Some Clemson/Bama analysis

[beej67]

http://www.syedschemes.com/17cfp/

That Empty Smash Divide is intriguing. Think it's something we could use? I'm not sure we have the blocking for it.

I guess we could run smash out of trips and still attack the safety with the field side AB, but I'm not sure what holds the opposite safety.

Things to ponder.

 

[ScionOfSouthland]

The play is designed well, but the concept isn't new. I believe we had a play for splitting safeties that we hit Searcy on this year. I'm not really sure there is anything Alabama could do on a lot of this. They played the play the right way; Leggett was just a good matchup for the linebacker.

 

[beej67]

We ran 3 seams twice against UGA in the final drive and hit it big, once along the sideline and once down the middle. (the middle was open both times) But the point of the smash route is to tie the cornerback up short, and then get the safety chasing the slot to the corner. That Empty Smash Divide is neat because to cover it properly you pretty much have to be in Cover 3 Man Under, and nobody runs that. Especially against us.

 

[ScionOfSouthland]

Saban's base defense is Cover 3 with a pattern matching zone/man mix based on the route. Took another look at the gifs - if you look at the gif from the spider cam, #10 was either forgot he was playing man and intended to pass off the zone to the safety, or he misread the route and got burned. Clemson's 5 man set prevents the Alabama defense from moving into their Cover 1 man defense, which is the natural response to a vertical route pattern. Hard to say what the rationale was, but I presume it was to keep enough men in the box to control the combination running out Clemson's backfield. In this scenario, when Leggett makes his juke, the weak side linebacker looks like he wants to pass him off to the corner as an under route. You see the corner pull off the out route to pick up the zone. Instead, Leggett runs it deep down the seam and get separation as the safety is playing to the deep post. That one is the fault of the linebacker.