[g1313]

The other thing is, if Oregon is making its play calls based pretty much exclusively on where the defense lines up pre-snap, it seems defenses have to be ready to do a lot of shifting and disguising their coverages.

As for Stanford in particular, I would play a lot of nickel defense (take one ILB off the field) and spy Amanam (and Harris) on Mariota.  Don't make Thomas and Murphy make decisions between taking the QB and the RB on the option.  Tell them to hit the RB all the time, and Amanam to hit the QB hard every time.  Stanford's DL seems to be good enough that losing one ILB isn't going to dramatically hurt Stanford's defense against the run. 

I have some questions about this approach:

It seems like it would be hard to disguise the number of guys you have in deep coverage, which was the primary pre-snap read called out in the article. I was reading another article yesterday about why spread might not be as successful in the NFL, and one of the theories is that you do have freaks of nature like Ed Reed on the Ravens who can line up in the box and then drop into deep coverage on the other side of the field. Unfortunately very few teams in college have that kind of talent. I wonder if the cure might be worse than the disease here - we try too hard to disguise our defense, and it just plays into Oregon's hands by making it more complicated for us and more out of position, while Oregon will just continue to do what they always do.

I would also be concerned about your assertion that "one less ILB won't hurt our run defense". Oregon's whole strategy is built around getting an man-on-man advantage at the LOS, and while our DL has been great at getting sacks against the pass, we've shown some vulnerability in giving up running lanes even with our base defense, particularly vs Arizona.

[g1313]

The other thing is, if Oregon is making its play calls based pretty much exclusively on where the defense lines up pre-snap, it seems defenses have to be ready to do a lot of shifting and disguising their coverages.

As for Stanford in particular, I would play a lot of nickel defense (take one ILB off the field) and spy Amanam (and Harris) on Mariota.  Don't make Thomas and Murphy make decisions between taking the QB and the RB on the option.  Tell them to hit the RB all the time, and Amanam to hit the QB hard every time.  Stanford's DL seems to be good enough that losing one ILB isn't going to dramatically hurt Stanford's defense against the run. 

I have some questions about this approach:

It seems like it would be hard to disguise the number of guys you have in deep coverage, which was the primary pre-snap read called out in the article. I was reading another article yesterday about why spread might not be as successful in the NFL, and one of the theories is that you do have freaks of nature like Ed Reed on the Ravens who can line up in the box and then drop into deep coverage on the other side of the field. Unfortunately very few teams in college have that kind of talent. I wonder if the cure might be worse than the disease here - we try too hard to disguise our defense, and it just plays into Oregon's hands by making it more complicated for us and more out of position, while Oregon will just continue to do what they always do.

I would also be concerned about your assertion that "one less ILB won't hurt our run defense". Oregon's whole strategy is built around getting an man-on-man advantage at the LOS, and while our DL has been great at getting sacks against the pass, we've shown some vulnerability in giving up running lanes even with our base defense, particularly vs Arizona.