Film Study: How a Two-QB System Can Benefit Your Offense

This week, we are going to be breaking down just one video. We only have a couple more weeks together, and I’d like to give a shout out to the people who read these. As I’ve said before, I’m not a writer, but I do love talking about OSU football.  I live in a smallish town in northeast Texas. There aren’t just a ton of OSU fans that live in Texarkana, well not anymore, thanks Andre.

Getting the opportunity to write these breakdowns have been so much fun for me. Y’all have been great, I enjoy the feedback I’ve been getting and you haven’t just hammered me. So thank you, I hope Kyle asks me to do this next season.

Onto the breakdown. Today we’ll be discussing my favorite offensive play of the game. This is zone read/play action/sideline pass. I truly believe this play is as close to unstoppable as OSU has.

For this play, OSU is lined up with three WR and two TB. Rudolph motions Carr to the right, nobody goes with him.

On hut, the line blocks down, letting the DE run free. It is up to Rudolph to read the DE, he essentially has three, maybe four options. This is an area I’ve really noticed improvement with Rudolph. He already has the arm, size, and athletic ability to be a good QB, mastering the little details will make him a truly great QB. Rudolph reads this play perfectly, and executes it even better.

Notice Carr running towards the sideline, the two backers stay at home. This is set up with how well OSU has been running the QB zone read. On this drive OSU kept mixing and matching Rudolph and Walsh, I believe this threw off TCU quite a bit. This is a perfect example of using the two QB system correctly. It completely throws off the defense. You sub in Walsh and the defense counters it by subbing in a run defense, so you throw it with Walsh, then put Rudolph back in and run the Walsh offense against a pass heavy defense.

Teams have seen OSU put Rudolph in for Walsh and run the ball in this situation on the field. So TCU plays this as a run. Rudolph fakes the run, and throws it to Carr. TCU bites hard on the run fake, this play was set up earlier in the season.

Look at how many TCU players are completely taken out of the play. You have a linebacker and DE having to take a bad angle on one of OSU’s fastest players. The corner and safety are in a bad spot having to cover the WR. If that corner would have broken off coverage to cover Carr, he would have left a safety trying to cover a slant on Washington. If the linebacker had gone with Carr when he motioned right, it would have put the DE in a bad spot.

If he shoots up field, Rudolph hands it off. There’s a lot of green grass for Carr. If the DE crashes down, Rudolph is running over a safety for a touchdown. I’ll take my chances with an angry 6’4 230 Mason Rudolph over any safety not named Ed Reed any day. 

This play goes for a touchdown, I like getting the ball out in the open field to a great athlete. We are starting to see what Yurcich can do with a full arsenal. Hopefully he continues to grow as an OC. He has the tools to do this.

Mike & Mike correctly used the two QBs to kick start an offense that had stalled a bit. Later in the game they showed us how not to use a two QB offense. I don’t mind going to Walsh to get it going, please don’t switch QBs when Rudolph is on fire. They got cute and it could have burned them. Fortunately, OSU has a defense that allows you to get cute.

Overall, I had no complaints about this game, Gundy seems to have taken the leash off of Yurcich. He also has given up trying to be a power run team. I’ve seen more four wide and less bunched formations. I sure hope that OSU is just starting to peak. How dangerous is this team if they peak the last three weeks?

Now time to crawl under a rock, get into the fetal position, and wait till 7 PM tomorrow night to emerge.

Kidding of course, let’s go kick the ever loving crap out of ISU. Don’t beat them as revenge for 2011, destroy them because you are a freight train heading for bigger and better and they’re standing on the tracks.