Film Study: Oklahoma State’s Run Game is Coming Together

Anyone else finding it difficult to focus on anything else? I feel like I spend way too much time thinking nervously about this football team.

Let’s get to this week’s film study. In the above picture, OSU is line up in three wide with a fullback and tailback in the pistol. Iowa St. has made a point to not let OSU beat them deep. Their corners and safeties are playing off to prevent the deep pass. ISU runs a 3-4 defensive scheme, meaning they have three down linemen and four linebackers.

OSU’s offensive line is blocking down, as I’ve pointed out before, it is much easier to block someone the direction they are already going. I watched highlights from when Todd Monken was OC, this seemed to be how OSU run blocked. What this does is put emphasis on the RB field vision and less on individual blocking.

The RB’s job is to look for the open lane, make the cut and take off.

Carson makes the correct read and cuts towards the open lane. Carson has multiple lanes to run through. It’s up to him to find the correct one. Once Carson makes the correct read he runs into the back of his lineman as he’s cutting back away from the defenders. This makes me wonder if OSU just didn’t trust the RBs to be able to see the field well enough, he probably should have made that cut a second earlier in the run. Nevertheless, he makes the correct read and gains a bunch yards.

Randle was so good at this when he played at OSU. I think that is something OSU has missed since he left, that RB that could stretch it out and cut on a dime inside when the lane opened up.

If you’ll look at the circled offensive linemen, they’ve basically walled off the side of the defense. This is such a good running play, because you don’t need world beaters to block this. I also want to take notice of Robinson, he really fires off the ball hard, he blocks with passion and anger.

This isn’t anything fancy or special, this is an outside zone run. I’ve been saying it all year, OSU needs to run more zone blocking schemes. I hope to see more of this in the next couple of weeks. If OSU’s RBs can improve on their field vision, which I think they are, you will start to see this run game develop at the best possible time

This next play is the J.W. touchdown run. I know it didn’t give us the lead, but I felt like this sucked the air out of the stadium. At that moment ISU realized they weren’t winning this game. OSU is lined up with three wide, fullback, and tailback in the pistol.

J.W. motions Carr out to the right, this take ISU’s backside linebacker out to the right as well. Keep that in mind, we’ll get back to why that’s important. OSU has shown that they will throw to Carr when they motion him to the outside. The play I broke down last week showed what happens when you don’t send someone with him. OSU has shown they aren’t afraid to throw with J.W., Yurcich has spent all season setting these plays up.

This is another zone blocking scheme, everyone blocks down, center lead blocks on the linebacker, fullback kicks the outside backer out and RT seals off the backside edge. The whole play flow goes back towards the left. All that’s left is for JW to cut back to the middle and hit pay dirt. Defense over pursues and it’s that easy.

Remember the Carr motion? Notice how the backside linebacker is nowhere to be found. This is great coaching and scheming, I’m really digging the play calling. As I’ve said before, this was set up earlier this year. How’s ISU supposed to defend this? If you leave the backer home, JW throws it to Carr, if he goes with the motion, JW cuts it back to where he’s supposed to be.

The center gets enough of his man and JW makes a great cut, catches the defense going the wrong way and BAM!

Can I get a ssshhh to the crowd and a fist pump from our Athletic Director? This was the backbreaker, yeah OSU was still down, but ISU knew this one was over. They knew they couldn’t stop the cardiac cowboys from snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.