OU vs. SMU Film Review

It's been a crazy week and we're a couple days later getting this out than usual, but let's get into it.

The base concepts that drive the SMU passing game are Curls, Verts, and Slant/Stick. This was a good opportunity for the Oklahoma coaching staff to dial in some blitz packages with man coverage behind it as a litmus test going into conference play. The top of the screen is a smash combination (Stop route with a corner over the top of it) and a drag by the inside receiver, with a stick route to the bottom. It's a cover 1 look with 6 defenders creating pressure from a balanced defensive look. Preston Stone is reading the stick route to the bottom the whole way and while the stunt doesn't get home and is actually picked up well, it still leads to a rushed throw and a good press by Kani Walker. This is a good alignment/formation for the SMU philosophy, as the balanced look puts the defense in a good spot to disguise blitz and coverage with little effort and really plays to our favor in just letting us be the better athletes. It was good start for the defense that ended up waivering slightly before shoring back up at the end of the game.

To say this was a blown coverage by SMU almost feels a little bit disingenuous to the Jeff Lebby/Oklahoma offense; their certainly was a blown assignment by a Mustang defender in the secondary, but the pace of the offense, the condensed formation, the aggressive run attack all led up to a perfect storm for Andrel Anthony. SMU mostly liked to send blitz's out of this 335 personnel (and also some 2-4-5, very reminiscent of the early 2010's Green Bay Packers) and condensing the offensive formation, which is essentially just a compact 2 by 2 spread look for us, fills the box with bodies and leaves the top and sides of the defense very vulnerable. This concept is the why on our usage of one and two tight end personnel, it forces defenses to bring extra bodys to counteract it and doing so allows our athletes to "get the most bang for their buck" so to speak. While the entire offense sells the run. besides Drake Stoop, who runs a flat to draw the defenders sideways, Andrel hits the perfect slip/outside release into the seam with nobody left over the top to stop him. Again, SMU clearly misplayed this but it wasn't just poor mental fortitude on their part - you could say they were set up.

A little bit of a blown coverage here by the defense - rushing 5, 2 high look against a slot left set - the top of the screen looks fine, its a true man coverage with a safety behind it, but there was a major miscommunication between Bowman and Harrington as they end up occupying the same space in the middle of the field. It's not uncommon for us to drop a safety down into a curl zone or a low-hole area (called a "sky" tag) to throw off a quarterback and try to jump a passing lane, but the defender whose area he replaces has to vacate. Harrington should of stuck the out route the whole way with Bowman playing the middle of the field. The rush doesn't get the sack but again does force a quick throw, but poor Kani Walker gets beat on a quick double move off the line for the long throw. This is a bad rep leading to a big gain ultimately, but the coverage miscommunication/misexecution was still apparent.These types of miscommunications have to be cleaned up leading into conference play, the goal is to never lose a rep from things that can be ironed out pre-snap.

Enough with the trick plays Jeff, run the dang ball - and boy did the Sooners run the dang ball. For better or worse the Oklahoma offene absolutely went right at SMU for most of the game, despite some confusing running back personnel, and at times looked great doing it. Here we have an inside zone look against a base 3-4 alignment and it was blocked pretty well. The key block here the ace combo to mike backer between Raym and Mettauer. They get such a good push the Mettauer doesnt even chip off right away to the backer, they just push the NT into him. Tawee stays patient riding the block's up until he seizes his chance at daylight and with a final block from Andrel to spring him free it's off to the races. The only bad rep here is Gavin Freeman, once he regoznizes the play developing his way he has got to get a hat on somebody and run with it, luckily for him Tawee has a great center of gravity. If we could execute Zone Read this well everytime, the Sooners would be cooking with gas.

Here we have what our 4-2-5 look against a heavy backfield with a cover 3 cloud (Safety is responsible for top third of the field, corner sits on anything low) and honestly alignment and coverage is all good. The pash rush is okay, not great but good and everyone plays their zone properly although would like to see Key give up some of that cushion to play the route a little closer. This is basically a flood concept, attacking the bottom corner in the flat by occupying him underneath and running a short corner route directly behind him, but this is the kind of gain we can live with a little more. Across the board all assignments were filled, it was just a good play call. You dust yourself off and move on to the next one.

No other way to put it, I just did not like this play call. I can see the argument that a positive play here sets you up for a 4th and short you can go for, but I think at this point in the game and it being a critical down, you really want to try to move the chains here and not make it a 4 down situation. That being said, this is stretch with a little misdirection wrinkle baked in to try to get linebackers flowing the wrong way, but nobody buys it and unfortunately Troy Everett gets pushed around at the point of attack. I generally like this concept in our offense as we use this same misdirection away from stretch to great avail most of the time, and stretch generally is a bigger plus play for us, but given the fact you're not quite where you'd want to be at this point I would personally prefer to see more aggression here in the play calling. A play action here would of been a better wrinkle than a window dressed perimeter run.

Critical situation, Slot left Y Cover against the 4-2-5 look, but again as far as assignments go this is one we absolutely can live with. You get a corner/whip from the slot with a Y on a skinny post/seam against what looks like a cover 2 sink coverage, possibly tampa 2 with peyton bowen playing that middle zone. The pass rush bends the edges of the pocket but we don't get much in the middle, but everything is covered, we get pressure, and the young guy gets called on something petty. There are absolutely times you can get away with that PI but this is not one of them. We are playing more sound and cohesive as a unit this year overall, and as our youngins grow up in this system, the excitement is palpable. Quite the hyperdoxial scenario where its an L rep but at the same time reason for optimism.

To seal the game we get an absolute clinic in downfield blocking by Stoops and Andrel. Out of a 2 by 2 set we release Major into the flats for the easy pitch and catch to solidify our field goal range and he decides to make the house call instead. Extremely effective playcall against a base 3-4 as it put its him up against a heavier outside linebacker, and with the downfield blocking going on, it makes it easy.