The basics of our exciting new offense

The Up-tempo RPO spread. For those who don't usually keep up with this kind of stuff, I'm going to attempt to explain the basics of what is new this year. I will only use the first half of play.

Tempo:
The purpose of tempo is to obviously burn out the defense by 3rd/4th quarter but it's also to confuse them. With tempo, you want to stay in the same base formation on a drive so that your players can quickly get back set for the next snap. You will notice from the game that we stayed in two base formations all half (with the exception of red zone and goal line plays) - 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WRs) and 10 personnel (1 RB, 0 TEs, 4 WRs). They mostly ran 11 personnel. GASO's defense was confused the entire half because they saw the same two formations, tons of different plays out of those formations and with quick snaps - they had no idea what was coming. You hear "it's only GASO" - while true, this concept works on most, if not all, defenses. The purpose of this is to force one-on-ones ("hat to hat") with the defense which brings the game down to athlete vs athlete. The defense is forced to play assignment football instead of reading the offense (it spreads the field out). As the year marches on, expect new formations and packages to be added.

There were other 11 and 10 personnel formations Saturday but these were the two main formations.

11 personnel


10 personnel


RPO:
Run/Pass option. We hear this all the time, but what is it? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like. The QB makes simple pre and/or post snap reads to determine whether to pass or hand the ball off. You heard O in his press conference the other night say "we now have answers to all defensive formations", this is what he means. Depending on how the defense is setup, Burrow has predetermined options as to what he does post-snap. This can get very in-depth but I will break down Marshall's slip screen TD as an example.

LINK
This was a play on the outside LBer. Burrow puts Marshall in motion, if the LBer catches the motion and moves outside, Burrow hands off as a dive right, removing the LBer from play. Else, Burrow hits the quick screen. You'll notice the LBer had no clue Marshall was in motion. And the DB looked like he just got out of a quantum physics exam.

Spread:
It's hard to see this on TV, but not only were the routes setup to spread the field sideline to sideline, it's designed to spread the field endzone to endzone. Doing this does 3 things - Puts the playmakers in space, narrows Burrows cone of view (for reading his progression), and opens the middle of the field up (which we've rarely seen at LSU). Burrow was able to dump off to RBs over the middle ALL game Saturday night - this will be huge down the stretch of our schedule. It forces the LBers into coverage which will help tremendously against teams like Bama, Auburn, Florida.

Redzone:
This is the biggest change. Nearly every red zone play was different. That's all I need to say here. I'm extremely excited to watch our red zone offense this year.

My concerns:
O-line. In the type of offense, the o-line HAS to play smart football, it's not just drop-back pass protection. They have to know their assignments, know when to peel, etc. This will be the test as the year progresses. RPO has a lot of play on the o-line - we'll see how they do.