Return of the Midline

00Burdell said:
I won't swear to it but I believe there is an unblocked DL on the midline (because he bit on a bogus assignment) whereas on the QB follow, every DL is accounted for by a blocker (incl the one the Bback picks up). The midline requires (I think) the QB to read the DL and decide what to do where as the QB follow is called and executed straight up.
Click to expand...

This sounds right. I vividly remember a play vs. Clemson in 2011 when Tevin pulled the ball and ran the midline on the goal line. You see the DT who was eating our lunch all day celebrating like he had made a TFL, and then throw his hands up in the air when he saw that Tevin kept it and scored. CPJ's post game comments were talking about how we changed the reads to be off of the DT since he was dominating us so badly.
 
beej67 said:
I bet it was purely that the midline wasn't part of our prior gameplans, so Bud didn't spend a lot of time preparing on it. Probably spent all that prep time working on the rocket toss and on play action, which is where we raped Duke.

Which is also probably why we held back JT's injury until the last second.
Click to expand...
CPJ said the game plan was to go between the tackles due to a change in how VT defended them last year. He made it sound like GT would have run up the middle no matter who was the QB. Clearly, the attack up the middle would be different if Thomas does it vs Jordan.

I agree that Foster probably prepped for a perimeter game and so got caught flat footed when GT showed up with an up-the-middle game. Obviously, Foster tried adjustments in-game, but that's hard to do effectively when he has to find and implement them on the fly while CPJ spent all week contemplating all the ways he would run up the middle.
 
MJ's 53 yard TD run was definitely NOT midline as everyone was blocked. It was QB follow.
 
00Burdell said:
I won't swear to it but I believe there is an unblocked DL on the midline (because he bit on a bogus assignment) whereas on the QB follow, every DL is accounted for by a blocker (incl the one the Bback picks up). The midline requires (I think) the QB to read the DL and decide what to do where as the QB follow is called and executed straight up.
Click to expand...
Correct. Go ahead and swear :bigthumbup:
 
ElCidBUZZingFAN said:
I need to go back and listen, but I'm fairly confident that CPJ in his post-game presser said we ran more QB follow than midline. Again, if I recall correctly, he stated we may have run the midline only 5 or so times.
Click to expand...

I came here to post this. We were blocking the entire DL more often than not on MJs inside runs. I'd bet less than half of our run plays were actually options - and probably a bigger disparity after the first 3 or 4 drives. Neither of the long TDs were options plays, QB follow and a trap I think.
 
gtrower said:
I came here to post this. We were blocking the entire DL more often than not on MJs inside runs. I'd bet less than half of our run plays were actually options - and probably a bigger disparity after the first 3 or 4 drives. Neither of the long TDs were options plays, QB follow and a trap I think.
Click to expand...
This is a good thing.
 
2QB is a hard case, frosh OL kicked them fellows to the curb.
Lots to love.
 
The fact that we were running QB follow rather than midline is pretty impressive. That means we were just blowing them off the ball and running our backup QB straight up the middle over and over and over again. We weren't even optioning a guy out of the play most of the time. Same goes with many of Marshall's runs. I noticed more often than not that we weren't running the option, we were just doing straight dives and traps and blowing VT off the LOS.
 
http://nflbreakdowns.com/the-flexbone-option-offense-midline/

Midline-double-lead-picture-1.png
 
We used to beat Clemson's ass with that play. Tevin Washington's QB rushing record (that JT just broke) was set against the Tigers, and I'd say 90% of his yards came by grinding out the clock with midline runs. That was back when their defense was centered around monster DT's that we just took out of the game by optioning off of them.
 
In alot of these midline plays, the QB is just getting yards due to open space/lanes vs pushing the pile. So I'm not sure why JT5 can't be effective in running these midline/QB follows. At least it gives the defense another wrinkle to worry about.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top