The WRE Archive

I find myself digging up old articles, diagrams, and GIFs for use in various settings across the web, but it's a little frustrating having to google myself to find it or click through page after page of things I've written just to find the one I'm looking for. So this organized list of my past articles is mostly for me, but you're welcome to use it, too.

Auburn Offense Explainers

1. The Hurry-Up, No-Huddle
2. The Formations
3. Inside Zone
4. Power and Counter
5. Buck Sweep
6. Running Game Wrinkles and Window Dressing
7. Passing Game Basics
8. Fire Alarms (Quick Huddle Plays)
9. Defensive Coverage Recognition
10. Route Trees
11. Smash and Flag-Flat
12. Post-Flat and WHEEL ROUTE
13. Four Verticals
14. Comebacks
15. Mesh, Drive, and Shallow
16. Floods (NCAA, Y-Sail, Y-Cross)
17. Rollouts, Nakeds, and Bootlegs
18. The Delaware Wing-T by Tubby Raymond in seven parts

Game Reviews

2013 (screenshots)

1. Washington State
2. Arkansas State
3. Mississippi State
4. at LSU - no review
5. Ole Miss
6. Western Carolina
7. at Texas A&M
8. Florida Atlantic
9. at Arkansas
10. at Tennessee - no review
11. Georgia - Part 1 and Part 2
12. Alabama
13. SEC Championship Game vs Missouri
14. National Championship Game vs Florida State - no review

2014 (GIFs)

1. Arkansas
2. San Jose State
3. at Kansas State
4. Louisiana Tech - no review
5. LSU
6. at Mississippi State
7. South Carolina - Part 1 and Part 2
8. at Ole Miss - Part 1 and Part 2
9. Texas A&M
10. Samford - no review
11. at Georgia - no review
12. at Alabama
13. Outback Bowl vs Wisconsin

2015 (gfycats)

1. Louisville
2. Jacksonville State
3. at LSU
4. Mississippi State
5. San Jose State
6. at Kentucky - Part 1 and Part 2
7. at Arkansas
8. Ole Miss
9. at Texas A&M
10. Georgia - no review
11. Idaho
12. Alabama
13. Birmingham Bowl vs Memphis - no review

My YouTube Channel

I have videos of nearly every Auburn game since 2013 cut up into offense only, defense only, and special teams only. That link should show you every playlist I've made of every (serious) video I've made. If the whole game is on YouTube and is of decent quality, I have a version.

What I Left Out

Obviously, that's not all I've done in the last three years. There were actually opponent previews in 2013. I've dabbled in numbers and stats and stuff. I've discussed rule changes, mapped out recruiting days and filled out NFL draft profiles. And there's a surprising amount of silly off-season material, too. #content

But what's above is probably what's most useful. So use it!

Game Charting: How YOU Can Help

tl;dr

If you want to take a closer statistical look at what Auburn does this fall, why not contribute by charting some games? Contact me by email or twitter, or just comment here. War Eagle!

[not that long; guess i'll read it]

If you've seen anything I've written before, it was probably an X&O breakdown of an Auburn game or maybe one of my offense explainers. If you've read everything I've written, then you know that I have also dabbled in game charting.

By game charting, I mean watching a football game and tracking different things like formations, run directions, and pass distances. It's something that Bill Connelly of footballstudyhall.com started in 2012 and expanded in 2013 and 2014, the two years I contributed. With lots of information on lots of games, Bill and his friends were able to share some really neat information.

Meanwhile I was able to write several posts on College and Magnolia with a more statistical flavor. Nothing too in depth, but stuff I found interesting anyway. For example...

• Tracking how Tre Mason, Corey Grant, and Cameron Artis-Payne were used in early 2013.
• Preparing for the different ways 2013 Florida State used its top four receivers.
• Determining whether or not Nick Marshall had improved as a passer in the first few games of 2014.

Now, I really enjoy contributing to the so-called "Auburn interwebz" but real-life and sanity have required me to cut back. During the 2013 football season, I wrote two posts nearly every week and I was able to chart about 10 of Auburn's 14 games. Last season, I cut back to one post a week and charted only 4 or 5 games (thereby contributing to Bill scaling back his charting project).

That's right. Bill isn't heading up a large scale charting project this year and he outlines several reasons in the last few paragraphs of that link above. The thing is, I had already planned on not contributing this year and finding someone else to fill in instead. Especially if that someone could write a post a week or so and dig up interesting things from the charting.

So that's where you come in. Even though the big charting project is mostly dead, that doesn't mean you can't chart the games anyway. I have the template we used. I have the numbers of the last two seasons. (Somewhere. I think.) And though we won't be able to see trends across the sport, I still have an interest in the things charting can tell us about Auburn football itself. I just don't have the time. Maybe you do.

Summer Update: You Take a Crack at It

We're 80-something days away from the start of the 2015 college football season. Let's see how my blogging goals are coming along.

• Gene Chizik's recipe for disaster: Done.
• Game Scripts and Knockouts: Game Scripts will have to wait another season, but Knockouts? Done, done, and finally done.
• Jeremy Johnson clips: Not done and won't be. I made a video of every packaged play Auburn's used since 2013 instead. Breakdown here.

• Hurry-Up Snaps: Not done. More on that in a bit.
• Passing Game Explainer: On target for August.
• College Football Championship Belt: Renaming it the Transitive Trophy. I have the whole list from 1869 to now, but not sure how to present it. We'll see.

Now, about those Hurry-Up Snaps. I used the cut-up videos to get the seconds left on the play clock for every snap Auburn had on offense. But the video doesn't show the play clock on some plays. Lots of them if it's a CBS game. And it's hard to know if the offense had a full 40 seconds to work with or if there were only 25. The list of reasons it starts at 25 is longer than I thought it was. Basically, I don't trust my numbers enough to go any further.

So, I'm gonna drop it. It's a shame too, because I had a "hilarious" image to go along with it.

But this is where you come in. Maybe you can extract some meaning from the data. Maybe you want to at least give it a try. Great! Here's a link to the data in Google Sheets. I prefer you download it first, but I have another copy so don't worry about messing it up. Go ahead and tinker with it as you wish. And if you get something useful out if it, by all means let me know by commenting below, emailing me, tweeting at me, whatever.

I look forward to seeing what you can do!

The 2015 Outback Bowl and then the Off Season

Auburn ended the season with a loss to Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl. In overtime, Gus Malzahn called for a trick play to win it, but it backfired. This is what it was supposed to look like.

But against the Badgers, the Tigers lost yards. Oh well.

BERT vs HUNH

To teach myself some video editing and inspired by this tweet...

Can someone edit together a video of HUNH teams scoring at will on Arkansas with the song "Let the bodies hit the floor' playing"?
— thejuiceisgood (@thejuiceisgood) February 21, 2014

...I made this video and saved it for Bret Bielema's day at SEC Media Days. That time is now.

If you are wondering why BERT is so mad about up tempo offenses later today, watch the HUNH teams of the SEC West (Auburn, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss) run and pass all over BERT's Razorbacks for a reminder.

Why Am I Standing Here? Malzahn's Most Used Formations

What's in a formation?

Football is a game with many arbitrary rules. Why four downs to get 10 yards? Why not five to get 15? Each team can field 11 players. Why not 12 or 13, Tennessee?

Arbitrary rules also dictate the basic structure of offensive formations. Of the 11 on offense, four must be in the backfield, or behind the line of scrimmage. That leaves seven that must be on the line. Obviously, one of the players in the backfield is the passer (who may or may not actually be the quarterback), but the other 3 are eligible to receive a pass. Of the players on the line, each one on each end is also an eligible receiver.

Seven are on the line, and the X and Y are on the ends, so they are eligible receivers.
Everyone is the backfield is an eligible receiver.

Easy as 1,2,3... & 4,5,9

In both of his interviews this fall camp, [Corey] Grant has said he's still getting some time at the "4," the tailback position in Auburn's hurry-up, no-huddle offense.

What did Grant mean by "time at the 4"?

Gus Malzahn wants to run his offense at as fast a pace as possible. But faster communication is needed to achieve faster pace. Since his time as a high school football coach, Malzahn has developed a system that allows the play calls to be communicated from the sideline that is easy to understand for the offense and hard to decipher for the defense.

One aspect of this communication system is the skill position numbers. Traditional skill position designations are letters. The quarterback is QB (duh), the split end is X, the tight end is Y, the flanker is Z, the fullback could be F, and the tailback could be T. A typical formation would look like this.

Malzahn uses the following numbers for the skill positions. The quarterback is the 1, the split end is the 9, the tight end is the 5, the flanker is the 2, the H-back is the 3, and the running back is the 4. Now the typical formation looks like this.

Pace and Injuries: How Dangerous is the HUNH?

Looks like random blue dots in a white square to me.

How long has this been going on?

Hurry Up, No Huddle Offenses did not just appear last year.  In 1997, Gus Malzahn was the head coach at Shiloh Christian in Arkansas when he decided to run his offense at a 2-minute drill pace for the entire game.

"We started running two- and three-play drives at the first of games the year before," Malzahn said. "We'd get great momentum, and then we have to go back to huddling and we'd lose it. So we decided in 1997 that summer to revamp everything and see what happens."

Malzahn was hired as the offensive coordinator at Arkansas for the 2006 season after running his offense at the high school level for nearly a decade.  He then held the same position at Tulsa and Auburn, where he continued to use pace as a weapon against defenses.

Chip Kelly became the offensive coordinator at Oregon in 2007, bringing his fast paced offense from the University of New Hampshire.  Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, West Virginia, Baylor, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and Clemson (not to mention several non-BCS schools like Houston and Marshall) are examples of teams that have run their offenses at a hurried pace within the past few years.

So *now* we're worried about the HUNH?

Yes, the HUNH is being used at more and more schools, but it is not new to football.  What's new is that a few coaches are becoming increasingly frustrated by it.

SEC Football Scheduling: An Exercise in Futility

Why are we talking about this?

The football scheduling uproar has come and gone this offseason, but it's not going away altogether. Some coach is going to complain that their cross-divisional games were tougher.  It happened at SEC Media Days and it will probably happen some time during the season.  Lots of talk has been dedicated to "solving" this problem.  There have been three basic options thrown out there.

1. Keep the scheduling as it is.  You play six divisional games, one permanent cross-divisional game, and one rotating cross-divisional game for a total of eight games. (6-1-1)
2. Eliminate permanent cross-divisional rivals.  You play six divisional games, and two rotating cross-divisional games for a total of eight games. (6-2)
3. Add a ninth game.  You play six divisional games, one permanent cross-divisional game, and two rotating cross-divisional games for a total of nine games. (6-1-2)

Each school has a preference and there is very little agreement.  Auburn, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee want to keep playing permanent cross-divisional rivals.  LSU wants to eliminate said rivals so that they don't have to play Florida every year.  Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida don't want nine SEC games because they also play Georgia Tech, Clemson, and Florida State every year, respectively.  Despite all the disagreement, there may be another option, no matter how unlikely.

The 3-5 plan

Andy Bitter laid out a plan for ACC scheduling that I think can be directly applied to SEC.  I'll let him explain it.

Here it is: Eliminate the divisions. Have every team play three fixed rivals per year. Play five more games against non-fixed opponents in a given year, then the other five the next, allowing for each team to play everybody in the league at least once on the road and at home in a four-year cycle. Then have the teams with the best two records play in the [SEC] championship game.

He goes on to explain that there are some problems.  For example, the NCAA only allows conference championship games if there are round robin divisions.  Also, some great annual division games wouldn't be played every year.  Good thing we can all agree on which teams will be fixed rivals, right?

Reintroducing the Fullback

Every season has some questions of who will start at various positions.  It is even somewhat of a tradition when it comes to Auburn's quarterback.  (Open competition every year since Brandon Cox, 2007.)  But the 2012 season brings some questions about how the offense and defense will run as a whole.  Scot Loeffler is the new offensive coordinator and Brian VanGorder is the new defensive coordinator. While VanGorder's style is better known because of his time with UGA and the Atlanta Falcons, Loeffler's style is more of a mystery.  He is best known for being the quarterbacks' coach at Michigan and Florida.  He was no an OC until last year, at Temple.  But one of things we've heard so far is that the offense will focus on a more physical run game.

The depth chart came out earlier this week, but there was at least one position that was never in doubt.  Jay Prosch at fullback.