STARKVILLE — The threat of everything should force a defense to allow something.
Therein lies the premise of the run-pass option: if one play threatens a defense with a quarterback run, running back run, screen pass and another pass on the other side of the formation, the defense will have to choose which ones to prioritize. In theory, they’re also choosing which one to allow.
That premise is the foundation of the Joe Moorhead offense, the system that saw him turn Fordham into a consistent FCS playoff team, the system that took Penn State to the Rose Bowl and the system that earned him a head-coaching job in the Southeastern Conference.
It’s also possible that system has an answer.
Tom Luginbill has been on the sideline of ESPN’s broadcast crew for MSU’s losses to Florida and LSU and will have the same duty 6 p.m. Saturday (ESPN) against No. 16 Texas A&M. When he watches MSU (4-3, 1-3 SEC), he sees it susceptible to man-to-man defense.
“What an RPO-based offense does is it puts a defender in what I call a conflict of assignment,” Luginbill told The Dispatch, using a similar term to the one Moorhead uses for this concept. “If a defender, though, doesn’t have a conflict because he’s responsible for a man, how are you supposed to make him wrong?
“That’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re playing the odds that they can commit to the run and not get burned over the top. If they get to third-and-seven or more, they know they’ve already won.”
Moorhead said LSU broke tendency by playing more zone than it usually does, but also recognized good man coverage does impact RPOs; he also feels his system has a natural answer.
“When people play press, it eliminates, the term we use is access. It eliminates real quick throws on the edges,” Moorhead said. “There’s quick game answers where there’s a man side of the route and a zone side of a route, there’s screens and things like that. Quite frankly, a couple of them were wide open and we didn’t hit them. Those are the ones we have to hit for this offense to look like it’s supposed to.”
MSU’s inability to date to connect on its man-beating principles is naturally going to lead its opponents to do more of the same. Thus, MSU will eventually need to connect on 1-on-1 situations to force defenses to adapt.
Luginbill recognizes not every team has the defenders to play aggressive man-to-man against MSU; he believes LSU and Alabama do, as does Florida, “to a certain degree.”
As he’s seen it, it’s not the only way opposing defenses have attacked MSU’s offense.
Moorhead says his rushing attack is based on numbers, angles, and grass. The numbers part of that approach is based on a simple presnap read: if the offense has enough blockers to handle how many defenders are in the box, it should be successful running. Luginbill has seen defenses toy with that numbers game, and Texas A&M defensive coordinator Mike Elko in particular.
“What they did versus Clemson, they had the same game plan LSU had last week: they would show a light box to make Mississippi State think they can run it, then they would buzz down the safety, play the other safety close to the line of scrimmage anyway and then end up with a seven-man box before the ball was snapped,” Luginbill said. “Technically, if you look at how they are aligned, Mississippi State should have been able to run right by them, but they couldn’t do it. That’s what Mike Elko did to Clemson.
“When you walk a guy down late prior to the snap, it can change your RPO read because it can change the assignment of the guy you think you’re reading. If he knows the safety is coming down behind him, he may have a different assignment and now your read goes from the linebacker to the safety. All the moving parts can be quite frustrating.”
In theory, Moorhead has a check for this, too: timing. Moorhead’s offense is what’s known as a check-with-me offense, where players look to the sideline for the play call more than once. His goal is giving him a chance to look at the defense before making a play call; it may push the snap down to inside five seconds of a delay of game penalty, but he’s willing to take that to increase the chances of the right call being made.
It’s possible opposing defenses have figured out the general timing of that playcalling mechanism and make their alignment changes accordingly.
“There’s some validity to that,” Luginbill said. “If you’re Mike Elko or Dave Aranda last week, you tell your guys, ‘Here’s their average snap time. We want to be in this until 12 seconds are on the clock, then we want to trigger, or we want to be in this until this many seconds are on the clock and then we want to go to that.’
“It’s all being scouted, it’s all being evaluated and it’s all being gameplanned, no doubt.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
