Remember in 2015 when Notre Dame played a scrappy Wake Forest team? At the time I didn’t pay much attention to the Demon Deacon defense. Of course now that Mike Elko is Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator that 2015 match up becomes more intriguing. In this edition of Iso Cam, we’ll take a look at the back and forth between Brian Kelly’s offense and Mike Elko’s defense on what turned out to be a critical play in the game. Let’s take a look at the film and I’ll show you what I mean.
2nd and 9, deep in their own end Notre Dame comes out with a heavy run formation with an interesting wrinkle. The heavy run look comes from the two tight ends stacked to the wide side (blue arrows). The wrinkle comes from the two receivers spread to the same side (yellow arrows). This creates an unbalanced formation with 4 receivers to one side and no receivers to the other side (black circle).
This formation puts pressure on the defense in a number of ways. First, the defense has to react to the stacked tight ends. If they don’t move some defenders over to match the extra blockers, Notre Dame will simply run to the tight end side and likely overpower them. At the same time, the defense also needs to decide what to do about the receivers split wide. Do they play man to man with no help over the top or do they move a safety over to provide additional support? Keep in mind one of those receivers is Will Fuller. What about the side of the formation with no receiver? Should they keep a corner on that side, or move the corner to the side of the formation with two receivers?
Elko decides to make the tight end side a priority and shifts his defensive line in that direction (red arrows). This is interesting because it leaves the backside tackle Mike McGlinchey (#68, yellow circle) uncovered. Elko also shifts his linebackers (purple arrows) towards the tight end side and has his rover (purple star and arrow) slide out to the 2 receiver side. For good measure, he’ll have a safety come down to the line of scrimmage to make sure he isn’t outmanned by the stacked tight ends (pink arrow).
When I first looked at this play, I thought Elko had overcommitted to the stacked tight end side. I was especially surprised that he would shift the backside defensive end over the guard (red arrow) since this alignment creates a pretty obvious run lane behind the uncovered tackle (yellow circle).
I’ve actually seen this type of alignment from Elko before, he’s not afraid to move his defensive linemen around. Elko clearly decided he wasn’t going to let Notre Dame overpower him on the stacked tight end side. I suspect he felt pretty good about the backside as well. If Notre Dame ran away from the tight ends, he had a corner in good position to keep contain (pink arrow) and a linebacker free to pursue from the inside (purple arrow). This would leave Notre Dame with one player (McGlinchey) to block two defenders.
The safety has come up in run support (pink circle) which puts 5 defenders (red stars) in position to make a play to the double tight end side.
If you were watching closely in the last screen shots, you would have noticed that running back Josh Adams (# 33, green arrow) was lined up directly behind quarterback DeShone Kizer (# 14). When the safety came down to the line of scrimmage and changed the math, Kizer moved Adams from behind him to beside him (green arrow). This subtle adjustment will allow Adams to get to the side of the formation where the math is better (black arrow) a little faster.
Of course we can’t forget about the 2 receiver (yellow arrows) side of the formation. Elko decided to move the rover to that side (purple circle). However, it wouldn’t be wise to leave him all alone on a receiver. Consequently, Elko will have the safety in the middle of the field roll over to the 2 receiver side (pink arrow) just in case the Irish decide to throw it deep. Remember this adjustment, it will be important later.
A fraction of a second after the snap and the 2 tight end side is already a mess (yellow circle). It looks like a herd of wildebeest crossing a narrow channel in a crocodile infested river. There’s not much room to run there. The linebackers (purple arrows), get caught up in the excitement and join in the river crossing stampede. This decision will come back to haunt the defense.
Josh Adams (green arrow) is just getting to the line of scrimmage, and has found a little bit of space between the guard and the tackle. The linebacker (purple arrow) got caught in the stampede and wasn’t able to scrape over the top and fill from the inside as Elko had hoped.
Remember the safety that rolled over to help to the 2 receiver side? Well there he is (pink circle) coming back to try and make the tackle. If he was able to stay in his initial pre-snap alignment, he would have been in a much better position to make the tackle.
Fortunately for the Irish, Josh Adams is able to break free and is off to the races for a 98 yard touchdown run.
Video
Final Thoughts
This was pretty nice play design by Notre Dame. Stacking the tight ends, forced Elko to adjust his defensive alignment so he had extra defenders to the strength of the formation. This left a bit of a weakness away from the stacked tight ends which the Irish exploited. To make matters worse for Elko, the two receiver wrinkle forced him move a safety away from the backside of the formation. This gave Adams a little extra space which helped turn a first down run into a 98 yard back breaking touchdown. Some nice X’s and O’s from the Irish. Oh and it doesn’t hurt that Josh Adams is pretty fast.
Man, that replay camera angle from straight up the sideline… That’s gotta be pretty for a running back, to break into the open with that much green and know you’re about to go another 80 yards for a score. Adrenaline, baby.
Long time lurker first time poster. Rules question. Why is that not an illegal formation with the uncovered tackle?
You must have 7 men on the LOS. Especially in high school and college football, that leaves you with leeway on how that is done. Basically ND went unbalanced, and actually covered up the TE on the strong side. What that means is, because the WR on the TE side is also on the LOS, the TE in ineligible to catch a pass, thereby making the formation legal since there are 7 men on the LOS.
So I’m guessing then McGlinchey had to report as tackle eligible? And thanks
Nope. He was still ineligible, if I remember correctly. He would have been tackle eligible if he was lined up as a TE in an unbalanced set, as long as he isn’t covered by a WR.
It sure looks like McGlinchey would have been eligible. I don’t think he was covered by a WR on his side.
As per NCAA rules, he is completely ineligible. All numbers 50-79 are not eligible. He would have had to physically change jerseys.
Didn’t realize the tackle eligible was illegal in the NCAA. I knew defenders would change jerseys to play on offense, but figured that was a workaround to having to announce as eligible every play, or in some cases to be tricksy. Thanks for the info.
No problem. That’s why, when a team goes unbalanced, you do have to make sure who lines up where. If McGlinchey lined up where, say Smythe was, and they flipped, Smythe would have been tackle eligible.
I’m not even sure what it means, but you have a great screen name.
It was originally a Star Wars themed fantasy baseball team name. I had Bartolo Colon
My favorite running plays in NCAA football (RIP) were to the non-WR side in twins/trips formations, usually after motioning even more people away from my planned point of attack.
Well, we can’t go 4-8 if NCAA football is dead. So we’ve got that going for us.
Counters to non-wr side were guaranteed TD!
Thanks Lars, great insight. I watched all of the practice videos from yesterday’s practice. In one video it looked like they were doing a tackling drill where guys would lay down on their backs with their heads pointing towards each other. At the whistle the ball carrier would try to run the ball in a narrow lane through the defender.
I was, once again, appalled at the tackling. These guys have got be the worst tacklers I’ve ever seen at ND. How hard can it be to fill a lane and bring a ball carrier down?
Thanks RK! The development of tackling is going to be interesting. I suspect Elko and his staff will make significant progress before the year starts. Just worried that they have a long way to go!
That’s what makes it so infuriating to me. It’s footbal. It breaks down to blocking, tackling, passing, and catching. How can they be so bad at one of the fundamentals of the sport? This is an agregious lack of coaching.
Yeah it’s frustrating. But maybe we’re just seeing glimpses and it’s better than it looks!
But it certainly underscores the belief that BVG spent too much time on scheme and not enough time on fundamentals
Thanks Larz! Am I the only one who is sad about our defense after reading and watching this? On the bright side, I’m happy that Adams is on the O
The run is largely due to the OL smushing the DL back into the LBs. If the DL holds their ground, this is a fairly easy tackle. That being said, based on our DL, being nervous is probably about right.
D line concerns me. Big time.
Don’t read too much into this play. I think we have a good one in Elko. I’m just not sure he has a whole lot to work with.
Great breakdown, but it did give me a little worry. As you pointed out, Elko had the pre-snap look matched very well. The rover covered the free WR (and, aside, how many times did we see ND LBs or S’s look at the MLB, everyone kind of shrug as they scrambled to try and line up correctly in the past 2-3 years just to get in some sort of alignment?)
Regardless, looks like a well-coached bunch that identified the unusual formation and got in proper position, but then the DL got pushed in, the LB couldn’t get there and the S wasn’t able to cover ground and avoid a big, big play. Given the personnel for Notre Dame this year, I have a lot of concerns the exact same post-snap problems could happen if Morgan/Coney can’t make that play we saw here, not too confident anyone else really will. And that type of thing seemed to happen a lot last year as well.
From all the stats, looked like Elko worked magic with the WF defense and hopefully he can improve and clear some issues up. But much like this play for Elko’s past defense, I’m worried way more about the personnel and execution post-snap than I am for the coaching to try and help them pre-snap.
Thanks Hooks! And I agree with your concern, not sure how talented this defense will be. Fingers crossed
Btw, thanks spider-man!
Most of the breakdown in that play, in my uneducated opinion, was the linebackers getting overanxious and forgetting their responsibilities. Probably got a little too amped about the heavy look and got suckered into jumping on it. Had the Mike scraped like he was supposed to, he would’ve been right in the hole that Adams hit. I think the floor for our linebacker play is probably “solid,” so I’m less concerned about breakdowns like that happening with any frequency with us.
Also, keep in mind that this is one isolated play, chosen specifically because the defense broke down. Wake actually did a pretty good job of bottling up a very potent offense in that game, and of course with inferior talent. They held us to our lowest yards per play number on the year at 5.76, just ahead of Ohio State at 5.79 and well below our season average of 7.09 against everyone else.
Really I think this play is more about the chess match between Kelly and Elko than anything else – kids will make mistakes sometimes, and in this case the mistake wasn’t even all that bad, but it was magnified because Kelly out-maneuvered Elko. It happens.
All that said, I’m very concerned about the defensive line too. There’s some physical ability, but there’s not a lot of depth and there’s no proven top performer. An awful lot of the success of this season could ride on how much of a step Jerry Tillery and Daelin Hayes can take this year, and how much we can avoid injury on the line.
EDIT: Also concerned about the safeties, of course. Need to make chicken salad out of chicken farts back there. (We’re slightly better than chicken poop, but not by much.)
Sheesh, Larz! You couldn’t dig a tackle-for-loss out of the archives!? Now I’m feeling all…
PS: RIP, Bill Paxton!
Lol. Sorry CC. I was going to break down a similar formation where Wake did a nice job!
When I saw the title I wanted it to go both ways huge tackle for loss and a huge run. After reading it I am a little depressed especially given our tackling…i guess I wanted the big loss more
Don’t worry, Elko does a nice job. The X’s and O’s on both sides were pretty good on this play. Elko will get a lot out of this defense. I’m a little worried about the talent he has at ND right now. But I think he’s a pretty good coach
Unless Elko motioned the players around as you suggest, they reacted to the formation. It may not have been what he wanted. I am sure the result was not.
Yes, I think it’s fair to say that was not the result he wanted. And of course the players reacted to the formation. But they didn’t just all decide to do random things independent of each other when they saw the formation. Coaches dictate rules for how the defense adjusts to formations. They spend a significant time in film study, game planning, and practice time on how to react to formations.
To what I think is your point, sometimes the players are responsible for calling audibles independent of the coaches (although those audibles would be created by the coaches). And no doubt that Elko or any other coach can’t control every decision a player makes on the field. So when I talk about Elko moving players I do not mean it literally. I also don’t mean to refer to every Irish person on the planet when I say the Irish in the article. Nor am I talking about the entire University when I say Notre Dame, so those statements shouldn’t be taken literally. Also, I don’t believe there were any Wildebeest in the stadium that day, so again not a literal statement.
I realize they didn’t react totally randomly, someone called the reaction. I am sure they are following what they are told. I think the LB who oversold as others pointed out did so because of the way Adams moved. If he had moved to the other side, the LB probably would not have gone, essentially, the wrong way.
You correctly discerned my point, and I yours. I do think we tend to make more of the chess match when in reality once the play is in, the reads belong to the QB on offense and the play caller on defense. At that point, all the coach can do is hope their coaching was right and the audible or adjustments get made properly. I do think we tend to make too much of the chess match between coaches.
I agree with your larger point, but disagree with some of the nuance. I would certainly take talented players over a really creative scheme. So you are right, sometimes scheme can be over blown. However, I would also say that scheme and coaching are more heavily weighted in football than most other sports. If you look at a team like Navy, it’s pretty clear that their scheme allows them to compete with teams that have considerably more talent
I would also agree that coaches do their best to prepare the players, but the players have to execute. I disagree slightly with the idea that once the play call is in, players on the field are running the show and making adjustments. They do that sometimes for sure, but a lot of that is still controlled by the coaches. For example, how many times have we seen a play call made, the offense line up look like they are going to snap the ball and then stop and look at the sidelines for a different call while the defense does the same thing?
on defense in particular, there is an element where the players have to react because they don’t know what the play is and I think that is more to your point. Players don’t always react the way that coaches want and there is little the coach can do about it. I completely agree with that and again if you have better players the scheme often doesn’t matter.
My intention on this play was to focus on the coaching simply because it was an interesting formation offensively with an interesting response defensively. Sometimes when I look at single plays I focus on scheme, sometimes individual players and what they do without focusing on scheme. I find both can be interesting depending on the context.
Thanks for the comments and the conversation!
One other thing, although I’m not sure I would adjust this way, I think this was a good adjustment by Elko. If the execution was correct they were in very good shape. Adams just barely squeezed through a very small hole and if the linebacker doesn’t step up he would easily make the play. Also, even though the safety rolled away from the play, he was in postion to make the tackle. He just didn’t execute. Nice play design by the Irish, good response from Elko. However in this case, Notre Dame just executed a little better
When I saw the lineup at the ND end of the filed, I thought it would be the Josh run.
Without Explosiva, it’s fairly likely the outcome would’ve been different.
Story of the 2015 season.
Shirley you mean 2016?
Oh no! I wanted to see something good from Elko.
You did it again Larz…you won the Internet…”It looks like a herd of wildebeest crossing a narrow channel in a crocodile infested river.”
Thanks Dannan!
Agreed, that might be the best line in the history of 18S/OFD film breakdown. I chortled audibly. Spectacular.