Coleman Feeley
On the line
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2013
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in Texas Longhorns Football By Coleman Feeley
Nearly 34 million people tuned in to watch the first national championship game, produced by the College Football Playoff – that’s 7.5 million more than watched the Florida State vs. Auburn championship game last year! For many, including myself, the two teams vying for the title weren’t the teams they expected to be playing that night.
Ohio State shocked nearly everyone when they beat Alabama 42-35 in the Sugar Bowl with a third string QB. No one questioned Urban Meyer’s ability to recruit or to coach, but a third stringer?! Impressive. Oregon had an equally impressive win, throttling FSU 59-20 in the Rose Bowl.
As expected, Oregon’s highly touted offense, that relies on a high tempo and multiple reads, found success by scoring over forty points by the end of the third quarter. However, what was truly surprising was the way the Oregon defense played last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Jameis Winston. The Ducks rendered FSU pretty much helpless. The Seminoles struggled to provide sufficient blocking while Oregon used complex blitzes and solid individual performances to reach the QB.
In the National Championship game, however, Ohio State was able to lean on Oregon and wear them down over the course of the game, leading to the 42- 20 victory and ‘first ever’ true National Champion. Throughout the game, both teams clearly expressed their identities, both offensively and defensively, with the systems they employed.
Early in the game, Oregon’s high paced offense caused the Buckeyes some serious trouble. With no time for Ohio State to make adjustments or substitutions, Oregon’s first drive of the game resulted in a touchdown, and took only two minutes and thirty nine seconds. That’s a play averaging 6.8 yards every 14.5 seconds – that’s real seconds, mind you, not 14.5 seconds/play on the game clock. Oregon’s offense is a Spread in every sense of the word, and with it you can see some of the advantages spread delivers.
However, Oregon was also limited by maintaining their high tempo spread. For receivers and backs, the high tempo doesn’t necessarily curb their routes or assignments, but for offensive linemen it creates a whole different scenario. As I’m sure you remember from previous Chalk Talks, offensive linemen must first identify the defensive front as well as the most dangerous linebacker, or ‘Mike’, before they can successfully block a play. One of the greatest challenges of a fast paced offense is that it can hinder or limit this communication between linemen. The result almost completely erases any run play except for Sweeps and Zones. To Oregon’s credit, they initially ran these very well, however, as the game progressed, Ohio State made some great adjustments to slow down this high-paced but basic attack.
Ohio State’s offense was an entirely different story. OSU linemen were talking every play, pointing out blitzes, adjusting zone combos, and in turn…dominating. Ohio State runs what most people would call a ‘Spread’ when in reality OSU’s offense more closely resembles an offense called a ‘Run and Shoot’.
Yes, practically all of Ohio State’s formations are run from the shotgun, however, where they differ from Oregon is in the personnel changes and motions pre-play. For example, early in the third quarter Ohio State was faced with a 3rd and 4 situation. With Oregon running a three man defensive line and by lining up in a three-wide wing formation, OSU forced the Ducks into a defense resembling a 3-4. Pre-play the Buckeyes sent the slot receiver in motion causing the defense to shift and cover a now unbalanced formation. With this shift, OSU ran a counter to the back side setting Elliott free for a 15 yard run (fig 1).
Ohio State uses tight ends, multiple running backs and fullbacks along with new and creative formations to help players win individual battles. With almost ten minutes left in the game, Ohio State found themselves in a 1st and 10 on Oregon’s 3-yard line, up by only one score. They lined up in a formation that was unbalanced to say the least! With a tight end, three wide receivers, and a running back lined up to the right, Oregon crowded the line with eight defenders in the box. Finding a mismatch backside and using a read to freeze the End, Ohio State’s Left Guard and Tackle were able to move the Nose and Free Safety deep into the end zone allowing Elliott an easy touchdown (Fig 2).
Watching Ohio State’s offense operate should have been very exciting for Longhorn fans because they were able to observe the offense that Texas hopes to one day have. Even though both offenses are grounded in the same thought, Texas uses many more under-center formations and doesn’t necessarily have the personnel to do what OSU did.
Well-blocked runs win games. Ohio State would not have been able to accomplish what they did without such a dominating performance from their offensive line. OSU’s 6 ft., 220 lb. sophomore running back, Ezekiel Elliott, rushed for over 200 yards in each one of his last three games (with 246 rushing yards and 4 rushing TDs in the Championship game) and those stats don’t happen without tons of daylight to run through. In 2014, Texas’ offense lacked superior offensive line play that comes from having tough, experienced offensive linemen.
The Longhorn offensive line was made up of over 5 different combinations of players. That means that for essentially half the games this season there was a different starting line-up! With experience, comes stability. With stability, comes execution, and with execution… comes wins.
