Establish the Fun: Pac-12, Conference-USA, Sun Belt football championship games in spotlight

The keys to the Washington-Oregon game, plus a look at a Liberty offense that’s really fun.

Welcome back to Establish the Fun, where football is fun and we’re establishing that deep into the heart of football season. This week, we’re doing a special conference championship edition of Establish the Fun, breaking down some cool things that some teams who are playing this weekend do, plus the keys to the biggest game of the weekend when it comes to the College Football Playoff. So let’s have some fun and get into an exciting weekend of college football!

Oregon needs to lower the Boom

In Week 7, Oregon and Washington played one of the best games of the year, a 36-33 Washington victory in Seattle. Now, they meet again in Las Vegas, with not only the Pac-12 championship on the line, but a potential College Football Playoff berth on the line as well, in the final Pac-12 title game ever. Although the margins were extremely close between the two teams in week seven, upon going back and watching the game and working on this column I found the biggest key to victory for both Oregon and Washington on Friday: explosive plays.

Per Game On Paper, the week seven tilt between Oregon and Washington was tightly contested, but there’s one major area where Oregon failed to come up to meet Washington, and that’s in explosive plays and stopping said explosive plays.

When we dig deeper into those explosive plays, a clearer picture gets illuminated as well.

Washington had eight explosive plays, seven through the air, compared to only five for Oregon. The air explosives are ultimately going to be the difference in this game, mainly because of both teams’ strengths and weaknesses. Defensively, Oregon is big and physical up front, and talented on the back end. That talent leads them to leaving their corners on islands and playing a lot of Cover 1. Per Sports Information Solutions, the Ducks have played Cover 1 on 172 passing attempts this year, third highest in the nation. In addition, the way that they play their Quarters coverage is aggressive and downhill play by the safeties, leaving their corners on potential islands.

How did that work against Washington? On all passing attempts the Ducks played Cover 1 in, Washington completed seven of their 15 passes for 97 yards and a touchdown, and a DPI penalty. Their EPA/attempt in that coverage allowed was 0.237, the highest all season for the Ducks. When they were in Cover Four, Washington went 5/7 for 57 yards and a touchdown and a 0.251 EPA/attempt, third highest all season. The Huskies shredded the Ducks defense downfield with their talented receivers, and it’s the bonafide matchup to watch on Friday night.

One way that Washington helped their receivers and QB exploit these coverages is by aligning them in bunches and stacks before the snap. Offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb and head coach Kalen DeBoer had an excellent gameplan to attack the Ducks coverages and get their wideouts in favorable situations. On this play, wideouts Ja’Lynn Polk and Giles Jackson are lined up in a stack to Michael Penix’s right. With the formation being in a stack, the Ducks lock the point corner at the LOS on Polk and the safety will take anything that Jackson does. Well, the Huskies run a cheeky version of slot fade where Jackson runs a hitch and Polk runs a fade to the end zone. Another benefit for Polk on this play is where the ball is placed. With the trips to the boundary, Polk has the entire field to run this fade. Watch as the play works itself out, and how it essentially turns itself into man coverage on the backside of this empty play. With no safety help because of the trips, it’s an easy TD for the Huskies.

Another area where the Huskies gamed the Ducks in the explosive passing category is through their double post action. This is a really good beater against Quarters coverage because the inside route draws the attention of the safety, leaving the outside route running the big post with no safety help against a corner without inside leverage. On Penix’s first touchdown to Giles Jackson, the Huskies got the Ducks caught in their Quarters coverage against double posts. The Huskies run their TE on a short post that draws the safety over, and Giles Jackson has nothing but purple in his sights. An easy touchdown.

Even on plays that ended in an incompletion, the Huskies had the Ducks beat coverage wise. This is good pressure by Oregon up front, but still almost results in a Husky touchdown because they gamed them again, this time in Cover 1. The Huskies are in a bunch formation, and run the outside receiver on a whip route, the point man (who is the tight end in this case) runs an over and then the inside receiver runs a fade from the slot. Grubb and DeBoer were constantly one step ahead in the passing game, creating margins that their NFL caliber receiver group benefitted from.

For Oregon to win on Friday, they have to insulate and protect their corners more. They can’t leave them on islands against this receiver group, because then they have the advantage. Washington is unafraid of testing the Ducks deep and won’t be shy about taking shots early in the game.

Either way it goes, we’re in for a heavyweight bout Friday, so get your popcorn ready.

God Bless the Triple Option, featuring Liberty football

For the last three years, one of my favorite offenses to watch in college football has been Willy Korn and the pistol triple option offense he implemented at Coastal Carolina. With the spread offense taking off, Korn implemented Wing-T and triple option run schemes but out of the pistol and shotgun, and ran them to perfection. Now, Korn is at Liberty, where the Flames are in the midst of an undefeated season. Before they take on New Mexico State (who is 10-2!) in the Conference-USA championship game, let’s take a look at the Liberty offense and what makes it so fun.

So the offense is based on the triple option, but instead of truly going full RPO, the Flames run the triple out of the pistol, using motion and diverse run schemes to throw tons of eye candy at opponents. This is one of their staple ones, starting with two “backs” in the backfield. The downblock leaves the EDGE player as the read on the give, then the apex player becomes the pitch option. It’s an easy way to throw so much at opponents and get easy yards for their offense.

One of my favorite things that Liberty will do with this triple is instead of down-blocking and leaving the EDGE, they’ll arc the tackle to the read side. What this does is two things: it helps to freeze that EDGE defender even longer, and it gets your tackle out in space blocking a smaller person. Seems like a win to me. They ran a really sick variation of it against Old Dominion, where the formation was to the field. They brought WR/RB Aaron Bedgood in motion to become the pitch man, which forces the DBs to bump over. However, with the right tackle arc-ing the EDGE, he can get out into space and go straight to the corner, who wants zero part of any of that smoke. The tight end works up to the safety and it’s an easy nine yards.

Now, you’re probably seeing something different with those two plays. Where Coastal Carolina had two seasons with at least 200 carries in their offense with two backs on the field, Liberty only has 75 this year. It’s a major difference in the two, but the offensive bones remain the same. They don’t need to have two backs on the field because they have a hybrid WR/RB in Aaron Bedgood, who has 50 carries this season.

What makes their triple like much of the other true under center triple options is how they can constantly force opposing defenses to account for everyone, making them wrong eventually. Against UMass, they had a drive where they exclusively ran the triple, and on two plays you can tell how the offense forces opponents into being wrong.

On this first play, Bedgood goes into motion and I want you to key in on the safety to the top of the screen. He’s going to be important here. On this play, the safety goes with the motion and QB Kaidon Salter gives the ball for six yards.

The very next play, that same safety gets caught looking into the dive, and the tight end gets a crack block on him. This sets up a 2v1 with Salter and Bedgood against a corner, which results in a Salter TD. God bless the triple option.

This is the appetizer for the UW-Oregon main course on Friday, but when you tune in, make sure to watch Liberty’s run game, because it rocks.

Troy’s defense does it again

In 2022, Troy’s defense was among the best in the whole country. They finished eighth in points allowed per game, 20th in yards allowed per game and finished 10-2 with a win over UTSA. Defensive coordinator Shiel Wood left for Tulane in the offseason, and Troy…kept the beat going. This year the Trojans finished tenth in points allowed per game, 12th in yards allowed per game and are…10-2.

Is it Groundhog Day? Nope, just Troy football.

What surprises me about this defense so much is how good they are against the run despite how light they play. According to Sports Info Solutions the Trojans play light boxes on 75% of snaps, good for 14th in the nation, and even then they play their personnel light as well. Their two starting EDGE defenders are 249 and 230 pounds, yet they’re so good against the run! Let’s dig into it and see how, and give more and more praise to head coach Jon Sumrall and the Trojans.

Troy structures their defense in the Mint front, a modern way to play the pass because it devotes more bodies to stopping the passing game. However, it also goads opponents into running the ball because of how light the boxes are. The Mint front is played like this: there’s a nose tackle over the center, two defensive tackles on the inside shoulder of the tackle (4i), and a Jack linebacker lined up as your traditional EDGE player. Then you have your linebackers lined up between the guard and center, and the guard and tackle. The point of this front is to force everything to bounce. Watch this run play Troy defends against Southern Miss. The defensive line slants to the inside, and the linebacker to the RB side has the ability to stack but also fall back to the C gap in the event that the back bounces the run. Southern Miss runs a split zone play here, and you can see number 10 start to fill on the backside as 91 gets to the inside of the tackle and makes the stop.

With Troy playing as many light boxes as they do, they ask a lot of their safeties. Troy will spin their safety down after the snap to help defend the run, a way of getting opposing offenses to think they can give on RPOs but then the defense catches them by adding another number to the run fit after the snap. This also helps Troy’s defense against gap scheme runs. Because of how light the boxes and defenders are for the Trojans, spinning a safety down helps to keep the run fit structurally intact. Southern Miss runs GT Counter for their quarterback, but watch from the end zone view how the linebackers fit this run. Both inside backers come downhill and they both “box” the pullers. This means they hit the puller with their inside shoulder, keeping their outside shoulder free and creating an alley for the safety to come down and make this tackle in a hurry. They play complementary, team football and it’s awesome.

Here’s another really good fit by the safety from the South Alabama game, they are unafraid of coming in and sticking opponents. Also look at the Nose tackle, completely dominating that double team.

The Trojans will be playing App State in the title game on Saturday. The Mountaineers are third in the conference in rushing yards per game and play a physical style of football, so if you want a helping of Fun Belt football, look no further than the Sun Belt title game and Troy’s awesome defense (Jon Sumrall is also a hot name when it comes to a lot of southern Power Five coaching jobs, and if his defense finishes the year strong, he’ll be on the top of coaching lists).