Game Review: Georgia Southern's Offense Is Busted

The Sun Belt's one-time foremost option squad has fallen behind.

We talk a lot about strong option attacks in this newsletter. It’s a style of football that has a special place in my heart, and that I really enjoy breaking down because so much of it is based not on overly complex football concepts but in the physics of the game. Leverage. Numbers advantages.

A good option attack is almost completely to stop for 60 minutes because a good option attack can always make you wrong. There are more explosive offenses, offenses that will score more points and gain more yards, but there’s very little in college football that I enjoy watching more than an option attack that absolutely grinds a defense into powder.

That’s not what today’s newsletter is about. If I wanted to talk about a good option offense, I’d pull clips from Coastal Carolina’s blowout win over Kansas or Army’s victory against Western Kentucky. Today, I want to do something a little new. Let’s look at a shitty option attack. I want something that completely misunderstands the physics of the game, a system that just totally sucks at accomplishing the base goals of option football.

That’ll do.

This Georgia Southern offense stinks out loud, and I absolutely hate that. I’ve established my affinity for the Eagles before, and to see a program with a richer option history than just about any other school in America fail like this is just miserable. It’s not right. Georgia Southern should be good at running the option, and that it isn’t is a serious indictment of the coaching staff in place out there.

An even larger indictment? The things that are holding up this offense. Poor identification of talent at quarterback; a lack of athleticism up front; play design that gestures towards creativity but does little more than that with it. This group has some serious structural issues, and the further get into the Chad Lunsford era here, the more apparent it’s becoming that he’s not the guy to bring Georgia Southern to the top of the Sun Belt, where it should be.

First things first here, Georgia Southern doesn’t really seem to care a whole lot about creating a numbers advantage, which is generally pretty important for things like “running the football” or “scoring.” We’ve got a pretty standard GT counter read look here from 11 personnel, with the backside guard and tackle (hence, GT) pulling with the halfback, while the quarterback reads the backside tackle, and the tight end kicks out into the backside, in case of a quarterback keep.

It’s a neat look, but FAU has eight guys in the box here. Georgia Southern has five, with a tight end kicking out and half-hearted crack block into the box, which isn’t going to do you a whole lot of good anyway. That isolated end and the backside linebacker can be pulled from that fake (in theory, though the end really isn’t), but the best-case scenario here is still a 6-on-5. It’s just not a viable look for this front.

Something designed to the outside, like a speed option, is a much better fit here. Or, as Georgia Southern shows later on this drive, just add another tight end onto the field and use both TEs as interior blockers for a zone look. You’re still 8-on-7 to start the play, but the quarterback fake is pulling the backside linebacker away. This is a line that needs things to be made easier on it, and zone blocking with two tight ends and an option threat is about as easy as it gets.

This brings me to the next glaring issue here: this line just cannot handle gap blocking, especially not without a serious passing game or at least a consistent threat to keep it at quarterback. FAU’s defense was able to shoot gaps all game long, and these pullers just are not arriving fast enough to make them pay for it.

It even shows up on zone looks, in preventing bigger plays from developing. A broken tackle still springs this one, but it feels like Georgia Southern’s blockers never get to the second level in time, especially not on backside linebackers, like the one who makes a play here. Some pre-snap motion or counter looks could work to give those second-level blockers a little more time, but this is a talent issue as much as it is anything else. Georgia Southern’s offensive linemen feel mismatched with this scheme, they’re too big.

Plus, the motion stuff that is here really doesn’t work to hold linebackers -- it really just encourages them to play as aggressively as possible because Georgia Southern rarely runs against its pre-snap motion.

The result is, to be blunt, an option offense that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The concepts don’t fit the scheme especially well and aren’t themselves designed with much physical understanding of the game to begin with. Georgia Southern is running the option like an established option power, as it was in the FCS days. The issue: those days are over. The Eagles need to get creative and reestablish the talent level up front before it can play like this again. Right now, you just have an underdog playing like a favorite.