Hey Berk. It seems I never know who were a QBs first, second, third, etc. reads. On the fumble play, do we know if they designed the entire scheme to have THAT guy open, or was it "were throwing a ton at Cal; let's see who's open and take what they give us"? I'm SURE they plan for plays in the 5-10 yard range, 10-15, etc., which makes me think this was the intended receiver. Thoughts?
Yeah, reads are a tricky thing, because they can be coached different ways from system to system, even for the same kind of concept. I do believe that both Curls and the Shallow were live options on the fumble play. It's basically set up to create a 3-on-2 stretch on Deng and Iosefa, with the Curls forming two points of a triangle, and the Shallow Cross forming the third point of a triangle underneath them. The QB reads the two LB's, and throws to whichever guy they don't cover (depending on the system, that could be a progression read, where he reads 1-2-3 the same way every time and throws to the first guy that's open, or it could be a coverage read, where he ID's the coverage and reads a specific guy based on that read, but the read player could change based on what the coverage is).
On this play, in thinking about the read we might wonder why the QB threw the Shallow instead of the Curls behind it, since those receivers look pretty open. I think that those routes look open as an artifact of how Zone coverage works, though. In Zone, players drop to a spot and then flow with the QB's eyes and shoulders. When the QB commits his eyes and shoulders to the Shallow, the LB's widen with it, and that makes the Curls look open to the inside, but if the QB would've been looking down the middle of the field, the LB's wouldn't have widened past those Curls. So, from the QB's perspective, he's seeing two LB's dropping under the Curls (the top two points of the triangle), and so decides to throw the Shallow. The LB's then close on that route quickly and before the WR can really gather himself or get going, and that quick break contributes to the fumble.
If you want to get more into coverages, passing concepts, and reads, I can recommend three resources (two by other people, and one by me). A great book for learning about how reads work is "The Bunch Attack: Using Compressed Formations in the Passing Game." The title makes the subject matter sound really specific, but a lot of what they say about different passing concepts and how they should be read against different coverages is universally applicable, and this book lays that thought process out better than any other that I know of. Another book that's good for this kind of thing is Steve Axman's "Attacking Coverages with the Passing Game." This goes less in depth into the thought process than Coverdale and Robinson, but it does a good job of laying out each major coverage shell and then telling you what kinds of concepts are good against them. It's more of a collection or a list, so it's not really a cover-to-cover page turner, but there are lots of diagrams and it's useful. Finally, some guy called berk18 made a video course on coverage and the passing game and put it on Patreon. That course tries to give you everything that you need to know to analyze coverage, and talks about different kinds of passing concepts and how they're designed to beat those coverages. So there's my shameless plug, hah!
Thanks very much for the detailed analysis and commentary. Our defense, with two major exceptions, played to their potential for the first time this season. I also feel like Shough made some mistakes which benefited us, particularly as he was a little beat up by the latter second half.
Hey Berk. It seems I never know who were a QBs first, second, third, etc. reads. On the fumble play, do we know if they designed the entire scheme to have THAT guy open, or was it "were throwing a ton at Cal; let's see who's open and take what they give us"? I'm SURE they plan for plays in the 5-10 yard range, 10-15, etc., which makes me think this was the intended receiver. Thoughts?
Yeah, reads are a tricky thing, because they can be coached different ways from system to system, even for the same kind of concept. I do believe that both Curls and the Shallow were live options on the fumble play. It's basically set up to create a 3-on-2 stretch on Deng and Iosefa, with the Curls forming two points of a triangle, and the Shallow Cross forming the third point of a triangle underneath them. The QB reads the two LB's, and throws to whichever guy they don't cover (depending on the system, that could be a progression read, where he reads 1-2-3 the same way every time and throws to the first guy that's open, or it could be a coverage read, where he ID's the coverage and reads a specific guy based on that read, but the read player could change based on what the coverage is).
On this play, in thinking about the read we might wonder why the QB threw the Shallow instead of the Curls behind it, since those receivers look pretty open. I think that those routes look open as an artifact of how Zone coverage works, though. In Zone, players drop to a spot and then flow with the QB's eyes and shoulders. When the QB commits his eyes and shoulders to the Shallow, the LB's widen with it, and that makes the Curls look open to the inside, but if the QB would've been looking down the middle of the field, the LB's wouldn't have widened past those Curls. So, from the QB's perspective, he's seeing two LB's dropping under the Curls (the top two points of the triangle), and so decides to throw the Shallow. The LB's then close on that route quickly and before the WR can really gather himself or get going, and that quick break contributes to the fumble.
If you want to get more into coverages, passing concepts, and reads, I can recommend three resources (two by other people, and one by me). A great book for learning about how reads work is "The Bunch Attack: Using Compressed Formations in the Passing Game." The title makes the subject matter sound really specific, but a lot of what they say about different passing concepts and how they should be read against different coverages is universally applicable, and this book lays that thought process out better than any other that I know of. Another book that's good for this kind of thing is Steve Axman's "Attacking Coverages with the Passing Game." This goes less in depth into the thought process than Coverdale and Robinson, but it does a good job of laying out each major coverage shell and then telling you what kinds of concepts are good against them. It's more of a collection or a list, so it's not really a cover-to-cover page turner, but there are lots of diagrams and it's useful. Finally, some guy called berk18 made a video course on coverage and the passing game and put it on Patreon. That course tries to give you everything that you need to know to analyze coverage, and talks about different kinds of passing concepts and how they're designed to beat those coverages. So there's my shameless plug, hah!
Thanks very much for the detailed analysis and commentary. Our defense, with two major exceptions, played to their potential for the first time this season. I also feel like Shough made some mistakes which benefited us, particularly as he was a little beat up by the latter second half.
Great stuff Berk18! Keep it up.
You can watch it on your phone