Podcast: Behind the U - Shannon Dawson

[DTP]

Those are fair points. Line did suck. But I fail to see how that prevents one from running more than 2 running plays. 2 might be an exaggeration but that’s certainly what it felt like. I mean if nothing else don’t you have to run numerous run plays just to keep the defense guessing, whether successful or not?

Part of the reason is that they were trying to go as fast as possible to catch teams off guard. So you want to get to the line and run the play ASAP. In those scenarios you’re usually sticking with something really simple like an inside zone.

Another part is that zone blocking run offenses don’t really have a lot of plays. You’ve got inside zone and outside zone, a couple variations of counters, and a lot of variation off qb zone read. They don’t run a ton of elaborately designed running plays because in a zone scheme there isn’t a designed man-to-man blocking assignment.

Plus, Josh Gattis had a deep playbook of man blocking running plays that he attempted to use last year and the running game actually got worse.