Gameplan

Welcome back to The Call Sheet!

Five ranked teams fell in Week 9 of the college football season. Yet, the game I paid closest attention to was LSU-Texas A&M. The Aggies were down ten points halfway through the third quarter but rallied to win by fifteen on the shoulders of their backup quarterback.

TLDR:

• Cover 1

  • How Switching QBs Completely Changed Texas A&M’s Offense

Cover 1

How Switching QBs Completely Changed Texas A&M’s Offense

Casual fans always call for the backup quarterback to enter the game when their favorite team struggles to move the ball and score. However, we rarely see a significant change in a team’s success offensively after switching. Think back to last week when Steve Sarkisian took Quinn Ewers out of the Texas-Georgia game in favor of Arch Manning for a couple of series: the first drive resulted in a punt, and Manning fumbled the ball away on the second.

So what happened on Saturday night?

With 8:17 left in the third quarter, Texas A&M’s offense only had 7 points on the board and wasn’t posing much of a threat to LSU. Mike Elko decided to bench his starter, Conner Weigman, and hand the reigns over to Marcel Reed. Most mid-game quarterback changes don’t work because they’re typically a like-for-like change (i.e., a pocket passer is replaced by another). But for A&M, switching up who was behind center represented a significant change in skillset and playcalling, the combination of which LSU’s defense was unprepared for.

Marcel Reed scored a touchdown on his first play from scrimmage. After the Aggies intercepted Garrett Nussmeier and returned the ball to the 8-yard line, Reed kept the ball on a zone read and scampered into the endzone. Reed’s ability to run was the jolt of life A&M’s offense needed, and on the flip-side, Blake Baker and the LSU defense didn’t have an answer for it.

Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator, Collin Klein, was once a dual-threat quarterback at Kansas State. As his coaching career progressed and he became an offensive coordinator at his alma mater, he was at his best when he had a dual-threat quarterback at his disposal. On Marcel Reed’s second drive, you saw Klein’s preferred playcalling style when he dialed up a QB pin n’ pull read. Reed kept the ball once again and quickly gained 20 yards. LSU still did not have an answer for the QB run game.

The Aggies capped off Reed’s second drive with a signature Collin Klein play in the redzone: QB draw. It was a simple play design, but it worked for a few reasons: (1) Reed took a legitimate drop to sell pass, (2) LSU’s linebackers took their zone drops as a result, and (3) the left guard and running back were able to climb upfield to block second-level defenders once Reed tucked the ball to run.

Reed would score his third touchdown in as many drives from the 4-yard line. To the casual viewer, they might think this was just another zone read. However, it was a modern variation of the triple option out of the shotgun. Reed’s first read on the defensive end is to decide if he’s handing the ball off to the back or keeping it. The second read on the nickel is to determine if he’s “pitching” the ball out to the tight end, who was running a slide route. Given how long Reed held the ball in Amari Daniels’ stomach before pulling it, he didn’t have time to make his second read but still made it into the endzone.

Mike Elko and his staff out-coached LSU in the final twenty-four minutes of Saturday night’s game. They took advantage of the fact that Blake Baker and LSU did not prepare for Marcel Reed’s legs (Weigman started A&M’s prior two games). So when Reed entered the game, he added a whole new dimension to the Aggie offense, resulting in 31 points. Baker’s defensive gameplan was built on facing a pocket passer, not a dual-threat. He simply didn’t have enough time to make a massive adjustment.

If you’re new, you can catch up on previous posts here. Thank you all for spending a little bit of your day with me. See you next week!