Special thanks to Mike Macon of Cotton Club Crew for joining me to discuss Texas Tech’s roster on this week’s podcast:

Thanks as well to ATQ’s Tristan Holmes for his help with some of the preliminary charting

work and statistical analysis on Texas Tech’s complicated quarterback situation.

Offense

While Texas Tech hired a new playcaller since the last time Oregon faced them in Lubbock in 2023 — OC Leftwich from Texas State, whose offense I reviewed with interest earlier this year — Mike and I discussed on the podcast that the core offensive concepts have stayed almost entirely the same and the most noticeable difference has been a step up in sequencing and gameplanning competence. The offense remains a chiefly 11-personnel spread with an emphasis on vertical spacing, though the basic run philosophy has been difficult to assess because of ongoing quarterback injuries.

Texas Tech’s terrible run of bad luck with quarterback health has gone on for several years now, afflicting virtually all of the time that former Oregon QB Tyler Shough was with the Red Raiders, his predecessor Donovan Smith who later transferred to Houston, the freshman backup for the last two years #15 QB Hammond, and the bluechip I watched on the 2022 tape forced into action early to show off his big arm, #2 QB Morton. For each of the last three years Morton has been the leading passer for the team, though not for complete seasons due to the Shough transition and missed injury time.

In the FCS opener this year, Morton took a hit to the leg in the pocket which has seemed to affect his mobility for the rest of the season. In week 4 against Utah while scrambling, he took a helmet hit just after halftime which caused him to sit out the rest of the game. They had a bye the next week and Morton played the full game the week after that at Houston, though any form of QB run or rollout had been pulled from the playsheet.

In the next game, week 7 against Kansas, Morton’s right ankle got rolled over while taking a sack in the 2^nd quarter, and he sat out the rest of the game, their week 8 trip to Arizona State, and the week 9 game against Oklahoma State. Morton returned in week 10 against Kansas State and hasn’t missed any time since, though it’s been clear his mobility has been limited and it wasn’t until the conference championship game that we saw Morton moving with much agility.

Hammond played in Morton’s absence, which constituted one full game and three partial games – the loss to Arizona State which went to the wire as well as the Utah and Kansas games that he took over partway through, but in the Oklahoma State game in the 2^nd quarter during a scramble, Hammond went down with what turned out to be an ACL tear. The game was finished by #12 QB Griffis, a covid super-senior and a journeyman (literally, Mike told an interesting story on the podcast about him working construction jobs).

On top of the heartbreak that all this human suffering entails, it’s also quite difficult to sort out what exactly the fundamental strength of the offense is – even controling for garbage time as I always do, a substantial amount of the meaningful data is without the starting quarterback or with the starter but in a different state of mobility than he might be have for the postseason with so much time off. It’s difficult to say if the more run-oriented playbook we saw with Hammond is what Leftwich really wants to do but couldn’t with a limited Morton, or if Leftwich was just playing to Hammond’s relative strengths vs his arm.

Mike’s guess on the podcast was that with Hammond out of commission with his ACL injury (and Griffis may be dealing with an injury of his own, he evidently left the Oklahoma State game late and a fourth QB came in, which was news to me), the staff will be conservative with Morton and limit his injury exposure even if he is completely back to 100%. That would rule out QB runs and perhaps rollouts as well, though he may be better able to escape pressure than during much of the regular season when virtually any pocket penetration would end the play.

Acknowledging the limitations of the data given the concerns above, here are the splits in the passing game controlling for garbage time and field position:

While it was unsurprising that Hammond’s explosiveness rate and yards per attempt were a falloff from Morton’s — it was clear on film he just doesn’t have as strong of an arm and wasn’t pushing the ball downfield as much — the most interesting result of the statistical regression is that Hammond’s efficiency was slightly higher. Diving further into the per-target numbers, there’s one significant and surprising distortion: Hammond had a real lock-on problem for a particular tight end and would make a lot of inadviseable throws to him, but every other pass catcher saw massive increases in their per-target success rate given the down & distance with Hammond throwing them the ball compared to Morton, between 9- and 28-percentage point jumps.

We discussed this phenomenon on the podcast, and Mike’s assessment matched mine from watching tape – Morton has a great arm and is probably an NFL talent, with the vanishingly rare ability to throw gorgeous rainbows down the sideline, but at this point in his development the rest of the toolkit is somewhat incomplete. Many of his shorter and intermediate throws can lack touch or proper layering to get through zone coverage, he can have difficulty processing the field quickly, and a substantial number of his passes are predetermined.

Here’s a representative sample of Morton’s successful passes:

(Reminder – you can use the button in the lower right corner to control playback speed)

:00 – Morton with a clean pocket, the switch concept creates a coverage bust, strong form with good weight balance and quick release. Morton’s arm strength has never been in doubt. Great finish by the inside receiver, one of my favorite WRs to watch this season, more on him in a moment.
:21 – This is Morton’s favorite throw and he knows where he’s going by pre-snap alignment. The pocket crease (from a 2-man rush …) speeds him up and his natural relaxed throwing motion gets a little goofy so the ball floats, but there’s enough space to the sideline for an adjustment.
:37 – Going to single-high against four-wide is a mistake against this offense, the run game can be contained with five in the box and there aren’t enough targets / depth of targets for the inside WR or TEs to expend safeties on them as opposed to linebackers. As soon as K-State got out of two-high I knew this ball was going down the sideline, where the WR can create some separation and use his size to beat the corner one-on-one.
:55 – The split-out TE is best understood as a quick Y receiver, and these short dumpoffs then embarrass the defense running across the field are what he does best.

And unsuccessful passing plays:

:00 – The running backs constitute about 20% of the passing targets and while they have some of the most explosive single plays of the year making Big-XII DBs look silly in the open field, on an efficiency basis these throws are opportunity cost drags with a 42% success rate and under 6.0 adjusted YPT. Here Morton goes to the Texas route in the redzone when the 3-man rush gets home and nobody has created separation, just because it’s the one right in front of him. The right read is the inside receiver based on the nickel’s leverage, the ball should be out on the top of his drop.
:23 – Nope, not that one. Every one of Morton’s interceptions have been forced balls and there’s a dozen more close calls like this one where he’s made the decision (or perhaps the playcaller has) before the snap and no matter what the defense shows him post-snap he goes there anyway.
:35 – Max protect vs a 3-man rush with a QB spy, and the spy is unnecessary. Be sure and watch the high angle – if they’re not running in a straight line, there’s just no separation.
1:01 – All four other routes are better likelihoods to convert than this one, the best being the No.2 to the field who has literally no one over him and no one leveraged against the fade since the corner has to sit on the No.1.

There are just three wide receivers used prior to garbage time: outside receivers #5 WR Douglas and #1 WR Virgil, and inside receiver #3 WR Eakin. Douglas transferred in from Florida last cycle, Virgil transferred in from Miami of Ohio this cycle, and Eakin was recruited to Texas Tech in 2022 and has been a very productive receiver since 2023 (though he didn’t get started that year until conference play).

Eakin is by far their most effective, with a 60.5% per-target success rate and 11.7 adjusted YPT with Morton as QB (his efficiency is close to 80% with Hammond throwing him the ball), but Morton only targeted Eakin on 14.5% of passes. Douglas and Virgil were getting closer to 42% of passes, while their success rates were 46.5% and 47.6%, Douglas was slightly below FBS median at 7.12 adjusted YPT, and Virgil slightly above at 7.78.

The two tight ends for the vast majority of the year have been #7 TE T. Carter and #9 TE Miller; Carter seeing the primary use with Miller coming in for 12-personnel reps. Both are quick, athletic H-back types, Carter is shorter at 6’2” while Miller is a couple inches taller but the same weight so his build is even slimmer. They’re used quite a bit as part of the run blocking game but without very high grades on my tally sheet due to their size. It seemed like they had a bigger, more traditionally built third option I saw in some early week, #89 TE Llewellyn, but he was never targeted and hasn’t seen the field for most of the year and Mike said Leftwich seems to like what he’s getting with Miller more. Carter gets the lion’s share of the passes, mostly quick stuff, and has a 52.7% success rate with 7.68 YPT.

We spent quite some time on the podcast discussing a peculiarity in Texas Tech’s offense, which is their very low redzone touchdown rate – just 56.16%, 98^th nationally. Even with some of the efficiency issues in the offense, in the predictive algorithm I’ve developed it’s still about eight points lower than it should be. The two main factors to explain the “missing” touchdowns seem to be first, that the passing offense is much better at scoring from outside the redzone than inside it — that is, by far the most successful route they have is the sideline go, and that’s what they can’t call when the defense compresses — and second, that they have difficulty lining up and pounding the ball up the middle in heavy sets to either score directly or threaten the defense into bunching inside and opening something outside. Both of these problems are related to just not having a big, dominant tight end who can both block and box out in the redzone.

The two running backs are #8 RB Dickey and #20 RB J. Williams. During meaningful time it’s worked out to a pretty even split between them, with Dickey coming out about 15% ahead in carries, but as Mike pointed out on the podcast there are several games in which Williams acted as the primary back. Dickey is a bit bigger, Williams has a bit more speed, and it’s reflected in their per-carry numbers: 52.5% success rate and 5.0 adjusted YPC for the former, 42% success and 5.2 for the latter.

Dickey and Williams are both sophomores recruited in the 2024 cycle, and I was very impressed with their maturity and patience finding the hole when the offensive line wasn’t always blocking very soundly, as well as being assets in the screen game humiliating Big-XII defenses in the open field. In charting, I separate out how much of each rushing gain is earned by the blocking vs what the back manufactures himself, and there were several games this season in which Dickey and Williams’ vision and improvisation accounted for close to 100% of the net gains in the run game.

Here’s a representative sample of successful rushes:

:00 – This is a designed run to the right but the C/RG are locked up and the LG is losing leverage, so Dickey checks left, finds an unblocked backer and the LT losing, presses and bounces farther left, gets around the blown block by the kickout, and makes it to the sideline. There’s half a dozen fail points in this run and Dickey gets five yards on pure improv.
:18 – Here’s Williams doing exactly the same thing, just mirrored. The leverage of these zone blocks rule out any possibility this is the designed run lane, the backs are taking the backdoor because of their vision and it’s instantaneous.
:32 – Really, really nice patience and then the jump cut to get through here by Williams. The guard/tackle exchange playside is not clean and both the DT and LB have shots at him but what a great slide.
:49 – BYU is taking the RPO or QB run threat too seriously, after the WR motion to the strong side this has always been a handoff from 4×1 to the weak side to enjoy the numbers advantage … and even then they need some unconventional blocking from the LT and RG while the LG and WR just forget to block entirely.

And unsuccessful rushes:

:00 – Given how often the RBs bounce to the outside, defenses are better advised to set the edge and keep the backers and safeties at depth, ready to string the run out to the sideline. Dickey’s good enough to recognize the need to get out and break one tackle but the DB (and more coming) is too much.
:08 – The RG is just losing, the C/LG combo is stuck so the LB is clean, and the TE doesn’t have the heft or helmet security for his block. The back checks to the other gap but that’s no good either, the safety is unoccupied because the read isn’t live.
:31 – At a certain point I thought the constant check-outs got to be counterproductive – here if Williams just followed his blocks to the right he probably picks up half the distance, instead of running into the unblocked DB and getting stuffed.
:43 – This pin & pull has a 14% success rate on my tally sheet, but the offense just couldn’t quit it. They didn’t use it at all in the first half of the conference championship game but after not moving the ball at all on inside zone they went back to it with usual results. This is as much as the modeling of transfer portal effect is going to decay this season, that is, this caliber of run blocking is as good as it’s likely to get.

The offensive line was re-vamped in 2025 through a number of transfer portal acquisitions – Mike related how one of the program’s main benefactors, a former offensive lineman, made good on a social media challenge to “buy a better line”. A couple of them have been hurt and saw only limited time this year, with the main upshot being that a redshirt freshman is starting at right tackle and neither of the starting interior lineman who returned from 2024 wound up with serious challenges for their jobs. If the project of the transfers was to get bigger and stronger on the line, I can report from charting they’ve certainly done that – the last time I was watching the Red Raiders they were prone to get bowled over and lose simple bullrushes even to smaller defensive linemen and linebackers, which isn’t happening anymore.

But I agreed with Mike’s assessment — he too a former offensive lineman — that this is the weakest unit on the offense, and communications problems have been the biggest obstacle. Their rate of false starts is astounding, a rolling average of 2.15 per game which has not changed at any point during the year, contributing to a negative play rate (which also means sacks, TFLs, holding penalties, and turnovers from poor line play) of 14.59% prior to garbage time, 1.9 standard deviations higher than FBS median.

The primary tradeoff is at the big left tackle acquisition, #79 LT Sampson who came in from North Carolina. He’s 6’8” and 340 lbs, and has shored up their pass protection simply on being immovable, though his run blocking grades are the lowest on the line for essentially the same reason. They also acquired another left tackle, the three-year starter at that spot from Miami of Ohio, but have him playing guard, #76 LG Jados, and he’s very clearly built like a tackle at 6’7” and just over 300 lbs. I have similar grades for equal but opposite reasons for Jados – an asset in pass protection but a liability in run blocking, just because I don’t think he’s built to play guard or is familiar with it or his teammates.

The center and right guard return from last year, #72 C Wilson and #56 RG D. Carter. I think Wilson was meant to get a challenge from the Colorado transfer who started at center last year, #52 OG Cleveland, but Mike told me that injuries kept Cleveland out for most of the year except for a half he played at RG in week 10. Carter is a sixth year starter — two at Juco, two at Memphis, and now two at Tech — and he’s instantly recognizable on the line as a couple inches shorter and 20 lbs stouter than the guys to either side of him. The youngster on the line is #70 RT Ponton, a redshirt freshman who made his debut in last year’s bowl game. Ponton is the bluechip of the bunch and I can see his talent in run-blocking where his pulls are the smoothest on the line, but he’s just a bit undersized right now and has the lowest pass protection grades.

The reader may be puzzled at the disconnect between the offensive efficiency reported in this article compared to some of the gaudy raw stats and scoreboard figures that Texas Tech has posted this year. This can be explained by examining the drive efficiency of the offense and where the Red Raiders are taking possession of the ball.

Excluding garbage time and the FCS game, I charted 129 meaningful possessions for Texas Tech. 63 of them, nearly half, were empty possessions which ended in a punt, missed field goal, turnover, or failed 4^th down conversion, while only 47 scored touchdowns. Breaking down Tech’s drives into the typical split of full-field (60+ yard drives) and short-field showed a huge problem in sustaining methodical drives over the entire field:

(Nota bene: each of these tables exclude six possessions in which Tech got the ball within 10 yards of their own endzone, that is with 90+ yards to go, as these are distortive.) With so much data, we can subdivide further, and find that taking possession of the ball in the ten yards between their own 40 and the 50 yard line doesn’t really move the needle – these drives had nearly identical outcomes to the 60+ yard drives. Meanwhile, drives that started within the opponents’ 30-yard line had a much higher touchdown rate, but still below expected (the FBS median at this range is 74%):

We can therefore observe a nice clean split in the data: when Tech takes possession of the ball in opponent territory, they’re more likely than not to score a touchdown and do it in fewer than five plays. When they take possession in their own territory, they’re more likely than not to have an empty possession:

The main limitation in play sequencing efficiency is that they only have a 40% rush effectiveness rate on 1^st down, but that jumps to over 70% in short yardage and they take advantage of it by running more than 80% of the time in short yardage. So they’re frequently operating behind the chains, forgo “money down” passing opportunities, and find themselves inevitably in 3^rd & longs in which they’re only 29.7% efficient.

What’s propping the offense up is short fields and extra possessions – gifts from the defense. Because the defense ends opponent drives within the top decile of playcounts, they’re generating about three extra possessions’ worth of plays for the offense per game than the offense would otherwise be able to sustain on their own. And because the defense creates turnovers at the top rate in the country, the offense is also handed the ball in opponent territory at a rate 2.2 standard deviations above FBS median.

Defense

Head coach McGuire struck gold with just about every defensive addition he made this season. In addition to rising star defensive coordinator Wood who’d rapidly turned around Houston’s defense, seven of the nine transfers taken this cycle are starters playing at a very high level (and an eighth is a backup with significant playing time, one of the very few on this squad with otherwise very little rotation).

Despite a bit of confusing terminology on the official roster, Mike and I agreed that the structure is best understood as a 4-3. There are two big tackles who eat combos, two stand-up ends who almost exclusively attack the backfield, and not really any other type of linemen or structural conversion into an odd surface. All three linebackers are highly athletic but two typically stay off-ball within the box and the third is a rover who can line up at any spot on the field, and they don’t switch out to a nickel based on offensive personnel.

I would characterize Texas Tech’s excellent defense this year as driven by the elite edge rush from their two starters combined with elite play diagnosis and athleticism from the linebackers, complemented by strong, fundamentally sound play from the tackles and defensive backs. I also think that a number of opposing offensive coordinators have made big mistakes in assessing the size and speed of the edges, linebackers, and safeties, and chosen precisely counterproductive strategies of trying to beat them by going outside and playing horizontally, which actually plays right into the strengths of the defense.

There are two weight classes for the defensive tackles, and they generally correspond to lining up one apiece at 1-tech and 3-tech, though I’ve seen some more flexibiilty in the second half of the season. The two guys in the 330 lbs range are starter #2 DT Hunter and backup #51 DT Cofield. In the 280 – 300 lbs range, the starter through week 7 was #0 DT Gill-Howard, but a leg injury has kept him out for the rest of the year and Mike told me he’s not expected to play in the quarterfinals. The backup, #33 DT Holmes, got an increase in reps but hasn’t gotten exactly as much playing time promoted to the starting role, instead it’s been spread around with more for Cofield, #8 DT Banks, #90 DT Nedore, #88 DT Washington, and one of the bigger 275 lbs edges #94 DE Rigsby sometimes sliding inside.

The starting edges are just phenomenal, perhaps the most effective pair of pure speed rushers I’ve ever graded. They are #31 DE Bailey who came over from Stanford (I reminisced about the watching him impress in the Spring game as a true freshman along with Stanford Daily writer Jibriel Taha and maybe a dozen fans in the bleachers), and #9 DE Height who’s now on his fourth stop, including USC in 2023 next to Oregon’s Bear Alexander in an Alex Grinch defense which couldn’t figure out how to use either. On meaningful plays when they’re in, the sack/scramble/throwaway per dropback rate is 36.2%, which is the highest I’ve ever recorded.

The only other edge who’s in the same weight class as a speed rusher is a former Oregon player, #18 DE Tillmon. #11 DE Esters is about 35 lbs bigger and is more of an edge setter, as is Rigsby who as previously mentioned has been playing inside more often. #3 OLB Ramirez is something of a specialist, a former off-ball backer who’s coming back from an injury and just comes in for certain 3^rd down packages. The havoc rate for the backups is far lower than the starters – some falloff was inevitable but this much means the staff tends to be reluctant to put them in unless they really have to so as to avoid overtaxing the starters.

The linebackers don’t rotate at all. The two guys in the box are #13 LB Roberts, a longtime vet of the program (and I believe the only player to have been on the field the last time Oregon played Texas Tech), and #10 LB Rodriguez who’s been a starter the last two years. The rover is #6 LB Curry, who saw extensive play in 2024 though in a different kind of linebacker role. All three grade out with some of the highest play recognition and tackling grades I’ve ever tallied. The only relief or alternate configuarion I’ve seen is when they go to the nickel look, removing a linebacker (either Rodriguez or Curry, Roberts tends to stay in and I believe is the green-dot player) for #1 DB McCarty. I don’t think this is a response to the offensive configuration, I think it’s just how the backup for fatigue purposes works, and they don’t have a proper backup in the LB corps.

In addition to being stellar linebackers by any standard evaluative metrics, they also practice (along with the defensive backs) a habit in tackling of punching and ripping the ball out. Most coaches preach this sort of thing but this year’s Texas Tech defense is the first I’ve seen actually substantially overperform their baseline defensive efficiency at knocking the ball out. Their defensive fumble luck (that is, who gets the ball once it pops out) has been somewhat better than average, about 60%, but the major driver of all their turnovers is simply the massive increase in turnover opportunities, about 4 standard deviations over FBS median (the same applies to interceptions – TTU defenders’ hands are slightly stickier than average in terms of catching interceptable balls, but vast majority of the effect is far more interceptable balls being thrown by panicking QBs under pressure). Some examples:

The safeties need to be discussed before examining the run game, because they’re highly active in run defense – in fact Mike’s argument on the podcast was that the biggest structural change (as opposed to simply the step-up in talent) in the defense this year compared to previous years was the strong involvement of the safeties in the run defense. I haven’t seen any rotation for either the field safety #7 DB Jordan, a junior from the 2023 cycle, or the boundary safety #5 DB Wisniewski, who transferred in from North Dakota State. Both are strong tacklers and come downhill eagerly in rush defense, and good complements to zone coverage, though have lower grades when they’re one-on-one in man.

Here’s a representative sample of successful rush defenses:

:00 – Utah’s biggest mistake was constantly trying to get to the perimeter, look at the play diagnosis and leverage wins by the backers. Without linemen to run interference they eat TE/WR blocks for breakfast and blow up outside runs with trivial ease.
:17 – Here ASU needs to get about 4 feet to convert and run a jet sweep for it. The blocks are set up such that it’s just a pure speed contest between Wisniewski from a standstill and the ballcarrier with full momentum, and the safety still wins it easily.
:40 – Here’s wide zone, nothing doing. Not a single offensive lineman or tight end is winning leverage against any of the defensive linemen or backers.
:54 – This is a more creative and productive use of motion, running inside with a receiver out of orbit motion. The blocks are set up well – the C and LT sealing the backside without drama, the RG is cleaning Hunter’s clock playside, and the RT is up to Rodriguez. The LG pulling to kick out Bailey isn’t quick enough and the safety is coming downhill fast so this probably wouldn’t have gone explosive, but it would have generated 6 or 7 yards from quality inside blocking if the ballcarrier were more patient and waited for the H-back lead in splitflow to get through first and hit Roberts. Blasting ahead in front of his blocker allows Roberts to cut in, forcing the ball carrier to the other side of the RT’s leverage and a quick stop.

And unsuccessful rush defenses:

:00 – Utah should have been doing this a lot more. Just ride the duo up to the second level – the backers are fast, they’re not brick walls. The RT blows it not once but twice and the blocking is still adquate for five yards up the middle.
:17 – Cutback runs have a 16 percentage point higher success rate against this defense and it’s not hard to see why – they read the initial pathing and crash hard on it, so the backside LB just needs to be blocked or distracted for a solid gain. There are RPO possibilities off this for a really mobile QB since the rover / safety alignment puts the backside LB in tension and there’s a hole midfield.
:35 – This was the second of three consecutive six-yard run by the same runnnig back, all up the middle, with the quarter break in between so the defense could sub if they wanted, and this time he’s in the wildcat so it’s not like they don’t know what’s coming.
:49 – Saddleback triple option, this takes me back. The second RB is the kickout which does double duty pulling Rodriguez out, and the threat of the QB keep freezes the safety. The ballcarrier’s pathing pulls Roberts the opposite way and then it’s right up the big gap. Note how it’s not the tackles giving the OL any trouble on the inside run game, the puzzle to be solved is only the backers and safeties.

The 4-3 scheme and rover / safety alignment leaves two gaps in the zone defense against unbalanced formations – they’re outnumbered to the strong side and outleveraged to the weak side, and because there’s no midline adjustment when late motion switches from 3×2 to 4×1, offenses can create an unbalanced advantage after the C2P comms are off.

To my surprise, the first team which deployed unbalanced looks against Texas Tech was Kansas in week 7, and only as part of their special two-minute playbook just before halftime (I have been told by some that TTU shut these down in the second half; no such thing occurred, KU simply didn’t have them in their regular playbook outside the two-minute drill). Arizona State and Kansas State seemed to have noticed this on tape and in their games in weeks 8 and 10 used unbalanced formations for big plays, as did BYU in week 11, though I was again surprised that TTU’s opponents in weeks 9, 12, and 14 were completely disinterested in this tape, and BYU didn’t pursue the strategy a second time in the conference championship game. Some examples:

:00 – This is actually the nickel configuration, with McCarty spelling Curry. He plus both the backers, the end Bailey, and the safety Wisniewski are all in attack mode, but the unbalanced formation has scrambled the assignments on the RPO toss. Roberts and Bailey both attack the inside give, while the DBs both hang on the QB, while nobody takes the toss back. The boundary corner has the fake handoff once he releases, so he’s managed to occupy four defenders all running the wrong way.
:25 – Putting the RB, TE, and two receivers to the field means the inside receiver gets assigned to the field safety, who by definition has no safety help. The boundary safety comes into the box to be a quasi-backer while Roberts and Curry have to stay in on the RB and TE who are blocking (the flag is because the TE is covered up, but the officials picked it up when they realized he didn’t release – that’s the whole reason this play works, the backers are stuck). In a one-on-one between Jordan and a top wideout, there’s no contest.
:44 – Dillingham ran this unbalanced tackle-over play at Oregon (I coded it as ‘taco aporreadillo’). They’re certainly beating up TTU playside, but the key is getting a numbers advantage since they can ignore Curry and the corner backside.
1:08 – Here BYU is unbalanced with the formation into the boundary, and against cover-2 there is literally no one assigned to this route. The keys don’t allow taking a backer out of the box or pulling the safety down, and the corner can’t split himself in half. The only way for the defense to handle this formation would be to go single-high, but then the offense could take shots against them.

There are three cornerbacks for the two outside spots; my guess was that the utilization pattern was based on a pecking order system and Mike said that was accurate. The top corner is #14 CB Pollock, who plays over the perceived top receiver, then it goes to the second corner #20 CB Balfour, and then backup #27 CB Boyd. About 23% of reps go to Boyd, by far the most for any backup on the defense, but the rotation doesn’t seem to be about skillset matchups but rather just fatigue prevention.

I actually have Balfour grading out better than Pollock by a rather wide margin — frequent pass interference, flagged and otherwise, pull down Pollock’s grades while Balfour tends to play cleaner — though it should be noted the staff consistently gives Pollock what they feel to be the tougher assignment. The entire backfield is fairly aggressive, however, and during the first half of the season this was one of the most penalized defenses in the country:

:00 – Wisniewski playing through the back of the TE, contact is much too early.
:23 – Balfour gets cooked in man, even with an 8-yd cushion. The ball is underthrown but when the CB has surrendered downfield position contact like this is illegal. The catch is made regardless.
:49 – This was the matchup of the game, and it was pretty decisive for Tyson.
1:19 – Flatfooted, wrong leverage. It’s midfield, better to give up a short pass to the sticks than a penalty or a bomb, Jordan needs to be up on his backpedal not grabbing as the receiver blows past him.

On the podcast, Mike characterized the secondary as the weak link of the defense. I think I understand where he’s coming from, compared to the elite play of several members of the front, though I don’t have any player in the backfield graded so poorly that I’d characterize them as “weak” in an absolute sense. Still, we agreed that there’s really only one viable strategy against this defense as a whole – survive long enough to find an opportunity to take a shot against the secondary, because ending a drive with an explosive score against them is a much surer bet than trying to sustain a methodical drive against the front.

Here’s a representative sample of successfully defended passing plays:

:00 – What’s 8-man protection called, supermax? Whatever it is, the Beavs’ version can’t hold up to Tech’s four-man rush, Bailey just knocks over two blockers at once while Hunter gets around the RT on the stunt.
:26 – This is what most of the interceptions look like, the QB is flushed — Height whipping the LT in this case — and then he does something powerfully dumb.
1:06 – Mike referenced this play on the podcast, Houston’s QB realizing they were never going to score because his protection just couldn’t hold up for a second. They’d gotten farther down the field this drive than the last by using the RB to chip, but that died on the blitz – the point of which isn’t to get home with the blitzer necessarily, it’s to erase the numbers advantage and give the edges single contests, which they’ll win instantly.
1:25 – The protection is doing better here with a numbers advantage, the edges are stymied, but now the defensive backfield enjoys numbers against a simplified pattern which they can just eat up in three-deep zone. The deep receiver quits on the route, the TE iin the flat s never beating Wisniewski, and this QB can’t make the wide out throw.

And unsuccessfully defended passes:

:00 – Other than short-yardage rushing, the one down & distance situation where the defensive efficiency is underwater is 2^nd & medium. The pass rush tends to play more conservatively and it’s also the most likely scenario for backups to be in. This is a good time for a shot and the offense takes it, with Pollock messing up his assignment and Wisniewski late (he should be at the numbers on release). If the QB set his feet properly and put the ball on target so the WR could catch it in stride he’d beat the safety’s angle and house it.
:13 – I was a little surprised that play-action and RPOs figured so little into Big-XII passing schemes, especially since this defense is so aggressive against the run. Dillingham sure didn’t miss an opportunity, this was the first play of the game.
:33 – The empty backfield spread pulls Jordan out wide on the No.2 to the field, and in zone the backer-corner pairs have to bracket the curl/flats, so Wisniewski is one-on-one against the deep route on his side. It’s a bang-8 except there’s no bang, Wisniewski gets fooled by the single wide step and is out of the play.
1:12 – BYU has their two tight ends in the backfield and TTU puts eight in the box, and they all come hard at the run, which is remarkable as this isn’t an RPO and the o-line isn’t run-blocking – they’re not looking at the blockers’ feet, just crashing the mesh automatically. The QB has plenty of protection while the corners on both routes have outside leverage and just a single safety over both, making an inside throw easy. Or if the QB had looked the other way, Boyd’s hips are flipped and the deep route is a touchdown.

Predictions

Of the four quarterfinals games, the SBNation Reacts polls put the Orange Bowl matchup the closest, while FanDuel currently lists the odds as Oregon favored by 2.5 points … the closest game, but wider by a point than when ATQ covered the opening line.