In the midst of the Mariners playing an electric, marathon 15-inning Game 5 of the ALDS, the Washington Huskies took on the Rutgers Scarlet Knights for another round of Friday Night Lights at Husky Stadium. Yet again, UW looked like they were in trouble in the first half before outscoring Rutgers 28-6 in the second half to secure a 38-19 victory. Demond Williams Jr. set a new Husky record as he recorded 538 total yards (402 passing, 136 rushing) to go along with 2 passing and rushing touchdowns each. The defense continues the ‘bend but don’t break’ formula that has been coming together as they await further reinforcements to return from injuries. The Dawgs take yet another step in the right direction as they continue their momentum into next week’s clash at the Big House next week to take on the Michigan Wolverines in another rematch of the 2024 National Championship.
Go Dawgs, Go Mariners.
To the film.
Offense: Hello, it’s Demond
More than in any other game in his young career, Demond Williams Jr. looked around and said “I got this” (at least metaphorically). There’s not a whole lot to say about a guy who’s stat line represented ~93% of the team’s total offense other than “wow”. There was Tui’s 300/200 game, Penix’s 516 yard passing game in 2022, and now there’s Demond’s school record game.
It’s a good thing he blew up in this game too. With injuries decimating the OL, Jonah Coleman and the rushing attack seem to be stuck in neutral. Plus, most Big Ten defenses seem to have figured out that Ohio State’s recipe for smothering our passing game. The difference in this game though, and most reassuringly to UW fans, that game plan seems to require a really good defensive front and elite athleticism at LB. Demond’s 136 rushing yards were the variety that throws defensive game plans right out the window. They were chunk yards that exposed Rutgers’ run fits and forced them to pivot their focus in ways that opened everything else up. Let’s take a look.
1st Quarter – 13:36 – 1st & 10
Right off the bat, first play of the game, Demond called his own number on a Zone Read play that we’ve seen dozens of times since he took over at QB. It’s based on Split Zone blocking up front with the TE (Decker DeGraaf, #86) coming across the formation post-snap to lead block downfield for Demond if he pulls the ball. One slight tweak to the typical play design is the formation and Denzel Boston’s alignment.
As you can see at the bottom of the formation in the snippet above, Denzel is lined up tight to the OL. This brings the DB covering him in close to the formation, borderline in the box. Rutgers is already loading the box and the line of scrimmage, so bringing Denzel in tight to draw the nickel in seems counter productive if we have a run play called. The trick here is Boston’s blocking assignment on the DE. Instead of Demond reading the DE, Boston blocks down on the DE and leaves the DB for Demond to read. Defensive linemen drill option defense extensively these days, but DBs don’t. Not only that, but when the DB is the read man on the option, there’s no one outside of him to play contain on Demond except for the wide side CB who is so far away you can’t even see him in the camera frame.
As you can see a lot clearer from the replay angle, Denzel does a great job washing the DE down the line (he was pretty clearly trying to play contain against the run), the DB #7 doesn’t replace him playing contain and flows with Coleman towards the front side of the play, and Demond dusts the defense in open space for a 40+ yard run.
Nifty wrinkle in a foundational run concept to spring Demond for big yards.
3rd Quarter – 14:24 – 1st & 10
In the passing game, Demond and the WRs feasted on a discombobulated defense that was getting desperate. By this point in the game, Rutgers’ defense recognized that they didn’t have the DL talent to both contain the QB run game AND get pressure on pass plays, so they shifted gears and tried to throw mixed coverages and blitzes at Demond to see if they could get him out of rhythm.
Here on this play they called a Cover 0 man safety blitz. Unfortunately for them, Demond was unfazed since he knew where to go with the ball pre-snap. On this play we’re running a Verts concept with pre-snap motion putting our three WRs in a bunch formation. With Dezmen Roebuck (#81) in fast motion pre-snap, Demond saw the CB travel with him and knew that it was man coverage. In general, if it’s man coverage, the QB just needs to go to his preferred match up, and in general, QBs are also coached to throw into pressure. If there’s a blitzer, it means that the space the blitzer was occupying is now open grass for a receiver to get into. With Roebuck getting a clean release off the line due to his motion, plus the middle of the field getting vacated by the blitz, Roebuck’s Seam route up the middle was wide open (of course it helped too that the DB in coverage fell down).
Demond evades the pressure in the backfield, zips the ball over the middle to an open Roebuck, and he takes it all the way down to the 4 yard line on his own. It’s a simple play design, but it emphasizes the benefit of consistent motion in the offense (a Fisch staple), a QB like Demond who understands how to process the coverage tells uncovered by motion, and the shifty route runners like Roebuck who can get open quickly against man coverage.
4th Quarter – 6:59 – 2nd & 5
Last play up on the offensive side of the ball we have this new goal line play we busted out for our last TD of the game. Fisch tends to go back and forth between exotic and vanilla in his red zone play calling, and this errs on the side of exotic while still being a fairly straight forward play concept. What we have here is a designed QB-keeper bootleg with a fake jet sweep. It’s not a ridiculously complicated play design, but it’s just unique enough that I don’t even have a name for this run concept. It’s something like a Fake Jet QB Boot Lead. Regardless of what it’s called, its a creative design with some razzle dazzle window dressing that sets up the TD.
First, let’s take a look at the formation because it sets everything up. Demond initially sets up in shotgun and then moves under center in an empty 11 personnel formation. This is important because earlier in the game, with similar personnel and in the low red zone, we ran a play out of this exact the shotgun empty formation (see snippet below). The earlier play drew a man coverage look with no safeties back, which was necessary for this play to succeed.
Drawing them into this same man coverage look, everything after that was misdirection. Coleman’s Jet motion drew his man coverage defender and the two LBs towards the left side of the formation leaving just the DE and CB to take care of. Geirean Hatchett (RG, #56) pulls in front of Demond to land a block on the EDGE, and Omari Evans (WR, #5) takes care the CB out in space. With no safety deep and no one else in the vicinity of Demond, he’s able to dart into the end zone for an easy score.
This was one of the more creative red zone plays we’ve run recently, and it highlights how effective misdirection and sequential play calling can set up advantageous looks later in the game. We as fans sometimes have a short memory play to play while we’re watching the game live, but good play callers are playing a chess match against the opposing staff trying to set plays like this up. That chess match is the difference in the margins that can help teams out perform their talent.
Defense: What’s Going on at the Second Level?
Jumping over to the defensive side of the ball, I wanted to change it up a little. Instead of hitting a variety of plays that touch on a couple of different topics or key moments from the game, I wanted to drill into the LB and slot corner/nickel play. In particular, I want to drill into how Rutgers identified it as a soft spot in the defense and figured out ways to exploit it in the run and pass game. At the end of the day, the defense made enough stops to get a decisive win, but understanding how second level play (what I consider LBs and the slot defender since they’re the equivalent of the old SAM LB in some run fits) is important. It also highlights the impact that Buddah Al-Uqdah & Jacob Manu’s availability has on our defensive performance.
1st Quarter – 14:22 – 2nd & 6
First up, we have Rutgers’ long run on their opening possession. It’s a basic Zone run concept from Rutgers against a 5-man front that we’ve run throughout the season. As I’ve mentioned several times before, the 5-man front with one LB at the second level of the box has very distinct pros and cons. The biggest benefit of this look is that by having so many bodies on the line, the OL can’t get double teams on the defense. This can help our DL get backfield penetration, but in practice it usually just allows for less wash, vertical movement, and smaller creases. The biggest drawback to this 5-1 type of look is that there’s only one LB to plug the gaps when they appear, so if you don’t have a stud at LB or he makes a mistake, you’re risking much bigger plays.
On this particular play, we’re playing our EDGEs aggressively against the run. You can see our field side EDGE crashing down the line from the backside of the play. In order to maintain gap integrity on the backside, we’re running a scrape exchange where Deven Bryant (LB, #17), who’s our sole second level defender in the box, needs to flow backside to replace our crashing EDGE as the contain defender in case they run an option. Unfortunately, our crashing EDGE isn’t able to make a play on the RB, and our front side DL isn’t able to cover all the gaps. Bryant isn’t good enough to play the backside contain AND plug the front side gaps (no LB can cover five gaps), and the Rutgers RB runs untouched for at least 20 yards.
We should either avoid playing aggressive scrape exchanges to let the LBs get easier gap responsibilities, or we need to play multiple LBs at the second level.
2nd Quarter – 10:58 – 2nd & 13
Rutgers didn’t just attack the second level defenders with the run. They also attacked Bryant through the air. On this play, we’re running a standard spot drop zone Cover 3. Cover 3 should be pretty familiar to most football fans, but at a high level it’s a 7-man zone coverage call. Three defenders are covering deep (1 safety & 2 CBs in this case), and four defenders are covering the underneath zones (the boundary EDGE, Bryant, McLaughlin, and the slot DB).
Technique-wise, the outside CBs are taught to play outside leverage on their WRs. This is because they can funnel in-breaking routes towards the deep safety and LBs where as there’s no help to the outside. The defenders playing the middle two underneath zones, aka “Hook/Curl” zones, are usually taught to drop to a certain depth so that they can squeeze the gap between them and the free safety, keep underneath routes in front of them, and interrupt passing lanes on in-breaking routes. On this play, those Hook/Curl defenders are Bryant and McLaughlin. Keep these responsibilities and techniques for Cover 3 in the back of your head.
Rutgers ran a spacing concept to create horizontal and vertical stress on our second level defenders. Focusing just on the boundary side of the play, Rutgers is running a Slant-Flat combo between their boundary WR and their RB. They are also running a Curl route over the middle with their TE. The Slant-Flat-Curl combination creates triangle spacing stress on our three zone defenders to that side. The RB’s Flat route clears out the “flat” defender (the EDGE), and the TE’s Curl preoccupies Bryant underneath instead of him dropping to his spot. This leaves a wide open passing lane for their QB to target the Slant route against our CB (Tacario Davis) playing outside leverage. Tacario is an excellent CB, but his coverage assignment and corresponding technique is giving up the in-breaking Slant because he’s anticipating help to the inside. Bryant is put in a lose-lose position. Either he was going to drop back to disrupt the passing lane to the Slant route (thereby conceding the easy completion to the TE), or do what he did covering the TE but give up the Slant. There’s a chance he could’ve dropped to his spot to take away the Slant, and then rally up to tackle the TE for a medium gain, but that’s still more ground for Bryant to cover than I’d feel comfortable with if I were calling the defense.
3rd Quarter – 0:34 – 1st & 10
Very similar to the last play, we’re running a Cover 3 again and Rutgers is running a similar spacing concept to the boundary. This time, Bryant is covering the Flat zone and Xe’ree Alexander (LB, #10) has the Hook/Curl zone that Bryant was responsible for in the last play. Rutgers on the other hand has a slight tweak in their passing concept with the RB running a Hitch route in the Flat zone, but the WR is still running a slant, and the TE is still running a Curl.
Focusing in on Alexander as the Hook/Curl defender, instead of staying shallow to defend the TE’s Curl like Bryant did on the last play, he drops back for depth to squeeze the passing lane to the Slant. Rutgers’ QB makes a great pass in rhythm to the Slant for the completion anyways, but it is a much tougher pass for him on this play. I also want to highlight how much space was available to the TE on the Curl since Alexander dropped back. Again, it’s a lot of space for our LBs to cover when we run Cover 3 against underneath spacing concepts like this, and sometimes we’ll give up passes like this against good QBs. However, if we’re going to continue using Cover 3 zone calls with LBs who may not be the rangiest athletes, we should at least squeeze the passing lanes like this on deeper routes and take our chances rallying up to make tackles instead of chasing receivers down when they get behind the coverage.
2nd Quarter – 1:51 – 1st & 10
Credit to Rutgers’ OC. They were ready with the right calls when we mixed things up after getting torched in zone coverage. Keeping the same 1-high coverage shell look as our Cover 3 look from earlier, we went with a Cover 1 man call to bait them into an ill-advised pass. The problem here is that many of Rutgers’ passing plays had zone and man coverage beaters built into the same play call. Similar to their play calls on the last two plays, they had a Slant-Curl spacing concept to the boundary. However, on this play they also hat a Slant-Slot Fade to the field side. Slant-Slot Fades are a go-to man coverage beater for a lot of teams, especially against Cover 1, because they create a natural rub to get the slot receiver open, plus there’s a lot more room for a slot receiver to work with towards the sideline (i.e. away from the free safety) for the QB to throw the receiver open. Leroy Bryant (CB, #0) is in coverage here and he really didn’t have much of a chance once the receiver made a beeline towards the sideline to run under the pass. It’s a really long throw for the QB to make towards the wide side of the field, but he dropped it in the bucket and McLaughlin isn’t a true sideline-to-sideline coverage guy to provide much assistance against the route.
3rd Quarter – 9:28 – 1st & 10
The Slot Fade wasn’t the only trick up Rutgers’ sleeve when we mixed in man coverage change ups. Beating man coverage as an offense also involves identifying mismatches to exploit and (unfortunately) they went after Deven Bryant again. Again running out of a similar Trips formation look like they ran on several of our previous plays, Rutgers runs a Slant with the boundary receiver, but instead of having the RB run a route into the Flat zone like they had several other times, they have the RB run a Wheel route up the sideline against Bryant in man coverage. Bryant recognizes the beginnings of the same Slant-Flat-Curl combo from the offense, but he gets caught sitting on the RB in the Flat only to get run past on the Wheel.
I don’t want to harp on Bryant’s coverage too much, so instead I’ll use this as an opportunity to point out that despite having a pair of CBs who are very well-suited to man coverage, we still have to consider that our LBs also have to play man coverage when we make those calls. I’m not sure we have the personnel to hold up consistently in man coverage with our LBs playing man.
4th Quarter – 14:55 – 4th & 4
Finally this week, we have yet another Cover 3 rep against yet another Rutgers spacing concept. However, this time, Rutgers throws the ball to the field side to complete yet another Slant. We wanted to sneak this one in here to further emphasize that it wasn’t just Bryant getting picked on with these short passing concepts and to emphasize that even with good anticipation and spacing from the defense, a perfectly timed pass is very hard to beat. Rashawn Clark (CB, #2) is playing in the slot as our nickel and has the field side Flat zone coverage responsibility. He’s playing off coverage as he’s supposed to when playing on that side of the field, but it does make it hard for him to squeeze the passing lane or undercut the pass. He does however read the QB well and breaks on the pass to hold them for a short completion. Unfortunately, it’s still a conversion on 4th down.
Other Thoughts from Coach B:
- Outside of the long run on the first possession the defense buckled down against the run. 4 yards per carry overall. 2.2 yards per carry excluding the long run. Yet another game where our impression of their performance contradicts the results on the box score. Something to keep an eye on.
- Bend but don’t break seems to be our winning defensive formula. It seemed worse than it was given the consistent Rutgers conversions on a few long drives and a couple explosive drives, but it’s an unsustainable strategy for most opponents. Rutgers only had one fewer 1st down than we did, but they went 5/15 on 3rd down and also needed five 4th down attempts, converting three.
- Like we said earlier, Demond was brilliant. He’s just the 16th FBS QB all time going 400/100. Another fun fact, he set the UW individual offensive yardage game record at 538, breaking Penix’s 529 yard record set in 2022 vs Fisch’s Arizona. That game Penix set the previous record in also happened to be the same day as the Mariners 2022 home playoff elimination game that went to 18-innings.
Awgs’ Bonus Play of the Week
This week’s honors goes to Denzel Boston for doing Denzel Boston things.
