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The DUO Conundrum and Personnel Groupings

LuCane said:
Can one of the OL masters in here give us a technical rundown of running DUO out of 10 personnel groupings?

Because, you know, I think 10 might be useful to us this year. But, I also acknowledge we're highly likely to run DUO.

So, what creative ways outside of running Mensah into the ground unnecessarily do you all have for sealing that unblocked Edge player? Please don't have Mali on wham blocks. I kid, I kid.

Would also be curious to see us flash 2RB and WR. Mark Fletcher can do some blocking if he remains healthy.
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Use a WR that has grapefruits as a kickout guy from the bunch set

Get Marty Brown to do it from a nested position

Let’s hope a TE emerges.
 
LuCane said:
If you've followed how we have followed some of the things the Rams have done, it's not difficult to see how we ended up with more TEs on the field and WR inserts, but I haven't seen a ton of the Rams' 4WR stuff, so I'm curious what wrinkles we've got. We simply need a healthy % of 10 personnel. I'm not expecting a majority. I'm approx. 3 drives a game with flavor. Maybe that's too hopeful. I don't know.
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Well he comes from the Shanahan tree which is mostly Outside Zone with Duo, Power and counter as changups against overload and overpricing the outside Zone.

Out of 10 you need a lot of WR motion and cracks/insert or pullers.

McVay then shifted toward more Gap heavy after getting Stafford and his offense became a little bit stale. Think they even led nfl in duo.

But I think orbit/jet motion alone could be used by itself to displace edges to prevent them from crashing on play side as long you have slightly wider splits I’d think. Like kf you aren’t going condensed and are 3x1 pistol with wider splits. You orbit motion Toney I don’t see why Duo wouldn’t still be effective tbh especially if incorporating the deep bubble off that orbit at the end like we ran a couple plays to him like against Ole Miss last yr…. Toney in that motion is incredibly effective at attracting attention. And if out of pistol and Fletcher can get downhill quicker with a slightly wider split, I like it.

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Like this but Bauman split out and Toney motioning the opposite way.

I mean no matter what we need to do cracks/inserts. But we can run more outside zone off it

Mike McDaniel with Dolphins is probably what we have to mimic more of I’d guess. If they didn’t get Njoku what he does with Chargers would probably goood too since Gadsden is more of an off-ball Te as well… but he used a lot more 20 personnel…. Which again is kinda why I said we could motion Toney to RB and have Fletcher used as a FB too. McDaniel has been more willing to go 10/20, and uses a **** load of motion and spreading teams out more. But again he utilizes a lot of outside zone with the gap concepts blended in and the WR insert/cracks to replace the TE. There’s no escaping that
 
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I’d love to actually have the numbers but I’d guess we’ve run very, very little 10 in the last 2 years. Even with arroyo in 2024, he was playing the slot a lot, but to a DC, they’re countering that as 11. It worked a ton too because it really is 10 to us.

I think at the end of the day, it’s what I said yesterday. Nobody in the history of opportunities has had a bigger opportunity than Elija Lofton does. He honestly could be on the field for 75%+ of our snaps.

As much as we all say Mario is caveman, and we know **** well we will run the ball, the more I think about it the more I realize that the best run out for this offense is playing traditional 10 and just throwing the ball a ton. Not quite Cam 2024 levels but I think the smart way to do this is have Mensah drop back 30+ times a game.

Cam averaged 35 throws a game in 2024, and that includes a game where he played a half. Granted of course that was largely due to necessity, but I think we will be MUCH more throw heavy than last year and we won’t run duo as much. We are loaded at pass catcher, like beyond loaded. We have an NFL QB. And we don’t have any depth at TE. Lean into it and chuck it all over the place. At least in the first half to 3 quarters.
 
skyman said:
I think everyone is going light boxes anyways, most teams arent patient enough (last year we were) and you have to be willing to crawl down field and be comfortable with no explosives, but one penalty or tfl and the drive dies..

You list to any of these coaches prior to camp and all are enamored with what IU has done with less talent.. Then you see whats goin on in NFL and they were ahead of curve this time in regards to solving their own issues.. Light box, sit in 2 deep shell, post snap movement, zone it up on back end..
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That's more NFL. College teams do that but there's only one team on our schedule that can do it consistently and effectively and that's ND and they play more man.
Opposing DCs are going to have to decide whether they want to bring a S down like OSU did with Downs last year or risk getting the top blown off by the the speed we have at WR.
Even Indiana, who played a ton of split zone was bailed out by an under thrown ball by Beck.Beck makes that throw he finishes with 280 yds and 2 TDs.
I'm not saying they're not gonna try, I'm saying they won't be able to stop us because of skill talent and versatility we have at WR/RB paired with a QB who has the arm to execute.
 
252cane said:
The only way to do it is to have that slot crack down on the edge. I also don’t expect to see a lot if any running out of that set. Mario likes to use TEs in the run game
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We wathched Restrepo do this for 2 years. I really don’t want to see it anymore. From a tendency standpoint it was painfully obvious what we were doing
 
Allabouttheu95 said:
252cane said:
The only way to do it is to have that slot crack down on the edge. I also don’t expect to see a lot if any running out of that set. Mario likes to use TEs in the run game
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We wathched Restrepo do this for 2 years. I really don’t want to see it anymore. From a tendency standpoint it was painfully obvious what we were doing
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The op was talking about running duo out of 10 personnel which is 4 wr sets. The slot on either side would have to do it
 
252cane said:
The op was talking about running duo out of 10 personnel which is 4 wr sets. The slot on either side would have to do it
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Yes I know. From a tendency standpoint it was tough to watch for those two years because there was no wrinkles off of it. If you’re going to run it which I don’t want us too as often as we did with Restrepo you have to build off the obvious tendency. I don’t remember us doing that. It got to the point where I could call it out from my couch. That’s never good
 
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