Film Look: Three Takeaways From OSU’s 40-point Outing in Tulsa

Sean Gleeson and the Oklahoma State offense only managed to put up 33 total yards in the second quarter last Saturday against the Golden Hurricane. They couldn’t get any kind of offensive rhythm going and the OSU defense allowed the Golden Hurricane to rack up 14 points, taking the lead at halftime. However, outside of this pretty dreadful 15 minute stretch, there were a lot of positive things I saw from the Cowboy offense as they finished the game with 506 yards, which included an incredible 337 yards on the ground.

Now, I’ll cover my three key takeaways from the offense coming out of their 40-21 victory over TU.

Outside Zone

I’m not sure how you can write about the Gleeson and Co. in this game and not talk about the Outside Zone. The terms Inside Zone and Outside Zone refer to blocking schemes that have the offensive linemen blocking specific gaps instead of a certain defender. If an O-lineman has a defender lined up in front of him, he blocks him. If he doesn’t have a defender lined up in front of him, then he steps toward the side the play is going and either helps double team block a defender or moves to the second level.

The main difference between the Inside zone and the Outside Zone is on the Inside Zone, the running back is normally looking to run off the outside hip of the guard, as opposed to the Outside Zone, where the offense is looking to stretch the defense horizontally. See the two images below for further explanation. The first is Inside Zone and the second is Outside Zone.

The Cowboys ran the play almost to perfection when running back Chuba Hubbard was in the game. We saw its success on the very first offensive play of the game, shown below.

I mean, the blocking on this play is absolutely beautiful. See the still shot below for a closer look, everyone is blocked except for this one lone Tulsa defender who has the daunting task of trying to tackle Hubbard in the open field.

Here we see it again later in the quarter as Chuba busts it for a big gain.

The zone play is so effective for the Cowboys this season due to the fact that the offensive line has been able to block this scheme well, along with Hubbard’s incredible field vision.

The Pistol

In both clips shown above, the Cowboys came out lined up in the “Pistol“.  This formation has the quarterback in shotgun, with the running back directly behind him, see the image below.

We’ve seen Mike Yurcich-led Oklahoma State offenses utilize the Pistol in prior years, but we hadn’t seen it very much from Gleeson until Saturday afternoon’s game in Tulsa. You can do a lot of things from this formation, especially with a talented runner like Spencer Sanders at quarterback. Chris B. Brown explains the advantages of this offensive style in a post on his site SmartFootball.com.

When the offense is rolling (which it is most of the time these days), the pistol gives a team the best of both worlds: It has at its disposal all the Urban Meyer/Rich Rodriguez spread offense stuff, like the zone read and other gadgets, as well as the advantages of a “traditional” I-formation or pro-style single-back attack. Among these are that the running back, aligning as he does behind the quarterback, tips no hand to the defense on the direction of the play, and the offense can get both good downhill running and play-action off those looks.

It was primarily running plays called out of this look on Saturday, as shown in the videos above and the clip below.

But, they also threw out of this formation as well… although, this one didn’t go as planned.

It will be interesting to see what other things Gleeson does out of the Pistol this season.

H-Counter

Finally, I just wanted to quickly touch on the H-Counter. Aside from zone run and power runs, this was the only other thing I saw Gleeson call consistently this past weekend.  The H-Counter is something the former Princeton coordinator brought with him from the Tiger offense, as you’ll see in the following clip.

In the clip above you see the tight end, lined up in the H-Back spot, pull around the end along with the backside guard.  The pulling lineman create additional gaps that the defense isn’t always prepared for. See the image below for further detail.

Here we see the Pokes run this play against the Golden Hurricane defense.

They also utilized in the play action passing game as well.

It’s been very interesting to watch Sean Gleeson’s play calling and overall offensive style show in the non-conference. I’m excited to see how the playbook evolves as OSU moves into Big 12 play.