Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Getting the best players on the field...TE

Part of coaching is finding a way to get your best players on the field as much as possible. With the graduation of AJ Green and Christ Durham Georgia is unproven at wide receiver for this fall but has so many talented players at tight end that they were able to move Bruce Figgins to fullback. That still leaves two guys with lots of starting experience in Aaron White and Orson Charles, a versatile Arthur Lynch and have five star recruit Jay Rome coming in this summer. To me this gives Bobo the perfect opportunity to create confusion and mismatches.
A few examples. In short yardage situation Georgia can come out in a 3 TE set plus Figgins in the backfield with a tailback behind him. The defense would likely match up with bigs of their own. You could then split White and Charles out to spread the defense out. You would still have Lynch or Drew in tight, plus Figgins at fullback. Still a power formation the option to run is still there but with two tight ends split out the defense would have to at least think about the pass creating more room to run. You could also go play action and throw to one of the split out tight ends or hit Drew/Lynch down the middle or throw the ball to Figgins out of the back field. If you went to Charles/White you would either have a size miss match against a corner/safety or a speed miss match against a linebacker.
Teams also match up differently based on a team coming in with 3 wide and a tight end versus 3 wide a fullback and running back. Georgia should move Figgins around, having him line up first at tight end then shifting to fullback and vice versa. They could also do this with Drew and Lynch as they are both bigger bodies. I could go through the hundreds of combinations of ways to move the tight ends around in order to make the defense adjust and be a second slower in their thought processes. Even if Georgia only runs four of five of these type plays a game it will mean that teams the rest of the season will have to spend time in practice being prepared for it. That means less time they are preparing for other things. Bobo must find ways to get his best 11 on the field as often as possible. This year that means getting 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 tight ends on the field at the same time.

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