The Cougars do TONS of things that put pressure on a defense to adjust, and today we’re gonna talk about another one of them.
Adding another layer to the Freeze Option
If you’re an offset gun team, defensive coordinators spend all kinds of time looking at your backfield tendencies, and trying to feed that information to their players.
Changing the location of the back at the last moment can get defenders thinking instead of reacting, which is exactly what you want as an offensive coach.
Let’s look at a couple of diagrams…
4:10 2Q vs Western Kentucky 2020
On this play, the back flips sides at the last moment just before the snap, and the H-back widens and “arc” releases, giving the unblocked end a muddied read and putting him in a ton of space in a hurry.
The technique of the RB is to open up at about a 45 degree angle toward the QB on a hop, then reversing out in pitch phase.
It goes without saying, but you want as many different ways to put that defensive end in conflict as possible. You’re forcing one of the most athletic players on the field to slow down, and when he slows down and your players are speeding up, it doesn’t matter what his forty time is, your guys are playing faster.
4:41 1Q vs Louisiana Tech 2020
You can do the same thing from a pistol alignment, like we see below.
One of the obvious advantages of lining up in the pistol is that the defense can’t get a run read in either direction. The downside is it also limits you from carrying out some of the most common gun backfield actions you’ll see from the “sidecar” alignment (as many defensive coaches refer to it).
So lets’ give the defense one look, and then change it at the last moment.
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