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Sunday, April 1, 2012

OU "Drive" Concept

Our staff attended the football coaching clinic at the University of Oklahoma this weekend. Thursday night, Coach Jay Norvell spoke about their crossing concepts. He talked through their Mesh and Shallow concepts, and showed a ton of cut-ups.

One new (for me at least) play that he showed was the "Drive" concept out of Trips. It is basically Trips Right H-Shallow - but with one difference: The RB checks his pass pro to the left, then goes through the OL and meshes with H.

The QB reads it: 1. H - Drive (Coach called this route "Drive"), 2. Y-Dig, 3. RB "Burst" (essentially Mesh). This is just a triangle read for the QB - they do not have him look deep.


It looks very close to Franklin's "Pyramid" concept where two receivers mesh, and there is a Dig over the top of it.

This really becomes a nice blend of Mesh, Shallow and Pyramid. They also ran it out of Bunch.

We noticed that this must be a big 1st down call for them - the RB never had to stay in and help protect.

We have our Y and X mesh when we run normal Mesh. Would this concept work if Y and the RB meshed, and H ran the dig behind it?

Does anyone run something similar to this concept?

3 comments:

  1. Heard a talk about this concept myself during the clinic season. In my notes I have written down: "Adjust split of Basic (dig) man so that he intersects the drive and checkdown (burst)"

    From what I understand, the problem could be if you had Y running the drive and H the dig, then H could have a difficult time getting to the correct place in his route at the correct time. What they would do is, if they wanted H to run the dig, is to move H to the other side of the formation (making it into a 2x2) and running what they call a "shallow" concept (H dig, Y drive, RB burst).

    They also could run the shallow out of a 3x1 formation by having the X on the drive, Y dig, RB burst (to the opposite side as you have diagrammed above) and have the H and Z run a two receiver pattern (post/wheel; smash etc.)

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  2. Looks like a good Cover 2 beater. Do the RB and H continue to run if the LB's sit? I think I'd want that dig route to MOFO - Take it if it's there. Agree with the above comment that it strongly resembles the old shallow cross play.

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  3. This is a good route concept. I'd add a couple touches to it to give you an advantage on the perimeter as well.

    Think about sending the frontside outside receiver on a post route. I'm a fan of a deep post on top of an inside dig route because of how over-aggressive safeties react to routes in front of them. Several times, we have been able to hit deep posts over the top of safeties in quarters coverage who drove on the dig route.

    Also, in our drive package, we send the backside outside receiver (X) on a comeback route. Defenses have a tendency to over-rotate to the 3-receiver side, isolating the X. Further, because the weak side zone dropper will have to put quick attention on the drive route coming at him, he will be stressed by the combination of that shallow crosser and the comeback route. Often times, this limits the zone defender's ability to swipe underneath the comeback, giving the quarterback a good opportunity for a completion on the outside. If you have a good X receiver, you can exploit this one-on-one matchup. When the defense adjusts, or gives you a two-high safety defensive structure, then the stage is set to work the concept side of the route.

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