Game Review: Let's Fix Austin Peay's Offense
The Governors have a cool idea, but it's not fleshed out enough quite yet.
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Austin Peay and Central Arkansas kicked off the most bizarre college football season of all time on Saturday with a game that could be best described as an extremely accurate representation of the chaos of this past offseason. It was sloppy and filled with mistakes both on the field and from coaches, which means that it was a lot like most week zero college football matchups.
Thankfully, at least for the sake of this newsletter, it wasn’t sloppy and filled with mistakes in a boring way. This wasn’t an Iowa-Northwestern at Noon on ESPN2 style of sloppy, it had a much more experimental flavor than that, which is often lacking in these early season matchups. It never felt like either team was playing overly conservative or tight, it just felt like they didn’t really know what they were doing on every third or fourth play. That’s probably because neither of these teams actually has anything to play for this season, so there’s no real reason to be conservative or tight, but I think it could also come down to differences between major FBS teams and major FCS teams.
Even teams at the top of the FCS are a lot more willing to try out weird new things because just about everybody that isn’t North Dakota State has to get creative to win at a high level. That was the focus of last week’s look at the Ivy League and it showed up again on Saturday, specifically with the Austin Peay offense.
Statistically, there isn’t a whole lot of Austin Peay offensive production worth talking about. Quarterback Jeremiah Oatsvall struggled with accuracy, completing 14 of his 31 passes for 186 yards and an interception. The running game was more consistent, led by freshman C.J. Evans (10 carries for 98 yards and a TD), Ohio State transfer Brian Snead (13 carries for 43 yards) and Oatsvall (12 carries for 37 yards and a touchdown) but it still isn’t worth celebrating purely on output.
What was intriguing, however, was the formation that the Governors came out in. They’ve been working multiple-halfback sets into the offense in creative ways for several years now, but they opened the season in what was described on the broadcast as a spread full house. I’m not convinced that’s the best name for it, because it’s a lot more like a pistol flexbone, which Army has been using for a couple years now, so we’re going to stick with the latter moving forward rather than the spread full house.
Regardless of name, the pistol flexbone was pretty easily the most interesting part of the game, both because it’s a pretty cool idea and because Austin Peay could be running it a whole lot better with just a few minor tweaks.
The best usage of the formation came on the first play of the game, before Central Arkansas really understood what it was looking at. There’s a lot of window dressing to get through but at its core this is a speed option with the quarterback and the running back (for the sake of this newsletter, the running back is the deep back, the two backs closer to the line are slotbacks). The line is isolating the play side end, the quarterback is reading him and following behind the slotbacks as lead blockers.
When that end stays inside, the pitch goes out to the running back, just as it would on an option from a more traditional formation. The difference between an option run from this formation and any other option is the stuff happening around the primary read. Like I said, there’s a lot of window dressing here, which can be a good thing when done correctly as it was here. The biggest misdirection is the play side guard’s influence pull away from the play. That’s a direct attack on the linebackers, who are reading the line for cues and take a pulling guard as a dead giveaway for a run in the direction of the pull.
When the run goes away from that pull, those linebackers are pinned inside because they bit too hard on the pull. That takes away two defenders with only one lineman and he doesn’t even have to block them. That’s not just helpful from a numbers perspective. It also means a great deal in matchups, because those lead blocking slotbacks suddenly have a safety and slot cornerback to block, rather than linebackers. That’s a lot less to ask of your slotbacks and it’s going to create a much higher success rate. The blocking on the perimeter worked here, Austin Peay got the ball to its best runner in Evans and generated the biggest play of the game on the first snap.
Unfortunately for the Governors, it was pretty much all downhill from here offensively. The passing game could never kick into gear consistently and as Central Arkansas got a bit more comfortable and took a small lead, Austin Peay went away from this formation to run something a bit more conventional. After running from the pistol flexbone on 13 of 32 first half offensive plays, Austin Peay dialed it up just 9 times in the second half, snapping from a different formation 31 times. It seemed to be a decision based on the coaching staff’s comfort level, returning to something that they know, because it certainly wasn’t based on production. The 75-yard touchdown buoyed the numbers a bit, but on the day, plays from the pistol flexbone averaged about four more yards per play than plays from any other formation. It was significantly better in both the run and passing game.
A lot of that is because this is a team that really should have two or three running backs on the field basically every play. Evans, Snead and Jay Parker are three of the more dangerous weapons on this offense and Oatsvall is quite a bit better with his legs than he is with his arm, especially without star wideout DeAngelo Wilson (who missed this game). There aren’t enough good receiving options to help Oatsvall down the field and this line isn’t good enough to protect for a pass-first offense. The smoke and mirrors of the pistol flexbone help to level the playing field for that line and gets a lot more talent on the field than a four-wide receiver set does.
However, for this to become the foundation of a truly successful Austin Peay offense, some changes still need to be made. It’s a creative idea and a good match for the personnel, but the actual design and execution leaves a lot to be desired. Some of that could be chalked up to the extremely strange week zero circumstances, but a decent amount of the issues with this offense are coming straight from the playbook.
Firstly and most importantly: There’s so much wasted movement in this offense. I understand that the purpose is to throw the defense off, but after the first few drives, the defense didn’t care about what what happening in the backfield anymore because it realized that the line wasn’t able to block anything for more than two seconds. Window dressing is a good thing but you have to have a sound foundation up front for it to have the desired impact and Austin Peay just doesn’t, at this point. Those slotbacks would be a lot more useful serving as a lead blockers for the running back here because this offensive line needs more help than it is getting. The constant threat of a triple option is a cool idea but the line isn’t there yet. Take a page from the Oklahoma wishbone playbook and stop messing around so much in the backfield, especially with someone like Snead on the offense. He’s a physical and strong blocker and would do an excellent job leading the way for someone like Evans on a perimeter run. Lean into the strength of the personnel.
This is a decent example of what I’m talking about, even though it’s not technically out of the pistol flexbone. Evans is the feature back as he should be on basically every play, while 6-foot-4, 225 pound athlete Eugene Minter and Parker are lined up essentially in that slot back role. Parker flashes as a screen threat to pull the outside linebacker away from the middle of the defense, while the line looks to wash down and trap the other linebackers away from the play. The run was actually meant to go inside (stupid, bad idea) but Evans bounces it outside to the C gap (where it should have been going the whole time) and follows behind Minter as a lead blocker.
Tweak it just a little bit (see the poorly drawn example above) and I think you have a really cool off tackle play. Switch Parker out for Snead and drop the screen fake, use Snead to block the outside linebacker, have that wideout crack down on the cornerback and then let Evans follow behind Minter aiming for the safety. You’re losing the misdirection of the screen fake (it didn’t seem to do much anyway) but picking up an extra blocker in that slotback spot to match up with what should be just three defenders on that side of the field as long as the offensive line does its job.
The second issue is that of slotback usage. Having four potential ball carriers in the backfield becomes a lot more dangerous when you actually use all four of them and save for this play, Austin Peay really didn’t do that on designed handoffs. Slotback sweeps like this are a good idea but like the rest of the offense, they just need a little work. Not running this on the two-yard line would be a really good start, but switching up the blocking a bit would go a long way too.
Mainly, that influence pull is doing more harm than good here. Sacrificing two linemen, even if it freezes both back side linebackers, is not viable on a play like this. There’s a perfectly good quarterback that can freeze a linebacker and defensive end with a convincing read option fake and that’s basically all that those linemen are going to accomplish. Either run this to the open side of the field and pull those guys to help as lead blockers on the perimeter for the slotback carrying the ball, or run it to the weak side (as they do here), zone block away from the handoff (like on the last play), sell that read option fake hard and trust the two other backs and a wide receiver to block on the perimeter. This sweep can work really well but it’s not going to happen with only three offensive linemen.
That brings us to the third and final point and a point that breaks my heart a little bit: Chill out with the influence pulls. It’s a really nice idea and it’ll work really well a couple times a game, but this isn’t something that you can build an entire offense around. When you never actually run with the pull, linebackers aren’t going to believe you after three or four times. Once that happens, you’re just taking a guard and sometimes a tackle out of the play for no good reason and then you end up with plays like this one, where the linebackers don’t bite on the fake. Then, you have a wideout, a slotback, a running back and a tackle to deal with six defenders, including three linebackers and an unblocked defensive end.
This is true of all misdirection in football: It just isn’t going to work if the linebackers don’t believe you, and Central Arkansas stopped taking the pulling guard seriously after about five plays.
Thankfully for Austin Peay, there are two pretty easily solutions here. The less fun option is to just take the pulls out of the scheme for the most part and rely on regular zone blocking on all but five or six plays a game so that the defense isn’t just seeing the same false pulls over and over.
My preferred of the two and the one that I would recommend to Austin Peay is to just run with the pull as much as you run against it. Add some off-tackle stuff into the offense with that running back from the pistol flexbone, use pulls with the slotback sweep and lean into being the team that creates chaos up front.
Hell, run play action or RPOs like this off of it. These tackles could use the extra help and it may give Oatsvall an extra second to find an open space, while also sucking those linebackers in to create room across the middle. There’s a lot of really neat stuff that can be done with these pulls but Austin Peay has to lean into it and let it define the offense. The pistol flexbone, spread full house, or whatever you want to call it has a lot of potential with this personnel and with some minor tweaks. If those tweaks are made, offensive coordinator Tim Zetts could give Pitt some serious problems on Sept. 12.
Up Next: Why does Matt Campbell’s defense work so well?
After that: Arkansas State can absolutely beat Memphis
Graphic by Kristen Lillemoen