This is a pretty basic play, but I like looking at X's and O's, so I decided to draw up Jordan Marshall's 54-yard touchdown run against Purdue.
With a 1st and 10 on their own 46-yard line, Michigan put 11 personnel (1 running back, 1 tight end) on the field. Wide receiver Andrew Marsh lines up wide left, WR Channing Goodwin lines up in the slot to the left, and TE Max Bredeson lines up as a wing to the left side. This is already a good look for Michigan to run the ball, because Purdue only has six guys in the box and Michigan has six guys to block them (5 linemen + Bredeson), not to mention QB Bryce Underwood and RB Jordan Marshall.
Michigan puts Goodwin in jet motion across the formation, which gets the two-high safeties to rotate. The weakside safety rocks down to be prepared for Goodwin coming across the formation, and the strongside safety drops back to the middle of the field. Michigan doesn't even need to block the defensive end to the offense's right since he's a) removed from the play by formation and b) needs to respect the bootleg from Underwood.
The key block here is Bredeson on the nickel. As long as the offensive line can get a hat on a hat, the play just requires the 250 lb. Bredeson to block the 6'0", 195 lb. nickel Smiley Bradford in space. With Bredeson making contact and blowing Bradford out of the way, now Marshall just has to beat the deep safety to the alley, which he does.
It's fight song time.
How about Crippen? He had to reach a 1-tech, and did so with great effect!
ReplyDeleteIt looks to my eye as the deep safety took a bad angle on Marshall. If I could post a picture in the comments, I'd show you the moment where, to my eye, a good angle would have resulted in a tackle. Which leads to me to ask: does Jordan Marshall have a "sneaky fifth gear" thing where he can accelerate in a step or two and punish guys for bad angles?
ReplyDeleteI think you answered your own question
DeleteJordan Marshall is no Justice Haynes when it comes to top end speed. But dude is faster than Deveon and Hassan, two bruisers that did quite well here. He may not be as strong as Mullings, but is faster than him too. He's not as fast as Don, but the vision & balance have been upgraded. He may not be Blake the Great yet, but he's bigger. I think Zach Charbonett is a good comp. Really good to great in many attributes, if not as ideal in some that we've seen from his predecessors
I don't think it's that sneaky that he has a fifth gear. He ran a 10.74 in the 100 meters in high school. But one or two steps? No, I don't think so. I don't think his acceleration is that great. He takes a few steps to get up to speed, but his top-end speed is still pretty good. He seems like a guy who would probably run the 40 in like 4.48, which is faster than Blake Corum but not absolutely blazing.
DeleteI think Haynes is the guy who can get up to full speed quicker. So if Marshall can do it in 1 or 2 steps, that would mean Haynes can get up to full speed in 0 or 1 step.
This is one reason I think Marshall is a good fit for outside zone, because his speed matches up well with how the blocks set up. If you're too fast, sometimes you get too close to the line and can't adjust properly. And if you're too slow, the defense can clog up the running lanes before you get to the line.
Did the deep safety just make a mistake? Or did the deep safety not have a good sense for the speed that Marshall possesses? (I'm trying to figure out what happened there ... to my eye, the deep safety had him if his angle led Marshall by a foot or so, but it looks like the safety aimed his body at a spot that Marshall cleared a moment earlier.)
DeleteI don't know the exact answer, but #21 got a 63 PFF grade for the game
DeleteOverall for the season he's decent, and 87 against the Run / 74 Tackling
Sometimes even a good player whiffs
The deep safety was going in the wrong direction at the snap. As I mentioned in the post, the motion back toward a 2x2 set made the weak safety rock down and the strong safety roll deep. When the ball is snapped, you can still see the strong safety rotating back toward the middle of the field. He's out of position and going in the wrong direction to fill the alley.
DeleteThunder, at the end of the season, it will be nice if you could do a ranking of the fantastic RBs we had in the past few years Blake vs Haskins vs Haynes vs Mulllings vs Marshall. Just a suggestion…
ReplyDeleteYou know, it's interesting that you bring that up, because last week during the bye week, I started to update my running back rankings. I haven't updated them in a few years to include Haskins, Corum, Mullings, etc.
DeleteYOU WON'T BELIEVE WHO COMES IN AT #7!!!
#clickbait
I look forward to reading that!
Delete