K-State started the season with a solid offensive performance against Stanford while leaving some points on the field. Messingham and his staff had the Cardinal scouted really well and K-State's offense came out clicking, gaining 168 yards on the first 12 plays (14.0 yards per snap), but unfortunately with only 1 score after an interception in the end zone ended the first drive. Stanford was completely on their heals as K-State mixed personnel, formations, and play calls, clicking at a 75% success rate based on down and distance on those first dozen plays. The offense gained a respectable 154 yards on 29 snaps (5.3 yards per play) the rest of the game before garbage time while putting 17 more points on the board, but with a success rate of only 27.6%. The 3rd quarter was particularly bad, with K-State gaining 23 yards on 9 plays with a success rate of 11%. For the game before garbage time (starting when the Cats led 24-0), K-State finished with 322 yards on 31 plays (7.9 yards per play) with a success rate of 41.5%. For the game K-State scored 2.67 points per drive and 0.59 points per play, better than last year's season averages of 2.21 points per drive and 0.43 points per play. Very impressive was K-State's explosiveness, with 26.7% of snaps gaining at least 10 yards and 11.1% gaining at least 20; much better than last year's 16.8% and 7.7%. Stanford's defense was poor last year, giving up 3.00 points per drive, 6.6 yards per play, and 5.5 yards per rush last season.
Below are my play call and alignment/personnel charts from the game, again not including garbage time. One thing that made K-State particularly hard to defend was the use of personnel. K-State used a tight end on all but a handful of snaps, rotating Lenners, Wheeler, and Imatorbhebhe on a regular basis. However, all 3 lined up split out as a receiver multiple times and each of K-State's empty formations featured a tight end and a running back split out. K-State used mainly Dineen at fullback, though Barta got a few snaps late. Dineen lined up as an H a couple times while he was in the game, with only 4 plays coming with traditional I formation and Thompson under center. K-State also used unbalanced formations quite often which seemed to bother Stanford. As we have seen in the past, motion and shifting were used often and the Cats had success off of that. The Cats featured Knowles and Brooks as primary receivers, but Weber, Garber,
The play calls were pretty varied, with 27% of snaps using inside zone runs with running backs coming off of either zone read or jet sweep as complimentary actions. This continues Messingham's use of option and read schemes while leaving defenders unblocked on the majority of running plays, though I'm pretty certain that many of those are called gives or keeps and not always a read by Thompson. Drop back passes were 24% of the play calls with another 15% coming off of play action. 10% utilized 2 back, I formation run plays and 10% were called QB runs, though Thompson had an additional 3 scrambles that were effective. Mixed in were some nice jet sweeps/stretch option gives to Knowles and a 1 back power scheme.
I'll post the GIF breakdown of schemes through the rest of this thread. If you see a mistake or break down the play/scheme differently, feel free to jump in and add or correct. These are based on my interpretations of play calls and schemes with my own football experience, that certainly doesn't making me without fault on how I break many of these down. I've limited this week's breakdown to 22 plays, but if you'd like to see more or have other questions feel free to ask in the thread.
Below are my play call and alignment/personnel charts from the game, again not including garbage time. One thing that made K-State particularly hard to defend was the use of personnel. K-State used a tight end on all but a handful of snaps, rotating Lenners, Wheeler, and Imatorbhebhe on a regular basis. However, all 3 lined up split out as a receiver multiple times and each of K-State's empty formations featured a tight end and a running back split out. K-State used mainly Dineen at fullback, though Barta got a few snaps late. Dineen lined up as an H a couple times while he was in the game, with only 4 plays coming with traditional I formation and Thompson under center. K-State also used unbalanced formations quite often which seemed to bother Stanford. As we have seen in the past, motion and shifting were used often and the Cats had success off of that. The Cats featured Knowles and Brooks as primary receivers, but Weber, Garber,
The play calls were pretty varied, with 27% of snaps using inside zone runs with running backs coming off of either zone read or jet sweep as complimentary actions. This continues Messingham's use of option and read schemes while leaving defenders unblocked on the majority of running plays, though I'm pretty certain that many of those are called gives or keeps and not always a read by Thompson. Drop back passes were 24% of the play calls with another 15% coming off of play action. 10% utilized 2 back, I formation run plays and 10% were called QB runs, though Thompson had an additional 3 scrambles that were effective. Mixed in were some nice jet sweeps/stretch option gives to Knowles and a 1 back power scheme.
I'll post the GIF breakdown of schemes through the rest of this thread. If you see a mistake or break down the play/scheme differently, feel free to jump in and add or correct. These are based on my interpretations of play calls and schemes with my own football experience, that certainly doesn't making me without fault on how I break many of these down. I've limited this week's breakdown to 22 plays, but if you'd like to see more or have other questions feel free to ask in the thread.
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