Long article but very interesting. Sounds exactly like K-State's offense except for #3 Simplicity and #5 Pace. Though they use K-State as an example of how not to use space. In reality, Snyder was one of the first to spread the offense for run game.
1. Quarterback as a Run Threat
Simply demonstrating a willingness to have the QB carry the ball and establishing that those carries can result in large enough gains to maintain efficiency (four or five yards per carry would comfortably do it) ought to force the defense to account for the QB as a runner on every play. If it doesn’t, the offense can run the QB often until the defense adjusts.
When the QB reads a defender, as on a zone-read play, the QB actually can manage to occupy two defenders, which evens out the original two-man advantage for the defense.
Josh Hermsmeyer, who maintains AirYards.com, found that over the past two NFL seasons, zone read type plays have been more effective than any other type of run play in terms of success rate (which he defines as the ratio of player generating positive vs. negative Expected Points Added) when facing more than five men in the box. This is despite NFL defenses stopping the run incredibly well. The general perception is that the zone read was “figured out” by NFL defenses a few years ago, but it still works better than all other run types, on average, at the NFL level.
2. Optionality
Reading a defender in the run game, incorporating option routes in the passing game, utilizing pre-snap hot reads based on tags, utilizing RPOs, or simply allowing the QB to change the play at the line of scrimmage based on the defensive look are all examples of optionality on offense. Each of these differ in character, complexity and execution, but they share one common theme: they are designed to punish a defense for its choices by attacking it at a vulnerable spot.
3. Simplicity
Research on mastery shows that the less somebody is required to expend on mental processing, the better they can do whatever basic task is in front of them. Players who are thinking about what they are supposed to be doing generally execute their assignments slower and less well than those who are not bogged down in processing too much information. They also make more mistakes.
When college football schemes are so complex that younger players take a long time to pick them up, that hurts the effective depth of the team. Excessively complex offenses impose huge burdens on the quarterback position. The need to prepare a single player as thoroughly as possible to shoulder the burden of executing a very complex system forces practice repetitions and coaching attention to be heavily focused on the starting QB. That means the backup and other QBs on the depth chart receive relatively little attention. Therefore, the more complex an offense is, the more fragile it is and the costlier an injury could be, because of what it would demand of a comparatively unprepared player.
4. Space
The idea of stretching the defense horizontally and vertically is foundational to offensive scheme design and as old as the hills. Eleven defenders can only cover so much ground, after all. And there have always been only three ways to bypass defenders with the ball: go around, over or through them. There is ample evidence, both logical and statistical, that the more spread out horizontally the defense is pre-snap, the more efficient the offense is likely to be. What might be surprising, is that this is more due to the impact of horizontal space on the running game than the passing game.
Consider an inside zone run out of 10 personnel (one running back, and four wide receivers) with the WRs split wide. This personnel grouping and formation forces the defense to either take a risk in the passing game by lining up with a single high safety or to concede some toughness against the run by lining up with a two-high look. If it lines up with two high safeties, it can have five men in the box. That means if we assign the same 90% probability on a per block basis, the joint probability of a properly blocked play is 59% (0.895 = 0.59). That is a quite significant difference (a nearly 25% increase in blocking success) in favor of the spread personnel and formation (and less loaded box). The point here is simply that spacing helps to increase the odds of success by reducing the opportunities for something to go wrong.
Analysis found that the number of men in the box was a far more significant factor in terms of rushing success than the number of extra blocking surfaces that the offense could utilize. In fact, the men in the box completely swamped the number of extra blockers available as a predictor of play success.
Forcing the defense to defend vertically is somewhat a function of formation and personnel but is also heavily influenced by play-calling. Throwing downfield enough to force the defense to respect it as a threat is essential to seeing those two high safety looks that make rushing from spread formations and personnel so attractive. Like the QB running threat, this doesn’t mean it has to happen frequently, but it needs to happen often enough to be respected as a real threat.
5. Pace
Playing with enhanced pace can have tactical advantages at times for all teams and can have strategic advantages for some programs. In addition, practicing with pace has strategic advantage for all teams. Varying pace of play allows the offense to dictate to the defense, by preventing substitutions when the defense is caught wrong-footed with personnel and also by following up especially successful plays with another play quickly, before the defense can react and re-group.
Also, if the defense is unsure how quickly the offense will come to the line of scrimmage and snap the ball, it handcuffs the defensive coordinator and players on the field in terms of how many adjustments they can make.
If a team has a meaningful per-play advantage in net efficiency, it should seek to lengthen games (within reason) in order to reduce the variance of game outcomes.
Over time, the casinos end up winning because the games are tilted in their favor. A team with a marginal advantage due to scheme or talent is like a blackjack table, while a team like Alabama is like the sucker bets on the craps table.
It might be simpler to just ask how many games Alabama would have lost over the last decade if football games were five quarters instead of four. And the answer is fewer than they did.
The converse is also true. A team with a significant disadvantage on a per play basis should try to shorten the game while also trying to increase variance in any other way it can (which would probably include being extremely aggressive on fourth down, blitzing a lot on defense, running trick plays, and utilizing onside kicks).
One might think it is completely obvious that a team’s defense is not going to execute as well and will be vulnerable to breakdowns in an extremely long game. And while could be true, it ignores the fact that the offense also tires, potentially leading to the same issues.
As a result, we see a lot more variance in play outcomes near the end of games with a lot of snaps, but that variance does not unilaterally benefit the offense.
If this isn’t sufficiently convincing, have a look at a pretty exhaustive study (with a very large sample set) performed by Ben Baldwin on NFL data that examines the relationship between defensive rest and offensive success (TL;DR: there isn’t one).
https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2018/8/9/17662152/college-football-offense-elements-basics
1. Quarterback as a Run Threat
Simply demonstrating a willingness to have the QB carry the ball and establishing that those carries can result in large enough gains to maintain efficiency (four or five yards per carry would comfortably do it) ought to force the defense to account for the QB as a runner on every play. If it doesn’t, the offense can run the QB often until the defense adjusts.
When the QB reads a defender, as on a zone-read play, the QB actually can manage to occupy two defenders, which evens out the original two-man advantage for the defense.
Josh Hermsmeyer, who maintains AirYards.com, found that over the past two NFL seasons, zone read type plays have been more effective than any other type of run play in terms of success rate (which he defines as the ratio of player generating positive vs. negative Expected Points Added) when facing more than five men in the box. This is despite NFL defenses stopping the run incredibly well. The general perception is that the zone read was “figured out” by NFL defenses a few years ago, but it still works better than all other run types, on average, at the NFL level.
2. Optionality
Reading a defender in the run game, incorporating option routes in the passing game, utilizing pre-snap hot reads based on tags, utilizing RPOs, or simply allowing the QB to change the play at the line of scrimmage based on the defensive look are all examples of optionality on offense. Each of these differ in character, complexity and execution, but they share one common theme: they are designed to punish a defense for its choices by attacking it at a vulnerable spot.
3. Simplicity
Research on mastery shows that the less somebody is required to expend on mental processing, the better they can do whatever basic task is in front of them. Players who are thinking about what they are supposed to be doing generally execute their assignments slower and less well than those who are not bogged down in processing too much information. They also make more mistakes.
When college football schemes are so complex that younger players take a long time to pick them up, that hurts the effective depth of the team. Excessively complex offenses impose huge burdens on the quarterback position. The need to prepare a single player as thoroughly as possible to shoulder the burden of executing a very complex system forces practice repetitions and coaching attention to be heavily focused on the starting QB. That means the backup and other QBs on the depth chart receive relatively little attention. Therefore, the more complex an offense is, the more fragile it is and the costlier an injury could be, because of what it would demand of a comparatively unprepared player.
4. Space
The idea of stretching the defense horizontally and vertically is foundational to offensive scheme design and as old as the hills. Eleven defenders can only cover so much ground, after all. And there have always been only three ways to bypass defenders with the ball: go around, over or through them. There is ample evidence, both logical and statistical, that the more spread out horizontally the defense is pre-snap, the more efficient the offense is likely to be. What might be surprising, is that this is more due to the impact of horizontal space on the running game than the passing game.
Consider an inside zone run out of 10 personnel (one running back, and four wide receivers) with the WRs split wide. This personnel grouping and formation forces the defense to either take a risk in the passing game by lining up with a single high safety or to concede some toughness against the run by lining up with a two-high look. If it lines up with two high safeties, it can have five men in the box. That means if we assign the same 90% probability on a per block basis, the joint probability of a properly blocked play is 59% (0.895 = 0.59). That is a quite significant difference (a nearly 25% increase in blocking success) in favor of the spread personnel and formation (and less loaded box). The point here is simply that spacing helps to increase the odds of success by reducing the opportunities for something to go wrong.
Analysis found that the number of men in the box was a far more significant factor in terms of rushing success than the number of extra blocking surfaces that the offense could utilize. In fact, the men in the box completely swamped the number of extra blockers available as a predictor of play success.
Forcing the defense to defend vertically is somewhat a function of formation and personnel but is also heavily influenced by play-calling. Throwing downfield enough to force the defense to respect it as a threat is essential to seeing those two high safety looks that make rushing from spread formations and personnel so attractive. Like the QB running threat, this doesn’t mean it has to happen frequently, but it needs to happen often enough to be respected as a real threat.
5. Pace
Playing with enhanced pace can have tactical advantages at times for all teams and can have strategic advantages for some programs. In addition, practicing with pace has strategic advantage for all teams. Varying pace of play allows the offense to dictate to the defense, by preventing substitutions when the defense is caught wrong-footed with personnel and also by following up especially successful plays with another play quickly, before the defense can react and re-group.
Also, if the defense is unsure how quickly the offense will come to the line of scrimmage and snap the ball, it handcuffs the defensive coordinator and players on the field in terms of how many adjustments they can make.
If a team has a meaningful per-play advantage in net efficiency, it should seek to lengthen games (within reason) in order to reduce the variance of game outcomes.
Over time, the casinos end up winning because the games are tilted in their favor. A team with a marginal advantage due to scheme or talent is like a blackjack table, while a team like Alabama is like the sucker bets on the craps table.
It might be simpler to just ask how many games Alabama would have lost over the last decade if football games were five quarters instead of four. And the answer is fewer than they did.
The converse is also true. A team with a significant disadvantage on a per play basis should try to shorten the game while also trying to increase variance in any other way it can (which would probably include being extremely aggressive on fourth down, blitzing a lot on defense, running trick plays, and utilizing onside kicks).
One might think it is completely obvious that a team’s defense is not going to execute as well and will be vulnerable to breakdowns in an extremely long game. And while could be true, it ignores the fact that the offense also tires, potentially leading to the same issues.
As a result, we see a lot more variance in play outcomes near the end of games with a lot of snaps, but that variance does not unilaterally benefit the offense.
If this isn’t sufficiently convincing, have a look at a pretty exhaustive study (with a very large sample set) performed by Ben Baldwin on NFL data that examines the relationship between defensive rest and offensive success (TL;DR: there isn’t one).
https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2018/8/9/17662152/college-football-offense-elements-basics
