This Is What College Football Is Supposed To Be
Coastal Carolina-BYU, and a lesson in flying too close to the sun.
I have so many thoughts on Saturday’s Coastal Carolina-BYU game and the college football landscape at large, and absolutely no interest into working those thoughts into a coherent narrative. This one is going to be scattershot, so I’m breaking it up into segments for your own sake. I’m also unlocking this one for everybody, not just the paid subscribers. Wednesday’s will now be premium this week, so if you like this and want more, be sure to subscribe.
The Game
Game of the goddamn year. I said it going in, I built it up way too much in my mind, I convinced myself that this was the perfect matchup between two teams that I have come to love this season and that it would live up to every expectation.
I repeated it, over and over, hoping that at some point the fear in the back of my mind about Coastal Carolina getting blown out of the fucking water by a much larger opponent would simply disappear if I said “this is going to be awesome” enough times. By the time kicked off, I was an absolute nervous wreck over two teams that I have zero ties to outside of liking their offensive schemes and loving that the idea of undefeated BYU or Coastal Carolina seems to drive fans of Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State into a blind rage, because the only college football teams that are allowed to be good are ones that have more money than God.
Then, after worrying all week about what would happen when Jamey Chadwell’s baller-ass offense was broadcast to the college football world against a great opponent, the Chanticleers rolled out the red carpet, invited BYU into their home, and proceeded to whoop that ass so severely in the trenches that I developed serious doubts about my own understanding of physics. Coastal Carolina’s offensive line, checking in at just over 6-foot-nothing, 288 pounds on average, moved one of the bigger defensive lines in America all over the field with the exact same offensive attack that it has used to defenestrate the Sun Belt all season.
It wasn’t the highest scoring affair for this group, nor was it terribly explosive, but this was a masterclass from every part of the Coastal Carolina offense, starting up front with Bill Durkin’s group, working back through quarterback Grayson McCall - one of the best option quarterbacks in America - and spearheaded by Chadwell and co-offensive coordinators Willy Korn and Newland Isaac on the play calling sticks.
It was also, as mentioned, exactly what this team has been doing all season long. There were slight game planning tweaks, sure (though most of that happened on the defensive side of the ball to manage Zach Wilson), but this was still at its core, the wacky triple option system that has worked its way firmly into the heart of this here newsletter. Many have complimented Coastal Carolina for being so ready to play on such short notice, but this offense had very little to fix or change for this game. This thing works, the coaches and players know that it works, and they just trusted that it would keep working, regardless of who was lining up on the other side of the ball.
Sure enough, the damn thing still worked! First play from scrimmage, Coastal Carolina came out in its two-back set, one behind the QB, one offset. The defense knows that the triple is coming but doesn’t know where the pitch man is coming from, so it has no way to put itself in a better position pre-play, it just has to make a play straight up once the ball is snapped.
Inside read comes from the deep back this time, with McCall reading the play side end as you would on a typical pistol read option. The end shades in, so McCall moves to his second progression, the pitch, with that offset running back flashing some sweet footwork to give himself enough room to work with while McCall is still going through that first read.
Defense is playing off, so McCall makes the easy pitch. With that play side end isolated, Coastal Carolina can kick out the right tackle to the field and use him as a third blocker on the outside, along with the twin receivers taking on cornerbacks.
God, even the receiver blocking is excellent. The inside wideout seals his cornerback in, creating a nice inside lane for the halfback, while the outside receiver runs right past his cornerback to get into the third level and block the deep safety, knowing that the loose tackle is going to take on that outside cornerback to create the second half of that lane for the running back. Coastal Carolina is scheming up third-level blocks, in this economy. Delightful.
Here’s another triple staple for CCU. Deep back is the inside read again, with the pitch man coming from the back side this time to force an unbalanced defense, taking those two back side linebackers out of the play and giving the offensive line an easy five-on-five with those two linebackers and the three defensive linemen that aren’t being read. Because Coastal only really needs to make a mess on that back side, the left tackle is able to push with the pile and release late to make sure that the middle linebacker doesn’t get wise to where this play is actually going if the defensive end bites down.
He does, so McCall pulls it. H-back leads this time as the kick out blocker, almost as he would on an inside zone split, though he’s flying right past the isolated read end and onto the second-level in hopes of taking on a linebacker. He actually whiffs here, making things much harder on McCall, who should be running into a clear lane with the tight end sealing off that linebacker, leaving the unblocked cornerback (while that receiver again gets into the third level, because Chadwell is a goddamn menace) as his pitch read.
Without a loose linebacker, McCall does as playmakers sometimes have to do in an option system: he makes a mockery out of a grown man.
Coastal’s favorite running play was working too. This team loves to make full use of its ultra-athletic offensive line (as it should!) and uses this nasty C-Down Belly (credit to Dan Casey for the terminology) to grind out tough yards in tight quarters, even without big offensive linemen to move the pile.
The trick here is the numbers advantage and leverage, as it is with basically everything in this offense. Coastal isolates that defensive end and starts the play with footwork reminiscent of a speed option to hold him in place, giving time for the center to pull across the line and kick that end out right as the halfback is hitting the hole. The rest of the line is just blocking down, but it has much better leverage now, because the play side tackle doesn’t have to work about an edge rusher lining up outside of him. That’s now the center’s job. The tackle can help his guard out with the defensive tackle, while the H-back slides right in past the tackle and to the second-level, looking to move the outside linebacker just far enough off of his spot that the halfback can cut inside of him after he hits the hole (this is helped again by that speed option footwork, which holds that LB in place).
It looks different (because everything is going to look different when you build a line like this), but this works really well as a go-to inside run staple and it was just as solid against BYU as it has been all season. Coastal has to get creative, as mentioned, to grind out yards. This is a great way to do it.
While much of this is classic Chadwell, there is one new wrinkle to touch on here before I move to the next segment: Coastal Carolina is getting better at the speed option basically every single week.
This was earlier in the season. Coastal is running the speed option but wants to add some backfield misdirection to sell an inside handoff, hoping that it’ll draw linebackers in, making it harder for them to track out to the sidelines once McCall and his halfback head to the perimeter. It worked well and frequently confused announcers, who were assuming they had seen a broken play (the lesson here is to trust that college football players know what they’re doing, which they usually do)
Here’s the speed option now. Same idea with the backfield misdirection to attack linebackers, but the Chanticleers are now running it with a full counter fake in the backfield, as McCall and the halfback both open away from the actual option direction. This essentially adds the illusion of a third option here on this play (like a fake dive handoff) without using a third player to actually sell that fake. Coastal Carolina is able to run a triple option look with four receivers, all of which are blocking (and the trips away from the play sucks up defenders). That shouldn’t be possible!
That’s just how things are going for this team, though. This staff is operating at such a high level, these players have bought in so fully and fit the scheme so perfectly, and everything is just flowing exactly as planned. Coastal Carolina’s offense is as good, and as well-coached as any other in college football. This is a tremendously special group that just beat a really, really good football team.
The Discourse
Now for the downside of this delightful football affair. I turned on a national college football podcast that will not be named this morning, got about five minutes in, and then heard a take that can be essentially summarized as “this was a great game, but it proved that neither of these teams are playoff worthy, because BYU wasn’t able to beat Coastal Carolina on three days notice.”
(Language warning on that one)
While I’d love to rail on the national college football media apparatus at large, I’ll keep this short and sweet, and relatively contained to this specific game: if you watched this game, and your first reaction is that “well, now we know that BYU isn’t a playoff team,” you have worms in your brains and you should stop watching college football, because you don’t appreciate it and you’ve missed the entire fucking point of it. You’re incorrect. You watch the sport wrong and you shouldn’t watch it anymore, because you obviously just want to watch or cover the NFL. That’s fine. Go do that.
The takeaway from this game is that Coastal Carolina and BYU - two teams that will never be given a fair shot by this system - just played a game infinitely more entertaining than any of the shit we’re going to get from the playoff next month. They did it on three days notice, it won’t matter at all in the long run, and the stakes were entirely about pride and bragging rights. There was not a title berth or playoff shot on the line here, because this is a fundamentally unfair system that desperately needs fixed. It won’t be.
The takeaway from this game is that the fact that the teams that actually get coverage - be it on television or in the college football media - will never produce something like this. Alabama-Clemson will never be this good. The national title will never be this good. This game felt the way that it did because these teams understand and play to the designed ethos of college football in a way that the teams at the top of the sport no longer can. While the sport raced to generate more money, dole out more cash to coaches and pull in more and more five-star recruits at the top, it never stopped to realize that college football was never meant to be this way. It missed the entire goddamn point of the whole thing. The best teams are nothing more than an NFL D-league.
Now, it’s hard to blame the corruption of something that was once unique and special on college football specifically, because this happens to all American culture (for a much larger, systematic reason that would be better addressed on a different newsletter). However, the fact that there are still pockets of purity hidden within the undercrofts of college football, in places like Bloomington, Conway, Cincinnati, Huntington and Provo should be cherished - not by the power brokers of the sport, because they’ll fucking ruin it like they do everything else - but by us. I’ve evolved past wanting these teams to get their time in the spotlight because I’ve realized that if these teams become national names, they’ll lose their souls too. I don’t want the Pepsi Chanticleers or the BYU Cougars, presented by a health insurance company profiting off of death.
So, keep them on ESPNU. Keep them out of the spotlight. Use these schools on your national podcasts as a way to talk about how Clemson would beat them by 50 because they have a full team of five-stars. Let the top of college football - both the teams and the apparatus that talks about them - stay at the top. Let the Buckeyes and Tigers and Tide claim the accolades and the titles and the five-star recruits while feeling nothing but emptiness.
I’m good down here. I’m good with remembering this game as the 2020 national title. It’s sure as shit better than the real one will be.