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Amateur Film Study of the Offensive Line (and more!)

Brian Losness-USA TODAY Sports

So the two biggest questions of the off season for Boise were (A) will there be football and (B) how the offensive line will do. The first answer came late and the second one, well, seemed positive for the first game. Utah State doesn't exactly have future NFL stars playing defense but there were some things I liked. I'll go over them and explain as best I can what's happening with a gif of the full play.

First play is the 52 yard touchdown to Shakir. It was Boise's first drive in the second quarter.

I know everyone talks about the blown coverage that lead to the touchdown, but I think we're ignoring what a good job the pass protection did. In a lot of offenses the emphasis is less "the offensive line protecting the quarterback" and more "overall pass protection", since it involves more than just one position group. This play shows why.

Here Utah State's #92 lines up over the center, but he'll slant down to the left guard (Garrett Curran) and put a swim move on him to go up field.

The move works and Curran gets beat. The defender now has an open shot on Bachmeier, which happend waaaaaaaaay too often last year. Most coaches preach "Outside in" in pass protection, meaning block the interior rush first then go to the edge. Luckily for us, John Bates, (red) is paying attention to the interior rush since Ojukwu has his man in control.

I can't count how many times last year I would see blockers rush to the outside, or hit a man already being blocked, while a defender came up the middle untouched. Well not anymore! At least on this play. Bates is able to hit that lineman just enough for Bachmeier to get a good throw off.

Maybe Bachmeier still could have gotten the pass off, maybe he would have rushed the throw and been off target, but he definitely would have gotten hit. Luckily that didn't happen.

The next play is on the next drive, 11:00 still in the second quarter. Here we'll have an example of what to do and what not to do on the same play.

Another passing play, this time on 3rd and 18. USU has six men on the line, but the interior linebackers (yellow) back off. Both outside rushers (red) will crash inside while the tackles (black) rotate over them to the outside edge.

We'll focus on the left side of the line first. Here we have the defensive linemen twisting over eachother (black and red), but you'll notice Ojukwu and Curran (yellow) don't follow them. They have their eyes focused on who's coming to their gap. Curran barely puts a hand on the tackle lined up across from him before picking up the edge defender. Meanwhile Ojukwu is looking for who's coming, since it doesn't make sense to have no one bring pressure off the blindside. Meanwhile, on the other side of the line (circled white) you see Crabtree not doing as well. He's not noticing the twist and doesn't even see the edge rushing coming right at him. He's so focused on blocking the guy who lined up in front of him he's not even looking at the defender hitting his right shoulder. In the second angle in the gif later you can see the tackle is trying to cross his face and not just get around him.

Ojukwu has no problem with his man (black). Now the edge rusher (yellow) coming in gets passed Curran, but he way over pursues and ends up behind the quarterback facing the wrong way (which is a pass rushing no-no).

However, the other edge rusher (red) got right pass Crabtree who couldn't react in time. Bachmeir is sacked and Boise has to punt

Twists and stunts seemed to really throw off Boise last year. The protection did well with one-on-one blocking, but they were almost too eager to hit someone. It's good to hit people in football but that's not everything. Ojukwu and Curran did a great job of pass protecting on this play, where last year any sort of variation in pressure would be a guaranteed hit on the quarterback. Unfortunately Utah State still got the sack, but I'm calling it improvement.

Now I'll do a run play, just to mix it up. This wasn't necessarily a great play but it shows how subtle deception can help gain yards. John Bates starts out wide then motions to just behind Ojukwu.

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Everything about where everyone is running suggest this run is going to the right. The line for the most part (Yellow) is going straight up, and Ojukwu is moving his man to the right. Curran (Black) is pulling right and so is Bates (also black). Even Holani is kind of going that way. So, a run to the right, right?

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Shakir (red) is actually taking the ball the other way. Bates (again black) actually does a spin and starts heading the other way. Right in front of him is Holomalia-Gonzalez, who's also heading to that side. At this point I don't think any defender knows where the ball is actually going. Many defenders will try to follow the blockers instead of the ball and in this case every blocker was going the opposite direction of the ball, leading the defenders the wrong way.

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When Shakir gets the ball he has Holomalia-Gonzalez and Bates to block with only one defender in front.

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Now it's only a 12 yard run (#92 does a good job of running him down), but it's still about 10 yards before Shakir is even touched. When you see the two defenders on the edge move inside you can tell this play was going to work.

Again, not a big gain or a pivotal play, but a nice blocking scheme that sets up an easy 10 yards.

Now for the last play we'll go back to the first quarter. This is another play that's not necessarily significant, but I found it interesting. Lost in the crazy offseason was Boise changing offensive coordinators again after Zak Hill ran the offense for three seasons (side note, the last offensive coordinator to stay that long in Boise was Harsin). While Hill wasn't bad he did seem to get predictable at times. For example, look at this formation:

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Pretty spread out. Three receivers, one tight end, Bachmeier in shotgun, and only six defenders in the box. Last year when Boise lined up like this I swear they passed the ball 80% of the time, regardless of down and distance. But this is a run play. Had Utah State guessed that they probably would have crowded the line a little more instead of being so spread out, even after Evans shifts inside.

Octavius Evans (red) motions inside to lead block. Holani (green) will run straight up, then cut outside once he gets the handoff. The goal is the get the Mike linebacker (yellow) to get sucked inside instead of the edge where Jake Stetz (black) can block him. If that linebacker doesn't go upfield and goes to the edge instead he can meet Holani right at the line for a potential loss.

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The linebacker (black) does go in and he can't quite see exactly where Holani is going. Bates (yellow) has set the edge and Evans (red) keeps the lane open.

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Now you can see how big the hole is. That linebacker is being blocked by Stetz so no one is in position to make a quick stop. Holani doesn't have to even do anything fancy here, the blocking alone will get him six or seven yards. Stefan Cobbs (#82 in the bottom of the white box; forgot to highlight him) is able to make a good block, getting Holani another few yards.

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When Hill was the coordinator he had his tells. If the offense is spread out, they're likely passing. If they're bunched together with more than one tight end, it's a run. Coaches will say execution is more important than predictability, but if you force the defense to think they can overthink.

It's like Hill didn't trust his line to run without extra blockers and didn't trust the tight ends as receivers. I'm not trying to bash on him, he deserves the job he got at Arizona State, I'm just trying to show some differences. I think most of us felt the offense would get stale at times the last few years, so it's nice to see a few changes with Eric Kiesau. On n this play they used Evans, a wide receiver, basically as a tight end. A number of times this game, especially in the first quarter, the offense ran play action with two tight ends, which sounds simple but rarely happened out of the redzone a year ago.

With all that said, this was just one game and Utah State doesn't have the best defensive front. It just feels like it's been a while since we haven't complained about the blocking in the season opener.

Hope this was insightful, and am glad we have football to talk about! Because, come on, football wasn't REALLY back until this last Saturday.

This content was not created by OBNUG and therefore may not meet our standards. On the contrary, it probably exceeds them.

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