Man- There we a lot of Shenanigans going on with our line. I know you saw it but for the people here that didn't I will just post this here for them.
This is pretty much a microcosm of what was going on out there and subsequently what happens to us vs this style of defense and why we struggle. We HAVE TO be able to win vs a 3 man front. If we are busting plays vs a 3 man that means they don't have to come out of coverage to handle our run game. Then you are seeing smaller windows for Quinn to throw into, and drives stall. This is the drive where we ran the fake field goal. We will go through 1st and 2nd down so we can see what happened.
1st down and UH is telling you with the alignment of their front what they are trying to do. Both their ends are aligned inside he tackles. They are telling us you aren't running inside. Sark is going to wisely call an outside run here. However, pay attention to Majors and the NT circled.
Sark pulls both guards and uses Baxter to play H-back and cutoff the backside pursuit. However, Majors fires out too low and the NT calmly pushes him face first to the ground.
There is Majors face first.
Everyone is doing their job except Majors. If he had done his job there is a gaping hole for Brooks to run through for a huge gain. However, that has been filled by the NT and Brooks has to bounce it.
Right into the waiting arms of the guy on the edge. Majors lost a lot of battles with their NT, but he wasn't the only one.
So now we are on to 2nd and 9. Remember what we said about how UH is aligning their DTs? They are basically telling us they are planning on clogging up the A&B gaps and spilling everything outside to their force players. So as an O-linemen you have to expect the DE to fire into the B-gap.
Sark calls another outside run. This time he pulls Banks and Helm. However, the DE whips Jones inside. Jones should've just blocked him down when he fired there.
Now he is standing in the hole. Helm, who is supposed to account for the man behind the guy circled tried to chip the DE and still get to his responsibility.
Helm is now blocking the DE. The man he was responsible for is now untouched and waiting for Brooks on the edge. Brooks has to cut it back inside and gets two yards. Had Jones done his job Brooks comes off the edge with only a DB in front of him. Probably a big gainer.
Sometimes I see guys yelling on the board and asking why are we running inside when the play wasn't supposed to go there. Sark doesn't always call the right play, but he does more times than not. Sometimes, like here, we just don't block them well. This is why we struggle vs the flyover. We have to be able to punish teams for daring to play a light box vs us. However, if you keep busting your assignments then it puts Quinn in a bad place. The next play UH split their 3 down out, rushed 4, and dropped everyone else beyond the sticks. We checked it down to Baxter who danced around and got tackled with no gain.