@HighSeas
I think our lack of a zone run from the gun is hurting the run game, especially with us having three athletic qbs.
We run a lot of power, stretch (?) and delay that get blown up by ends. Seems like it takes an unnecessarily long time to get the back going and their alignment seems very deep.
Do you think it would be doable to bring the back a yard or so closer and run more dive and off tackle plays? It seems that there is space to get yardage running inside of the defensive ends (with the tackle or tight end kicking out/ pushing the defender upfield) if we hit the hole with conviction.
I see a lot runs where contact is made but it takes so long for the play to develop, defenders are shedding blocks. Have seen this with lbs at the second level where if the back was coming through faster, he could cut off his blocker’s butt for a nice gain.
If I’m wrong, I would like to know the opinion of a poster whose knowledge I respect.
There are two definite problems with running from shotgun. One is that when the back is offset to a side it's a strong indicator that the run is going to the opposite side, especially if the TE(s) is lined up opposite the back. The second and bigger problem imo is you force the backs to move laterally before they can get downhill. This was a big problem under Richt because Homer was pretty stiff and fit best as a downhill 1-cut runner (
BTW shoutout to Homer for his good special teams work last night). When you get backs moving laterally that exposes them to penetration and unless you have backs with dynamic lateral quickness who read their blocks well those plays fail.
I suppose the solution to that would be to run Pistol formation or run a lot of Duo and inside zone dive plays. But we don't have the dominating interior line that can drive block and get more than a few yards on those type of plays.
The teams that run the ball successfully from shotgun fall into 2 categories:
1. Pro-style power run concepts from spread looks, with dominant OL consistently every year. Texas, OU, OSU are good examples.
2. Teams that use a lot of window dressing, misdirection, jet motion, RPOs and the like with the spread option game. Clemson, Auburn, App State are good examples from recent years, but teams that do this usually have dual-threat QBs.
Developing a shotgun run game like that is a long-term project. You have to recruit the players, design the scheme, install it and teach the fundamentals. It's not an adjustment we can make mid-season by just pressing a button, and fans don't understand that. If we shifted to more shotgun it would be a vanilla, predictable run game that would be very easy to defend. We would have a much harder time scheming up numbers advantages and the backs (especially Harris) would be forced to do things that aren't their strength.
There are myriad issues with our run game but most of them are related to execution or what the defense is doing. UF & CMU loaded up the box against us and UF plays with essentially a 5-man line that can collapse every gap with relative ease. The Bucs run a similar scheme and have the #1 run D in the NFL. We still ran the ball pretty well on UF. The biggest problems with our run game are penalties, OL execution - missed cut-offs, missed reach blocks, penalties (again), atrocious base blocks by TEs, and RB execution - missed reads, tentative runs, impatient runs, etc.
I think the end arounds could be designed better, and Osborn is a poor choice to run them, but that's nitpicking. Those plays have generally been successful but could yield even more.