Film Study: Here’s How Emmanuel Ogbah Makes OSU’s Defense Great

What WVU was doing

WVU is in the famous diamond formation. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this formation, but for those who might not be the diamond formation is when the QB is in the shotgun formation four yards behind the center (similar to the Pistol alignment), and has two players on either side of him and the RB behind him.

In this particular diamond formation, the players to the side of the QB are the FB and TE. Often times, the FB and TE are used if the offense is loading up on the run blocking and needing bigger bodies in there to lead block.

There are only two WRs on this play (one up top on the play side and one at the bottom). When the ball is snapped, the TE and FB take off and lead block up the 4-hole between the RG and RT. The QB hands it off to the RB, who, instead of following his two lead blockers, kicks it outside.

What OSU was doing

OSU is lined up in a customized goal line, man-to-man defense. In most goal line sets, the defense will have three DTs on the field with two DEs on the outside. On this play, the have Taylor, Maile and Ogbah playing inside, with Burton and Bean playing the outside rusher spot.

The CBss are playing in the face of the WRs they’re lined up, meaning the defense is intent of not allowing the WRs any room to score.
Jordan Sterns, Tre Flowers, Chad Whitener and Seth Jacobs are all lined up at the front of the goal line, so as to keep the play in front of the.

Spencer is putting a lot of trust (and rightfully so) into his CBs on this play because there is no safety help, as both safeties are five yards off the L.O.S. playing run support.

A theme with these film studies the past few weeks has been the importance of gap assignments. When in a goal line defense, every defender in the box has to make sure he’s doing his job because there is little room for error. One missed assignment and the QB or RB could have just enough space to punch it in for the touchdown.

Why this worked for OSU

This play worked out in OSU’s favor maybe more because of what WVU does in its blocking schemes. Let’s just ignore the right side of the defense and focus on the left side.

When the ball is snapped, the center blocks Taylor (kind of), the RT blocks Burton (kind of) and the WR up top blocks the CB.

But if you notice, the RG, TE AND FB all block Ogbah. When you have three blockers on one defender, the numbers advantage suddenly favors the defense because that means a defender or two is going unblocked.

“He’s an important part,” Glenn Spencer said this week of Ogbah. “The front seven as a whole has done a good job of pressuring the quarterback. Sometimes it’s him alone, sometimes it’s other guys feeding the quarterback to him and sometimes it’s him feeding the quarterback to someone else. It all works together.”

On this play, it was Whitener and Flowers who went unblocked. The RB sees there is no hole inside so he takes off outside the RT.
Despite going against the RT with the major size advantage, Burton does a good enough job playing outside containment and is able to grab and hold up the RB long enough for his run support (Flowers) to come in and finish off the tackle.