Triaging the QB room

[Mavric]

This was the first play of the game so there was an obvious pre game scout as to why they chose this tree route.  I can’t know for sure but my best guess is the play was designed for HH to read the safety and throw accordingly.   
 

That said, the safety kinda sat in no man’s land allowing both TE and WR to be open.   The systems I played in and how I was taught was to check deep and work progressions back. Since HH is seeing the safety sit, WR would be the throw, however, a good pass to Fidone was fine too.  HH did neither.  
 

Im going be Memory, but didn’t Rhule even say the first play should have been a touchdown?  

I don't think he was seeing the safety sit.  From the high-angle replay on a slowed-down view, it's easier to see.  But I don't know how there's any way he'd be expecting the safety to turn the deep guy loose.  The safety was right with Bullock.  If that's Trey Palmer, yeah, I say turn that one loose and count on Palmer out-running him.  When your choice is between the walk-on WR who looks like the safety is going with them and the high-four-star TE who has the linebacker beat, I'm going to the TE 10/10.

 

[Comish]

I don't think he was seeing the safety sit.  From the high-angle replay on a slowed-down view, it's easier to see.  But I don't know how there's any way he'd be expecting the safety to turn the deep guy loose.  The safety was right with Bullock.  If that's Trey Palmer, yeah, I say turn that one loose and count on Palmer out-running him.  When your choice is between the walk-on WR who looks like the safety is going with them and the high-four-star TE who has the linebacker beat, I'm going to the TE 10/10.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Maybe he was talking about a different play but I thought in his presser Rhule said that he missed that read but came back in the 2nd half and they ran it again and he hit correctly. 

Honestly, this is Haarberg in a nutshell. He is capable of making good throws and deserves the chance to do so, but he's going to have the inconsistency of a lightly-recruited back-up QB. There's no reason to assume he won't get better with more reps and better chemistry with receivers, but you may not want to bet next season on it. 

We are in a Jammal Lord situation this year, and our #1 offensive weapon is our QBs willingness to run. I think Haarberg can get better at that, too. But he will need at least 12 -15 pass completions a game to remain a threat. 

 

[Comish]

You are probably correct but a caveat worth noting is that his favorite target is almost always Fedoni and scouts surely will know that as well.  It's almost as predictable as always keeping on the option. Seems like some serious self-scouting would be beneficial.

 

[BigRedBuster]

You are probably correct but a caveat worth noting is that his favorite target is almost always Fedoni and scouts surely will know that as well.  It's almost as predictable as always keeping on the option. Seems like some serious self-scouting would be beneficial.

Yes....now Fidone needs to spend some time being the bait and HH find other targets....while still giving him some targets.

 

[Archy1221]

I don't think he was seeing the safety sit.  From the high-angle replay on a slowed-down view, it's easier to see.  But I don't know how there's any way he'd be expecting the safety to turn the deep guy loose.  The safety was right with Bullock.  If that's Trey Palmer, yeah, I say turn that one loose and count on Palmer out-running him.  When your choice is between the walk-on WR who looks like the safety is going with them and the high-four-star TE who has the linebacker beat, I'm going to the TE 10/10.

As I suspected, I listened to the Purdue press conference again and at around the 9:00 mark Rhule emphatically states the the team was going to “start the game off with a touchdown and a Boerkricher was wide open”.   
 

That play design was to hopefully have Fidone’s route pull the safety down and leave WR open on the out and go route.   Which is exactly what happened and why WR is the first look when that happens and Rhule seems to agree based on his presser.  

 

[Undone]

As I suspected, I listened to the Purdue press conference again and at around the 9:00 mark Rhule emphatically states the the team was going to “start the game off with a touchdown and a Boerkricher was wide open”.   
 

That play design was to hopefully have Fidone’s route pull the safety down and leave WR open on the out and go route.   Which is exactly what happened and why WR is the first look when that happens and Rhule seems to agree based on his presser.  

These comments are directed entirely at our staff and not at you.

Here's the thing I've been saying on this though: how many times in games does our staff have to watch us fail on these kinds of plays before they realize that they need to maybe dial them back? Because usually our QB or our line or both just don't execute them well.

Yeah, we did then fire on all cylinders on the big one to Coleman in the 2nd half. But I think our team needs to be running to setup the pass and not doing it the other way around.

 

[Husker in WI]

These comments are directed entirely at our staff and not at you.

Here's the thing I've been saying on this though: how many times in games does our staff have to watch us fail on these kinds of plays before they realize that they need to maybe dial them back? Because usually our QB or our line or both just don't execute them well.

Yeah, we did then fire on all cylinders on the big one to Coleman in the 2nd half. But I think our team needs to be running to setup the pass and not doing it the other way around.

I just don't think you can dial it back much more. That wasn't a super complicated play, seems like we got exactly what we wanted out of the defense. Defenses already seem pretty keyed into what we're trying to do, IMO it would be irresponsible to not even try to take advantage of defenses overcommitting to the run game. We ran the ball 64% of the time.

And more importantly, if we just make a slightly better throw the narrative is how great an opening playcall it was by Satterfield. There were a few games in the Beck era where we hit a deep shot right off the bat, this was called well enough to be one of those and it's not an insanely difficult throw.

 

[Gorillahawk]

If it Daniels that’s a double edged sword. The guy is an absolute stud but struggles to stay healthy. It’s another boom or bust kinda thing 

 

[Undone]

I just don't think you can dial it back much more.

You can absolutely replace them with a different kind of high-percentage pass play or some kind of outside run. And maybe the ratio out of total plays called stays the same but you save them for the second half. Rhule can say "we wanted to start the game off with a TD" until he's blue in the face, but his team just almost never executes that play well. So, it's weird to expect anything from it for me.

It just hasn't looked good at all. The definition of insanity, etc., etc.

In past years that INT probably sets up that game for the 'L.' This year we have an insanely better defense, so it wound up being basically inconsequential. In another game it may not be.

 

[Husker in WI]

You can absolutely replace them with a different kind of high-percentage pass play or some kind of outside run. And maybe the ratio out of total plays called stays the same but you save them for the second half.

It just hasn't looked good at all. The definition of insanity, etc., etc.

That's what opponents are sitting on though - even if we could hold on to the slants and hitches, the DBs were right there. And the safeties/nickels were firing up so hard on the options that the TEs couldn't block them. I mean I get your point, I hold my breath waiting for an INT every time we drop back for a deeper pass. But to me it would be more insane to continue to run the same short passing concepts and runs into a defense committing everyone to stopping those plays.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

I just don't think you can dial it back much more. That wasn't a super complicated play, seems like we got exactly what we wanted out of the defense. Defenses already seem pretty keyed into what we're trying to do, IMO it would be irresponsible to not even try to take advantage of defenses overcommitting to the run game. We ran the ball 64% of the time.

And more importantly, if we just make a slightly better throw the narrative is how great an opening playcall it was by Satterfield. There were a few games in the Beck era where we hit a deep shot right off the bat, this was called well enough to be one of those and it's not an insanely difficult throw.

Yeah, this is where I'm landing. If we are afraid to do anything beyond the predictable in order to protect our still raw talent, we will still lose and have less fun doing so. 

 

[Mavric]

As I suspected, I listened to the Purdue press conference again and at around the 9:00 mark Rhule emphatically states the the team was going to “start the game off with a touchdown and a Boerkricher was wide open”.   
 

That play design was to hopefully have Fidone’s route pull the safety down and leave WR open on the out and go route.   Which is exactly what happened and why WR is the first look when that happens and Rhule seems to agree based on his presser.  

I can't find that exact quote.  At about the 2:00 mark, he says "Thomas was open for a touchdown, we threw the ball behind him".  So he apparently thought either one of them could have scored.

If we had two weeks to scheme and the best play we thought we could come up with to try to score in one play is to have our #2 TE run a fade from an attached position, we're in trouble.  

The reason you run one guy deep against a zone defense is to drag the safeties deep and open up something else underneath.  Perhaps if you have a Trey Palmer, you go over the top.  You're not running your TE on a fly patter and expecting to beat a zone defense over the top.  Unless you have Brock Bowers at TE.

 

[Archy1221]

I can't find that exact quote.  At about the 2:00 mark, he says "Thomas was open for a touchdown, we threw the ball behind him".  So he apparently thought either one of them could have scored.

If we had two weeks to scheme and the best play we thought we could come up with to try to score in one play is to have our #2 TE run a fade from an attached position, we're in trouble.  

The reason you run one guy deep against a zone defense is to drag the safeties deep and open up something else underneath.  Perhaps if you have a Trey Palmer, you go over the top.  You're not running your TE on a fly patter and expecting to beat a zone defense over the top.  Unless you have Brock Bowers at TE.

Respectfully, I don’t think you understand the concept of the play call.  
 

The reason you run a back to the flat, one TE runs a deep out cut and up, while the other TR runs a deep in is to make the safety AND the corner to make a decision.   Reads go from deep to shallow on most drop back passing plays.   
 

The safety sits on Fidone so as Rhule correctly stated, the other TE was wide open for a touchdown.  Do you know why the safety was comfortable sitting shallow??   Because he read no flat route allowing the CB to sink  (but ahhh, we did have a delayed flat route and you will notice the corner see it late and break up towards the RB and pass the deeper route to the safety.  By that time the safety sat too long and the TE was open deep.   BTW…our head coach expected the TE to get open over the top.  
 

I 100% disagree that it wasn’t a great play design and the coaching staff did their homework on that one.  
 

here is his remarks at the 9:35 mark.  
 

 

[Madcows]

You have to be really careful working with an older quarterback's mechanics. I know it sounds weird to refer to Haarberg like that, but a 20-year-old in their third year of division one football isn't exactly a blank canvas.

Often times what you'll see in a situation with someone like Haarberg is more of a fine-tuning of existing mechanics, i.e. avoid making wholesale changes, but find what you can do to tweak the existing framework and improve overall performance. I don't know what his mechanical ceiling is but I do think there are some things they could work on that wouldn't compromise him too much, particularly his footwork, which makes me gag often.

To relate to a different sport, Reggie Miller had about the ugliest jumper, no one wanted to change it because his shot went in more than not, and the shot gurus were worried correcting his form would ruin his shot.  While there's not a lot to 'ruin' for Haarberg, he's set in his motion. This is stuff that should have been corrected in HS/Middle School, but I do wonder how much they threw the ball and had a coach who cared. As long as they won more than they lost, they didn't care about his mechanics.