Snap Shots: Good Colt, Bad Colt
by Peter Bean on Sep 24, 2009 3:28 PM CDT
in Texas Longhorns Football
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PrintThe Snap Shots series continues, this time with a look at Colt McCoy's execution on two iterations of a similar play, one ending with a 20 yard gain... the other with an interception. The video quality I used is pretty poor, but you should be able to get the ideas.
Situation #1: 2nd and 13, Texas is in its 11-personnel, with Buckner (highlighted) upright on the line and McGee in shotgun next to McCoy. Texas Tech is in the nickel, with two backers, corners man under, and a pair of safeties 12 yards deep.
Play Action: McCoy fakes the hand off to Mssr. McGee, bringing the Will linebacker in, while holding the Sam (highlighted) as Buckner releases upfield.
The mismatch: Seeing now that McGee didn't take the handoff, the Will holds ground, while the Sam shields Buckner underneath as the tall tight end glides past him. (Not pictured: Tech's safeties, who are still sitting deep.)
The completion: Dan Buckner has an obscenely large free zone to slide into. As the ball arrives, you can see Tech's free safety belatedly moving in. 20 yards and a first down, Texas.
Situation #2: 1st and 10, Texas is again in its 11-personnel, only this time Gregorio (highlighted) is your tight end on the line, McGee is in the shotgun next to McCoy, Shipley is the split end at the top of the screen, and Chiles and Malcolm Williams are the slot and sub-B receivers on the strong side of the field. Texas Tech is again in the nickel, only this time, the Will linebacker is on the line coming on a blitz while the strong safety is moving forward late.
Play Action: After the snap, Colt fakes the handoff to McGee and the line picks up perfectly each of the five Tech rushers. The Sam linebacker is locked in on McGee, the strong safety stops his charge to greet a releasing Greg Smith. The free safety is starting to move to his right, and I've highlighted the hot zone where Colt should be looking.
The options: Colt's options are numbered below. (1) Vondrell McGee is releasing towards the Sam linebacker. (2) Greg Smith is covered by the free safety. (3) Malcolm Williams is moving past the nickelback. (4) John Chiles is heading upfield with the right cornerback.
The decision: As Colt steps into his throw, you can see in the bottom left of your screen that Malcolm Williams is heading up and to his right, into the hot zone, separating from the nickelback, who appears to be sitting in a zone. Note the picture perfect pocket McCoy has to step into if he wants it. If McCoy's ball is heading to Williams at the 30 yard line, it's a completion...
But it's not: Colt's made the wrong read, throwing over the nickelback towards Chiles.
The interception: If Colt's pass is lower, Chiles makes the catch -- he had a little space in the zone. The problem is that the throw to Chiles required McCoy to throw over the nickelback, who stayed underneath in zone. McCoy threw it too high, Chiles leaped to try to catch it, and the ball bounced off his hands into the waiting arms of the Tech defender.
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I don't like the title of this.
It makes me think of Connor Atchley a senior that NEVER got out of his funk! =(
"Football's so important in Texas. On the West Coast, it's a social. On the East Coast, it's a culture. Here, it's a religion."
-- Major Applewhite
I love it...like good cop, bad cop
Now if we could stop the good half, bad half. At least the bad half has been the first half though.
offseason interview on ESPN
didn’t he say that his completion % would be better this yr? That he would make better decisions through his reads pre & post snap? What’s goin on? During the TT game he was not making very good reads and staring down Jordan too much.
That was the tenor of the off-season discussion.
I don’t think anyone should be overly worried though and hopefully I haven’t contributed to that with my tone at times because we’re all holding Colt to an incredibly high standard right now. It seems like there are a few things right now more characteristic of 07 Colt than 08 Colt, but at least the offense has an identity, which it didn’t for a few years and was something I wasn’t sure was going to happen last season, much less how quickly it did. Point being, Colt will probably be fine as he develops more trust with the newer wide receivers.
by Wescott Eberts (GoBR) on Sep 24, 2009 4:07 PM CDT up reply actions
Something else should be considered as well.
Defense is a year-round preoccupation. All the DCs in the Big 12 have dug through the film record to try and find ways to stymie each opponent’s QB, particularly ones as successful as Colt. So that would mean more disguising of defenses and utilizing more defenses that (at least in the long run) can help lower that percentage of completions.
The nut is that defenses become more sophisticated on a collective basis.
Colt makes mistakes, yes, but there can be more to it than that. This can include ooc teams like UTEP who might listen to suggestions to run certain defenses (or variants on their 3-3) to see how Colt and GD react and adjust. Those plays might not make much difference in their game but might for some Texas opponent down the road.
In this sense, it is not just the chess game within the game, but the multi-dimensional encompassing the whole season.
I like these breakdowns
In putting these together I assume you review pretty much every pass play we run – can you tell how often Colt makes the wrong read, and whether that is too much/more than last year?
Seam
I think both this post and my Snap Shot yesterday illustrate that if teams are going to continue to play both safeties deep all the time, the seam routes will be open for a while. Texas should continue to run Williams and Buckner into those spots and if teams have to start dealing with that, then the out routes and crossing routes might start to open up. And if the crossing routes open up, then Texas is a dangerous team on third and long again.
How about the trick of pulling a deep safety all the way up to deal with Greg Smith? What an advantage for the offense to get that safety up closer to the line of scrimmage. Who knew that he could be such a factor in the passing game? Hell, I even went a paragraph without referring to him as the Extra Blocking Surface.
by Wescott Eberts (GoBR) on Sep 24, 2009 4:04 PM CDT reply actions
The route Chiles ran
I was sitting in that corner and it seemed like a timing route that Aikman and Irvin perfected in the ’90s, because Colt threw the ball before Chiles made his turn. Chiles ran more of a comeback route, and based on where the ball was headed my first thought was Colt was expecting him to run more of a out route towards the sideline.
I realize now after this post Colt made the wrong read, but that was my first thought based on the vantage point I had.
Miscommunication
I’ve wondered if there Chiles and Colt weren’t quite on the same page there. It’s definitely possible.
by Wescott Eberts (GoBR) on Sep 24, 2009 5:31 PM CDT up reply actions
I love it... Just Love it.. Thank you so much
The pictures are just great. First GOBR does it and now you did it. It helps so much when I can actually see what you are talking about. Makes understanding football so much easier..
Thank you
Wrong read?
Why is the second one considered a bad read when Chiles appears to be open and a decent throw is a pretty easy completion? I am not trying to troll. I genuinely don’t know.
P.s. I love the analyzing of plays. As someone who didn’t play organized football, this opens my eyes to things the commentators only occasionally hint at.
Mostly just a harder throw
The nickelback stayed underneath, releasing Williams behind him. To make the throw, Colt had to throw over the top of the nickelback, which may be one reason he was high on the pass. The easier, better look would have been in the seam, where he had Williams breaking to space.
You ain't hurt.
I had the thought at the time that if Chiles hadn't tipped the pass
that it would have gone safely out of bounds. Being athletically gifted and being able to climb the ladder like that is not the best thing, but you can’t fault the effort to get the ball.
It must be all of those years of organized football that PB played
that makes his analysis so strong, right PB?
crusader flag football, 1990-1993.
we were undefeated under brees, i believe.
and, also starting at WR for that team was hollywood heart-throb ben “schenkkan” mckenzie, of OC fame.
bleeding orange up in nyc. get a rope.
Wrong read plus
The throw was not easy because Colt had to drop it in beyond the defender in front of Chiles. No reason to choose a difficult throw on first and 10. Malcom was an easier target.
Since the horns were very close to 4 down territory, it would have been better to dump it to the TE or TB for a short gain. Unfortunately, GD put the TB just beyond the LOS, which made it tough for Colt to get the ball to Vondrell (who is much shorter than the tall DL between Vondrell and Colt). This left Greg Smith as the only easy target on a button hook pattern (Greg can easily shield the much smaller defender from the ball). Suffice to say, Greg may not yet be in Colt’s circle of trust.
Four short gains would have gotten a first down which would have put the horns in field goal range. This is an example of throwing away points. Colt made a poor decision but GD/Mack should have provided Colt with better dump targets. Considering that so few receivers were in the game who Colt trusts and that Greg was in the game and that the horns were so close to 4 down territory, maybe running the ball would have been a better choice. For sure there was no need to go down field. A short pass would have been great in this situation.
GD needs to try to consume more clock when playing Tech so that the D is rested. There is a reason the horns D played worse in the second half. Running clock will also get the Tech O out of sync.
Great stuff
Rehashing these plays is a lot of fun. Thanks for pointing out the intricacies of these plays.
On the pass the Chiles, Tech was playing zone coverage, so Chiles sat down in a hole between the safety and the DB in the zone. One of the respondents and Mack both mentioned timing problems on this play but it seems like the real problem was that the pass was high. I understand that Colt had decided that if he was going to miss, he was going to miss high so that it could not be intercepted by the CB (which seemed like a good idea at the time).
It seems like it would make more sense for Greg Smith to go to the middle rather than Vondrell (since Greg is a much taller/bigger target) and for Vondrell just to go into the flat. It should be easy to get the ball to Greg since he was a head taller than the safety.
How does it make sense for the D to guard not so fast Greg with a safety and guard very fast Vondrell with an LB?
My guess is that Colt threw to Chiles because Colt trusts Chiles more than Vondrell, Greg, and Malcolm.
Given that was first down and UT was inside Tech territory, it was not smart to try such a difficult pass. Better to dump it to an easier target and settle for 5 or 6 yards. Too bad Vondrell was not easily available for a dump pass.
Interesting article on reading coverages
http://smartfootball.com/page/2
In case the link does not point exactly at the article, scroll until you get to the article:
“Understanding coverages and attacking them with passing game”
Great use of screencaps
A simple but effective way of illustrating the play.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. If they get mad, you're a mile away AND you have their shoes.
Nice
This is a great article PB and the photo’s are a great way to break down the progressions and reads. Keep ’em coming.
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