The BYU Cougars have a very deceptive offense, but not in the way you might think.
This offense specializes in a lot of “pro-style” formations and schemes, and they love the outside zone play to open up opportunities in the run game.
What this team is really good at, however, is lulling you to sleep with all the typical plays you’d expect, and then when you least expect it, BAM! They hit you with something that you never saw coming.
Today we’re gonna talk about one of those plays that was set up perfectly.
BYU Double Pass
The tailback is headed to the field up the hash as an outlet in case the corner route isn’t open.
The pass was open, the secondary collapsed on the now screen look, and BYU had a great opportunity for an explosive play.
Here’s a look at how the defense reacted to the “Now Screen” action after the snap.
BYU runs a lot of these formations into the boundary, so this doesn’t set off any alarm bells in the head of the defense. It’s something they’ve practiced against all week and they know exactly how they’re supposed to line up.
One thing to note here is how the play is actually blocked up front.
The Cougars don’t get overly tricky with the blocking scheme, staying big-on-big up front and not allowing any defender to shoot through and get his hands in the way of the quick pass.
The H-back is the one who helps sell it, AND protect it, with the wide path on his release.
Take a look at the end zone view below and see how wide open this play is.
You don’t need a guy who’s a blazer running this route, you just need him to get a step or two on the defense, and that’s enough.
The ball ends up being thrown incomplete, but that’s not all bad. Worse than an incompletion is a bad pass that gets intercepted, when it’s underthrown, or forced into a window where it doesn’t belong.
If you’re gonna miss, it’s better to miss long where there’s no one to intercept it.
This is a good example of a low-risk, high-reward play that BYU incorporated into their game plan against Troy.
The play was actually run by Matt Canada during his time at Pitt as well, which who offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes got it from. Grimes was an assistant under Canada at LSU, working as the run game coordinator and was just hired by former LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda to lead the Baylor offense in 2021.
The biggest lesson to take away from this is that they got aggressive, but the gadget play was still built around what they do in their base package. That’s the mark of a good coaching staff, finding ways to create big opportunities and give the defense unusual things to worry about without straying too far from the heart of what you do best.
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