THE DIAMOND'S EDGE
April 18, 2011 08:10 PM | General
They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Well, the Diamond may also be Dana Holgorsen’s best friend by the time the fall rolls around.
Holgorsen’s Diamond backfield formation is too complicated for me to explain (or understand) – Holgorsen himself telling one reporter that he could spend the next seven hours drawing up all of the blocking schemes and variations off of it – but suffice to say, it’s clever and it looks like it’s going to give people problems this year.
The gist of it is three running backs lined up somewhere in the backfield; where they motion to and where they motion from is strictly up to Holgorsen. They could be together, apart, two to one side and so forth. What all three of them have to be able to do is run, block, and catch the football out of the backfield.
Although the concept is much different, it does provide West Virginia with a triple-threat option in the backfield it once had with Pat White, Steve Slaton and Owen Schmitt when the Mountaineers were running up and down the field on people a few years ago.
The reason Holgorsen initially came up with the scheme was because he wanted to take the tight end out of the game and isolate his two outside receivers to give his quarterback a better handle on what defenses were showing him. And by going to this formation it created angles and gaps that a defense typically doesn’t allow with a tight end in the game.
The guy getting removed in this formation, former tight end Tyler Urban, says it’s impressive to watch from the sidelines.
“It looks pretty sweet,” said Urban. “I haven’t learned where they are going yet, but it’s a unique formation and something our defense hasn’t seen yet or other teams in the Big East have seen yet. It’s something to look out for.”
Holgorsen has admitted many times his offense is really simple to learn, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be confusing for defenses to try and figure out.
“Having three backs in there is going to cause confusion because you don’t know which way to move your strength at first, and then they might motion across so you might be out of position,” Urban explained.
One of the things Jeff Casteel’s defense is really good at is noticing the tips and tendencies all offenses show. But senior linebacker Najee Goode has been practicing against it for almost three weeks now and he says he still can’t figure it out.
“They’ve got three running backs in the backfield and they can choose to run the ball either way,” he said. “That’s one thing that keeps the defense backed off to see where they are going to run the ball.
“We try to recognize it by who’s going where based on what we see in the backfield, but our offense is great at disguising things,” Goode said. “Then you’ve got Stedman (Bailey) and Tavon (Austin), they come into the backfield; they’ve got Daquan (Hargrett) and Shawne (Alston) in the backfield – they can give the ball to anybody who is back there.”
And Hoglorsen has, not to mention the fact that he’s thrown out of it to.
Holgorsen said his staff is really conscious of self-scouting their tendencies to keep defenses from getting a beat on them.
“We try to make everything the same,” Holgorsen said. “We know what the tendencies are and we try to fix them. When we go into a new place or a new year we do what we can to try and fix what the tendencies were that we had from the previous years. We’re definitely trying to focus on not having any, which is hard, but you do your best with it.”
The same goes for his new Diamond formation.
Click here to read a story that explains the diamond much better than I can ...
Holgorsen’s Diamond backfield formation is too complicated for me to explain (or understand) – Holgorsen himself telling one reporter that he could spend the next seven hours drawing up all of the blocking schemes and variations off of it – but suffice to say, it’s clever and it looks like it’s going to give people problems this year.
The gist of it is three running backs lined up somewhere in the backfield; where they motion to and where they motion from is strictly up to Holgorsen. They could be together, apart, two to one side and so forth. What all three of them have to be able to do is run, block, and catch the football out of the backfield.
Although the concept is much different, it does provide West Virginia with a triple-threat option in the backfield it once had with Pat White, Steve Slaton and Owen Schmitt when the Mountaineers were running up and down the field on people a few years ago.
The reason Holgorsen initially came up with the scheme was because he wanted to take the tight end out of the game and isolate his two outside receivers to give his quarterback a better handle on what defenses were showing him. And by going to this formation it created angles and gaps that a defense typically doesn’t allow with a tight end in the game.
The guy getting removed in this formation, former tight end Tyler Urban, says it’s impressive to watch from the sidelines.
“It looks pretty sweet,” said Urban. “I haven’t learned where they are going yet, but it’s a unique formation and something our defense hasn’t seen yet or other teams in the Big East have seen yet. It’s something to look out for.”
Holgorsen has admitted many times his offense is really simple to learn, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be confusing for defenses to try and figure out.
“Having three backs in there is going to cause confusion because you don’t know which way to move your strength at first, and then they might motion across so you might be out of position,” Urban explained.
One of the things Jeff Casteel’s defense is really good at is noticing the tips and tendencies all offenses show. But senior linebacker Najee Goode has been practicing against it for almost three weeks now and he says he still can’t figure it out.
“They’ve got three running backs in the backfield and they can choose to run the ball either way,” he said. “That’s one thing that keeps the defense backed off to see where they are going to run the ball.
“We try to recognize it by who’s going where based on what we see in the backfield, but our offense is great at disguising things,” Goode said. “Then you’ve got Stedman (Bailey) and Tavon (Austin), they come into the backfield; they’ve got Daquan (Hargrett) and Shawne (Alston) in the backfield – they can give the ball to anybody who is back there.”
And Hoglorsen has, not to mention the fact that he’s thrown out of it to.
Holgorsen said his staff is really conscious of self-scouting their tendencies to keep defenses from getting a beat on them.
“We try to make everything the same,” Holgorsen said. “We know what the tendencies are and we try to fix them. When we go into a new place or a new year we do what we can to try and fix what the tendencies were that we had from the previous years. We’re definitely trying to focus on not having any, which is hard, but you do your best with it.”
The same goes for his new Diamond formation.
Click here to read a story that explains the diamond much better than I can ...
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