Daniel Jeremiah on the toughest postion to scout

chuck

Fucking bubble screens and spread option offenses!

Doogles, it seems like he's saying that BFL safeties have a harder or more mentally challenging job. Coverages and routes are more complicated. It's hard to find film where college safeties can be seen executing coverages or making reads comparable to what they'll need to do in the nfl. They can evaluate their speed, quickness, and tackling but not the mental side.

H_D

So Daniel Jeremiah doesn't use hip evaluation? Seems pretty basic.

kh83

Unless you're consistently playing a safety toward the line of scrimmage, it's pretty reasonable that they're not going to have much of an effect against quick passing attacks. Big reason why Earl Thomas had such a "quiet" season was that he was always in the deep middle, and only idiots threw deep middle against the Hawks.

RoadDawg55

Doogles said:

Why do bubble screens negate an athletic safety? From what I saw last year, having a guy like Budda read react and fly to the ball at the LOS instead of waiting for the Receiver to shake and bake at the second level was crucial to blowing those types of plays up.

If we had, say, a tripper johnson back there it would have been a bubble screen massacre.

This is what I was thinking. Safeties have more opportunities to fight off blocks and tackle in open space. There still is enough downfield passing to get some film on safeties covering downfield too.

I get that the movements and responsibilities can be different in college vs the NFL, but safety play is as crucial as ever in college football. You can't stop spread offenses without safeties that can cover and tackle.

I know Allison is speaking from an informed point of view, but it would be interesting what other scouts had to say.

Tequilla

Doogles said:

Why do bubble screens negate an athletic safety? From what I saw last year, having a guy like Budda read react and fly to the ball at the LOS instead of waiting for the Receiver to shake and bake at the second level was crucial to blowing those types of plays up.

If we had, say, a tripper johnson back there it would have been a bubble screen massacre.

The staple of the Oregon passing game up until maybe the last year or two (not that it's massively different now) has been the bubble screen and then hitting you over the top with the fake the bubble screen and hit with a WR fake blocking and then running a go route with no deep coverage.

You can play against this type of offense effectively IF you have the right pieces. Take a look at how TCU played for most of the years - particularly in the games against Oklahoma, Baylor, and Ole Miss (all to varying degrees of success). Defensively they play a 4-2-5 defense (2 CBs and 3 S) that relies on the front 6 + 1 safety (changing from play to play) to stop the run game while playing press coverage on the receivers with no more than 1 safety deep on most plays. The ways to beat them defensively are to 1) effectively run the ball to force them to provide more attention to the box to soften up the defensive coverage and 2) to hit a lot of jump balls in the deep passing game. Considering that TCU is producing high-end CB (will have 1st round picks at the position in each of the last 2 years) and have always had good safety play, it's easier said than done.

Oklahoma ran the ball 42 times for 152 yards while completing 14 of 36 passes for 309 yards. 3 of their TDs came directly as the result of massive chunk plays in the passing game.

Baylor was able to effectively run the ball to the tune of 54 carries for 272 yards. However, in the passing game, the chunk plays were again the basis of the offense as they completed 28 of 55 for 510 yards with large chunks of that coming on deep throws. Baylor's probably the poster child IMO for the modern spread with their wide WR splits to the sideline that force defenses to either defend the run or the pass and to tip their hand accordingly prior to the snap. It's not uncommon that you'll find 4 Baylor WRs lined up before the snap and all 4 of them are outside of the numbers defensively.

Ole Miss relied on the spread all year, although they weren't a great running team. Their inability to run (37 times for 9 yards, no run longer than 12 yards) made it impossible for their outside players to break loose as Ole Miss completed 11 of 27 throws for 120 yards.

Even with some of the best defensive coaching and arguably one of the top 5 defenses in the country, TCU was helpless against a Baylor team that is able to manipulate the field such that they create significant space and eliminate the ability for teams that play good defense to utilize the strength of ANY good defense (the ability to defend with numbers by rallying to the football and executing their assignments).

It's one of the reasons that I think that as long as offenses are allowed to basically operate in a manner that is anything goes, you'll continue to see obscene offensive numbers in college football. I saw it for year in watching Texas HS football in how they target the weakest of the links and just abuse it to the point that defenses have absolutely no shot. That has drifted into college football notably in that part of the country as well. I don't think you'll ever quite see that at the NFL level. But college needs to get back to avoiding games that end up 61-58 between two of the better teams in the country.

CFetters_Nacho_Lover

Tequilla said:

Doogles said:

Why do bubble screens negate an athletic safety? From what I saw last year, having a guy like Budda read react and fly to the ball at the LOS instead of waiting for the Receiver to shake and bake at the second level was crucial to blowing those types of plays up.

If we had, say, a tripper johnson back there it would have been a bubble screen massacre.

The staple of the Oregon passing game up until maybe the last year or two (not that it's massively different now) has been the bubble screen and then hitting you over the top with the fake the bubble screen and hit with a WR fake blocking and then running a go route with no deep coverage.

You can play against this type of offense effectively IF you have the right pieces. Take a look at how TCU played for most of the years - particularly in the games against Oklahoma, Baylor, and Ole Miss (all to varying degrees of success). Defensively they play a 4-2-5 defense (2 CBs and 3 S) that relies on the front 6 + 1 safety (changing from play to play) to stop the run game while playing press coverage on the receivers with no more than 1 safety deep on most plays. The ways to beat them defensively are to 1) effectively run the ball to force them to provide more attention to the box to soften up the defensive coverage and 2) to hit a lot of jump balls in the deep passing game. Considering that TCU is producing high-end CB (will have 1st round picks at the position in each of the last 2 years) and have always had good safety play, it's easier said than done.

Oklahoma ran the ball 42 times for 152 yards while completing 14 of 36 passes for 309 yards. 3 of their TDs came directly as the result of massive chunk plays in the passing game.

Baylor was able to effectively run the ball to the tune of 54 carries for 272 yards. However, in the passing game, the chunk plays were again the basis of the offense as they completed 28 of 55 for 510 yards with large chunks of that coming on deep throws. Baylor's probably the poster child IMO for the modern spread with their wide WR splits to the sideline that force defenses to either defend the run or the pass and to tip their hand accordingly prior to the snap. It's not uncommon that you'll find 4 Baylor WRs lined up before the snap and all 4 of them are outside of the numbers defensively.

Ole Miss relied on the spread all year, although they weren't a great running team. Their inability to run (37 times for 9 yards, no run longer than 12 yards) made it impossible for their outside players to break loose as Ole Miss completed 11 of 27 throws for 120 yards.

Even with some of the best defensive coaching and arguably one of the top 5 defenses in the country, TCU was helpless against a Baylor team that is able to manipulate the field such that they create significant space and eliminate the ability for teams that play good defense to utilize the strength of ANY good defense (the ability to defend with numbers by rallying to the football and executing their assignments).

It's one of the reasons that I think that as long as offenses are allowed to basically operate in a manner that is anything goes, you'll continue to see obscene offensive numbers in college football. I saw it for year in watching Texas HS football in how they target the weakest of the links and just abuse it to the point that defenses have absolutely no shot. That has drifted into college football notably in that part of the country as well. I don't think you'll ever quite see that at the NFL level. But college needs to get back to avoiding games that end up 61-58 between two of the better teams in the country.

Disagree.