Upon Further Review: Purdue’s loss to Fresno State
Upon Further Review is GoldandBlack.com’s detailed weekly look back at that weekend’s Purdue football game. Today, the Boilermakers’ loss to Fresno State. In this series, we will do our best to examine some of the finer points of game, the strategy, scheme and such things. We will do so without intimate knowledge of game plans and terminology and without access to all-22 video, so please keep all that in mind.
Use of these video clips is intended for editorial comment only.
PDF: Purdue-Fresno State statistics
PURDUE OFFENSIVE APPROACH/PASS GAME
On the first big play Purdue made, obviously it was a dart by Hudson Card to Deion Burks and an exceptional individual effort (and trash tackling by Fresno), but kudos to the RB — sorry, I can’t tell who it was — for holding his ground against the blitzer off the corner, and see how the pre-snap motion, moving TJ Sheffield left to right across the formation, pulled the safety out of the window Purdue threw into. Similar to Jeff Brohm offense in terms of scheme manipulating a defense.
Purdue never really established any passing game bread-and-butter stuff, so to speak. If was wasn’t hitting vertically to Burks, it wasn’t getting a lot done. Most of Purdue’s passing tries attacked the middle of the field.
It did involve the tight end — true freshman third-stringer — as an east-west route-runner, both lined up offset from the line and put in motion on counters, or simply as a chipper lined up on the line only to break off and run drags with the QB.
Almost everything out of the shotgun, as expected, except for some goal line stuff, and there was some two-back stuff in the red zone. Not typical two-back stuff like with a fullback or whatever, but Tyrone Tracy out there as an extra receiver essentially. One red-zone play, Tracy ran a route and Purdue wound up throwing a swing to Devin Mockobee right behind him, position Tracy as a lead blocker of sorts on a play that almost scored. Whether that was by design or just happened organically on a checkdown, I have no idea.
It was interesting that only four Purdue wide receivers were targeted — Tracy is now a running back, mind you — and one of them was Elijah Canion‘s end zone target one of the just three snaps he played. Purdue only played five wide receivers and two of them were Canion (three snaps) and Jayden Dixon-Veal (one).
The run game was some option but a lot of inside zone and traps. When Purdue just lined up and tried to move people, it didn’t go so well. The offensive line’s collective health showed up.
PURDUE RUN GAME
Purdue didn’t get enough done on the ground to win.
This series is not meant as a call-out session, but here’s a play to highlight.
It’s third quarter, Purdue’s up 11 and starting to move the ball on the ground some. This play is a drive-staller in effect, as the left guard and tight end just can’t or don’t get to their spots to make blocks of any consequence. Now, I’ll leave it to you to speculate how this play might have turned out with Gus Hartwig or either of Purdue’s top two tight ends on the field.
I just want to note that when people think of offensive line play it’s just about physicality and all that, but a big part of it too is just being able to move to get to blocks and deliver them effectively, especially in zone- and trap-blocking schemes, as Purdue will use.
Purdue had a real offensive line problem in this game. Watch this play below against a three-man front and tell me tackle Mahamane Moussa (77) is healthy. (He was questionable on the injury report.)
Back to the run game …
Part of the appeal of dual-threat quarterbacks in modern college football is the added layer of worry they put on a defense looking to stop the run. Purdue’s Hudson Card seems like he sort of player capable of adding that value, but on Saturday, all his rushing yards came off scrambles (we think). Keep that in mind when assessing balance between called passes and called runs.
Ryan Walters did not seem averse in his post-game comments to use Card as a runner (as opposed to shelving any designed runs to keep the QB out of harm’s way).
When Card and his offensive coaches watch film Sunday, they will see missed opportunities.
Walters and Graham Harrell have made read option and run/pass option (RPO) part of their Air Raid-based offense, which will put the onus on Card’s decision-making. This clip here looks like a read option where the end either bit inside or was sealed and the QB should have kept it.
Prior, there was a fourth-quarter play where Card was flushed and probably had six yards there for the taking, but instead flattened out to keep behind the line of scrimmage to buy time before ultimately throwing it away.
PURDUE DEFENSIVE APPROACH
Purdue’s basic alignment was one high safety — and by high, we mean high. Dillon Thieneman routinely lined up 20-30 yards deep, with Boilermaker defenders playing mostly man-to-man underneath him. It did zone at times as well situationally.
This role puts an extreme importance on that position to cover a lot of ground and tackle, though there’s also the counterpoint that if that position is racking up huge tackle numbers, that means the offense is probably having some success.
Anyway, to the territorial part, it worked out pretty good here for Thieneman.
In coverage, Purdue is going to be mostly man-to-man it would appear. That puts you in situations where sometimes the perfect throw-and-catch, there’s just nothing you can do, but it also puts an extreme onus on that first tackler knocking out run-after-catch opportunities. Like so, on this Markevious Brown third-down stop to open the game. Being in man gave Brown the head of steam in pursuit of Fresno State’s motion man, but these are the tackles you gotta make in man, because the QB isn’t throwing into crowds the way he might be against zone.
Two of Fresno State’s big plays on third-and-long subsequently came off missed tackles, one by Cam Allen and one by Thieneman (albeit at a bit of a weird angle for the freshman). Another, an early third-and-seven one play before Fresno’s first TD, came off another miss by Allen.
• Purdue, as expected, is asking a lot of its edge players, but seems to have good enough athletes to handle the burden. Kydran Jenkins and Nic Scourton spent the whole games standing up as outside linebackers and either rushing off the edge, holding the edge against the run or dropping back into short zones in coverage. Jenkins and Scourton both look like NFL players one day to me.
A third-down wrinkle here. Purdue brings in Khordae Sydnor and stacks him next to Jenkins, forcing the offensive tackle to lean outside and allowing Jenkins to attack the gap between the tackle and guard, who Jenkins will always be able to out-athlete in space. Sanoussi Kane showing blitz over that guard’s other shoulder is a distraction, too.
• What Fresno State did a good job of — or Purdue did a bad job combating — was schematically creating isolation and conflict-of-assignment, as coaches call it. On Fresno’s first TD, Botros Alisandro got caught between an underneath route and the deep route. Don’t know what happened there as I don’t have back-half view.
One of the Bulldogs’ second quarter touchdowns came with Thieneman stuck between stopping the quarterback scramble in the red zone and accounting for the guy who slipped behind him. That play seemed to be all about linebacker Clyde Washington not containing the quarterback after leaning inside on the option. (TV pointed out that Fresno State had an ineligible player downfield.)
RANDOM
• I don’t have Purdue’s offensive playbook obviously, but to my novice eye, this looks like a triple option sort of thing, giving Card the option to hand the ball or transition into that tight end RPO Purdue ran once in the first half.
• First off, this is great matchup football by Fresno State. Second, I don’t know what Purdue’s defensive scheme dictates happen here, but in man to man, there’s got to be some sort of help behind linebacker OC Brothers here when Fresno motions Jaelen Gill out of the backfield to go after the matchup against a linebacker. Cam Allen can’t or just doesn’t get over in time to be any factor in the play.
• True freshman Will Heldt played on punt return.
The post Upon Further Review: Purdue’s loss to Fresno State appeared first on On3.
