Question about “sliding the protection to Clowney”

[BigSpur]

Coach Lawing said that Vandy was “sliding its protection over to Clowney”. I wanted to ask if some of our resident X@O ologists could explain that a bit. I haven’t had a chance to watch the replay yet and I wanted to know what to look for.

Does it simply involve an unbalanced formation that can be diagnosed pre-snap? Does it involve pulling an interior lineman out to Clowney? How exactly does it work? What are the best adjustments to counter it?

 

[FeatheredCock]

It’s when an offensive line is utilizing a zone protection scheme, and they “slide” to block the gaps to one side, in this case Clowney. If you think about it, there are generally five blockers on the offensive line (center, 2x guards, 2x tackles) to take on four defensive linemen (2x DT, 2xDE). Of course you can add numbers on either side with TEs and LBs or corners. But let’s just say for this example you have the five on four alignment. The center, guard and tackle on Clowney’s side are going to slide over into his gaps to effectively take him on inside and outside.

The slide actually starts with whichever lineman is uncovered, so you can have the tackle, center, and both guards sliding to the left if, say, the right guard is uncovered. Obviously this leads to a man situation on the other side, but adding a TE, of having a RB take the assignment (or to take on whomever comes blitzing) mitigates the one on one man cover. The offensive plays are designed to account for the alignment as well. That’s an oversimplification for sure, because it turns into an alignment chess match between the offense and defense. In our case, Vanderbilt obviously chose to try and eliminate Clowney as much as possible by sliding zone blocking coverages into his gaps. I think they started this later in the game after they got a good look at who was causing them the most trouble. It made Clowney have to work that much harder, and is probably a big reason he was so gassed.

The talk about moving him around the defense was to combat this very thing, but they didn’t do it in the Vanderbilt game. Either they feel like he doesn’t know his assignments well enough to be moved (very likely) or they feel he’s doing his job occupying those blockers. We really need Taylor to step up and take advantage of this to mitigate the gap double teams Clowney is receiving.