Auburn vs. Alabama A&M film review

aubiefifty · September 3

Auburn vs. Alabama A&M film review

What did we learn from Auburn’s week 1 win? Did we learn anything?

Okay, so this isn’t going to be a full review of the game film like usual, because I don’t have time to go through and fully chart the game and write that up because I’m busy with my actual writing job, but I at least wanted to give y’all something. With apologies to the late College and Magnolia blog (pour one out for the homie), this is basically just gonna be a “Touchdown Auburn” column, with a few random thoughts at the end.

Also, I don’t want to bury the lede, so I’ll answer my own question up front: no, I don’t think we learned much from this game. It was fun to see the offense show out like this, but the talent disparity between the two teams was obviously huge, much too large for our success in this game to really tell us much about how good this team is.

We might learn a bit more next week, but we also might not, since Cal doesn’t seem to be very good either based on their unconvincing performance against UC Davis. I really don’t think we’ll learn much in this first month of the season (which is good, because I’m not going to have much time to write). These should be four easy wins to start the year, and if they’re not, we might be in trouble. Anyway, without further ado, touchdowns.

Touchdown #1

Auburn opened the game with a bang, coming out of the gate and scoring on a four-play drive that barely ate 45 seconds off the clock. After a long completion to Malcolm ~~Johnson Jr.~~ Simmons took the offense into Bulldog territory, the Tigers’ first run play of the game gave them their first points on a 34-yard Jarquez Hunter run.

This play is a pretty basic RPO, pairing an inside zone or duo concept (it’s hard to tell the two apart, to the point that it’s a meme on football film twitter, I think this is duo) with hitch routes to the field and a slant or glance route to the boundary. The basic principle of duo is for the offensive line to double all of the first level defenders and allow the back to read the LBs and find his own running lane. It’s often described as “power without a puller”, but to me it’s more like inside zone without releasing off the double teams to block the LB. On this play, Thorne is reading the safety to the wide side of the field; if he covers the hitch route by the slot receiver, he’ll hand it off, and if he doesn’t, he’ll throw the hitch.

In this case, the safety flies down to the slot, so he hands it off, and Jarquez does the rest, assisted by some really poor run fits from A&M’s LBs. A&M is in some kind of under/reduced front here, so the OLB into the boundary should be filling the open B gap; instead, he flies way over the top, letting Jarquez cut it back to the gap he should’ve been occupying and take it to the house. Put a pin in this one, we’ll come back to it later

Touchdown #2

Auburn’s second drive was even quicker than its first, with the Tigers scoring on the first play via Payton Thorne’s first passing touchdown of the season. On this play, Auburn is running a flood concept; the basic idea is to send several receivers (usually three or four) to one side of the field, “flooding” that area with receivers and outnumbering the defenders so that somebody has to be open. Generally, you have a short route (in this case a flat route by the RB), an intermediate route (in this case a sail or out route by the slot WR), and a deep route (in this case a post by the outside WR), with the QB reading it deep-to-short.

Alabama A&M is in some kind of cover 6 or quarter-quarter-half (QQH) look, which they used a lot in this game. The idea of QQH is that you’re going to have two defenders (a corner and a safety) who are responsible for a quarter of the deep zone of the field, while another DB (a corner or safety, in this case the boundary corner) is responsible for the remaining half of the field. This allows you to get an extra hat in the box against the run game or an extra underneath zone defender, since the remaining DB (here the inverted safety) won’t be responsible for a deep zone.

The coaching staff obviously knew they’d be doing this, and made a great playcall to take advantage of it. A&M has the two quarter zones to the field and the half-zone defender (the boundary corner) to the boundary; the idea is to use the sideline as an extra defender to limit the amount of space he had to cover. However, this leaves a lot of grass down the boundary hash, since the CB has no safety help inside, and Auburn exploited that well here. The boundary safety goes down to take the out route by the slot receiver, and the outside WR runs a post over the top of him. The WR (KLS) burns the corner deep and since there’s no safety help, Thorne manages not to fumble the bag with a decent throw, and that’s all she wrote.

Touchdown #3

Auburn’s third touchdown was another one-play drive with another good call to take advantage of A&M’s boundary corner. In this case, it’s a play-action pass, with the single receiver (Cam Coleman) running a double move; he’s going to start running vertical, pretend to stop like he’s running a comeback route, and then burst out running vertical again. The idea is for the corner to bite on the fake comeback, leaving him flat-footed and unable to cover the vertical route, which is what happens here. Alabama A&M is playing the same QQH coverage they were playing on the last touchdown, so the boundary corner has no help over the top once he gets burned (you can see the boundary safety coming down to fill against the run and then turn to watch helplessly as his teammate gets cooked).

This one is as much Jimmies and Joes as Xs and Os, and I’m not really sure why A&M chose to put their DB in a situation where he has no help over the top against Cam Coleman, but it makes for an easy touchdown for Auburn.

Touchdown #4

Auburn’s fourth touchdown came out of the Tigers’ first red zone trip, and it was good to see them convert one of these situations rather than settling for a field goal against an inferior opponent (something that happened way too often last year). Here, Auburn is in 12 personnel, with two TEs, two WRs, and a RB on the field. This is an RPO with an inside zone run paired with a two-man pass concept on the outside. Offensive coaches would call this a rub, defensive coaches would call this a pick. The idea is for the outside receiver to “accidentally” run into the defender covering the inside receiver, taking his own defender with him, leaving nobody to cover the outside receiver, which is what happens here.

I’m honestly not sure what Thorne’s read is here for the RPO, but he chooses to throw the flat route, and the rub is successful in getting the inside receiver wide open for an easy score.

Touchdown #5

Auburn’s fifth touchdown came from, and I hope you’re sensing a pattern here, a deep post route off of play-action against the boundary corner in QQH coverage who had no safety help inside. In this case, Auburn used a concept that’s often referred to as Yankee, which is one of the most popular “shot” plays in football; it’s essentially a two-man concept, with one receiver running a deep post route and a receiver running a deep crossing route from the opposite side, not that dissimilar from Gus Malzahn’s infamous “Little Rock” play.

Once again, the corner is essentially helpless against a much better player and it’s another easy touchdown for the Tigers offense.

One subtle thing here I’d like to point out is that, if you watch the outside receiver on the far side, you’ll notice doesn’t do anything. That was actually the case on the first long pass TD as well. This seems like an inheritance from Philip Montgomery and the old Art Briles/Baylor offense, which frequently told its backside receivers to “hang out” on their shot plays so that they could save their legs until it was their turn to go deep. Auburn actually used some of the wide WR splits that were characteristic of that offense, further evidence for my theory that Hugh Freeze’s rationale in hiring Montgomery was to get access to the Briles system, which he and his acolytes are notoriously cagey about.

Touchdown #6

Auburn’s next touchdown was another successful conversion in the low red zone, this time via Payton Thorne’s legs. Thorne proved himself to be a useful runner last season, but in this case, it was just a matter of taking what the defense is giving you. This is a common play that spread teams run in the low red zone and short yardage; zone read with an arrow screen to the tight end. The Chiefs famously ran this to convert a crucial fourth down and short in the Super Bowl last season.

Here, the defensive end (#1 in the diagram) pinches down on the RB, so Thorne gets a pull read, and the OLB (#2 in the diagram) chases the arrow screen, so he tucks it and keeps it himself for the score. #0 for A&M should’ve been in position to make the play scraping over the top (a common method of defending zone read), but for whatever reason he runs over to take the TE, who is already covered, leaving Thorne open to run it in. Very weird, and I don’t have an explanation for it.

Touchdown #7

Touchdown #7 is almost exactly the same as touchdown #4, from the same formation but flipped to the opposite direction. Again, it’s a zone run with a rub concept on the two receiver side; this time it’s more of a slot fade or smash concept, with the inside receiver running over the top to pick off both defenders and the outside defender running a slant underneath.

In this case, Thorne elects to hand it off instead of throwing the rub. I’m not entirely sure why, since Auburn had two against two out there just like the first score; maybe it was because the slot defender was pressed up this time? Not sure. Either way, Damari Alston was able to put his shoulder down and get over the goal line.

Touchdown #9

I’m going to skip over touchdown #8 since it was just a punt block and there’s not a ton to explain about that, although it was very funny. Touchdown #9 is yet another case of Auburn exploiting the boundary safety in QQH coverage. In this case, this looks like an RPO rather than true play action, with Brown reading the boundary safety to either hand off on an inside zone run or throw a glance route to the single receiver. (He’s covered up by the scorebug here, thank you for incredibly nothing, ESPN.)

Since the safety was inverting as part of the QQH coverage we discussed earlier, this is an easy read for the QB to hit the WR on the glance, and with the corner in a soft technique with no help inside, this is free real estate for the offense, and the A&M DB isn’t going to win a foot race against ~~MJJ~~ Malcolm Simmons.

Touchdown #10

Auburn’s 10th and final touchdown (which I didn’t see live because I had already fallen asleep in the third quarter) was a bit odd from an Xs and Os perspective. Auburn is running four verticals from a 3×1 look, with A&M in their usual QQH coverage. Four verticals is a good concept against QQH, since you’re running four guys deep against a coverage with only three deep zone defenders.

Here, however, Brown goes to the quarters side of the field, where Auburn doesn’t have a numbers advantage. The spacing between the receivers isn’t very good either, as they’re basically right next to each other instead of spread apart enough to give each other some room to work. It’s a pretty bad underthrow by Brown, but Sam Jackson V does a good job of working back to the ball and making the catch anyway. Odd play, but it worked out.

Random Thoughts:

Despite the good result and the personal record number of passing TDs, I didn’t find Thorne’s performance entirely convincing. He still displayed some of the bad tendencies he showed last year, being slow to process reads and late on throws, as well as not setting his feet and missing open receivers as a result. That post he underthrew on the first drive would’ve been a pick against an SEC DB, and the miss on the curl route on Auburn’s fourth drive that forced a punt was pretty egregious as well. I think he’s improved during the offseason, but this wasn’t an unalloyed success for him.
Auburn’s rebuilt secondary was pretty solid, but did give up some open receivers that a better QB and better WRs would have exploited. A&M’s QB missed some open guys and his receivers dropped some catchable balls. The long completion on the deflected ball was bad luck, but we’ve been on the other side of one of those in a game that mattered a little bit more, so I guess we can’t complain too much.
It was nice to see Auburn’s offensive line get the job done against inferior competition rather than allowing an inordinate amount of run stuffs. It sounded like the OL was the weak point during camp, but they probably won’t be tested that much during these first four games, so hopefully that will give them a chance to get up to speed before the real season begins.

As I mentioned earlier, I probably won’t have a ton of time to write this month so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to talk about the next three games, but hopefully it should be back to regular program in October when the rubber hits the road.

warneagle

Edited September 3 by aubiefifty

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Auburn vs. Alabama A&M film review

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