Every Swing/Screen Pass of the 2019 Season

knapplc

knapplc

Active member
I know what you're thinking - it's the offseason, we haven't had a Husker Football game to watch in two months, you're jonesing, and you want to slam your hand in the car door ONE MORE TIME.

Well, I'm there for you my self-hating Husker friend!  :thumbs

Here they are, every glorious pass thrown at or behind the line of scrimmage in 2019. Presented by RambleOn51 / Nebraska Cornhuskers Athletics from the Reddit / YouTube.






Another friendly Redditor, NukeChem, broke down the yards gained from each of these plays.

Here's the LINK to NukeChem's spreadsheet.

Here it is, a bit easier to read:

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If you take away our miserable averages against a couple of teams, we actually had a lot of success on the season with this type of play.  I can understand why it was called fairly frequently but it sure was annoying to see in the Iowa game.  

 
So to sum up:

It still worked well all season when multiple threats like Washington, Robinson and Spielman were available and only didn't the last two games with only Mills, Stoll and Mazour to throw to. People only remember the last 5 seconds, which was Iowa where it didn't work well and complain that we need to run the I formation solely at all times.  Sounds about right.  :thumbs

 
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It's really not a sexy play, and rarely worked for big gains (we got 10+ yards on 18 of 90 attempts). But the play isn't designed to pop for big yardage, it's designed to set up other plays. It forces a defense to cover the field sideline-to-sideline, and if they don't, and if our perimeter blocking is good, and if our QB gets the ball out there in good time, it's a positive-yardage play.

Our biggest problem with this play, and the reason the fans hate it, is that our perimeter blocking is often terrible, the passes are often errant, or the timing is off. That results in no gain or negative-yardage plays, which happened 40 of the 90 times we ran it. 

UCF ran this play under Frost with much better success than we do. But they had better athletes on the perimeter, and (to date) we don't have a McKenzie Milton in the QB room to put the ball on target on time every time.

For Nebraska, it was feast or famine with this thing. Half our games (N. Illinois, Ohio State, Minnesota, Purdue, Maryland, Iowa) we averaged three yards or less with this play. For the other half (S. Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Northwestern, Indiana, Wisconsin) we averaged seven or more yards with this play. 

Weird thing is, success with this play (and thus, spreading out the defense) didn't matter much to wins or losses. In our six games where we were less successful with this play we went 2-4, and in the games where we were more successful we went 3-3.

 
knapplc said:
It's really not a sexy play, and rarely worked for big gains (we got 10+ yards on 18 of 90 attempts). But the play isn't designed to pop for big yardage, it's designed to set up other plays. It forces a defense to cover the field sideline-to-sideline, and if they don't, and if our perimeter blocking is good, and if our QB gets the ball out there in good time, it's a positive-yardage play.

Our biggest problem with this play, and the reason the fans hate it, is that our perimeter blocking is often terrible, the passes are often errant, or the timing is off. That results in no gain or negative-yardage plays, which happened 40 of the 90 times we ran it. 

UCF ran this play under Frost with much better success than we do. But they had better athletes on the perimeter, and (to date) we don't have a McKenzie Milton in the QB room to put the ball on target on time every time.

For Nebraska, it was feast or famine with this thing. Half our games (N. Illinois, Ohio State, Minnesota, Purdue, Maryland, Iowa) we averaged three yards or less with this play. For the other half (S. Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Northwestern, Indiana, Wisconsin) we averaged seven or more yards with this play. 

Weird thing is, success with this play (and thus, spreading out the defense) didn't matter much to wins or losses. In our six games where we were less successful with this play we went 2-4, and in the games where we were more successful we went 3-3.
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Because one of the biggest things that the repeated swing plays leads to is the deep pass offshoot from the swing pass.  NU didn't have a reliable deep threat to take advantage of the spread out defense, which creates points and leads to more wins.

 
ColoradoHusk said:
Because one of the biggest things that the repeated swing plays leads to is the deep pass offshoot from the swing pass.  NU didn't have a reliable deep threat to take advantage of the spread out defense, which creates points and leads to more wins.
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You beat me to it.

One of the big reasons why we had limited success with this play is because we DIDN'T have the deep threat.  The DBs on the outside didn't have to respect that, so they could play closer to the line and react quicker to the play.  The blocking was bad.  But, it's easier to block if we have a deep threat.  And, since we lacked a big body receiver who typically can be a better blocker, we were trying to use a TE many times out there to block and they are going to be slower and less affective.  

I'm excited about the additions to the WR room with both players and the coach.  I think we will see a vast improvement here.

 
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