Why This Empty Bunch 3 Verticals Concept Didn't Work
Empty Bunch 3 Verticals in the 2023 SEC Championship Game
Starting today, and on all Tuesdays moving forward, we’ll look at why a play didn’t work. While it’s important to look at plays that work out, the study of plays that don’t is just as insightful.
The goal of this series is to look at plays as if we wanted to make them work. Plays are time consuming to come up with and install and you find out how to make them work by looking at what doesn’t make them work.
Today we’re looking at an Empty Bunch 3 Verticals concept that Alabama ran against Georgia in the 2023 SEC Championship. They got to the formation in a unique way: they were lined up in an unbalanced set to the left, but then motioned the RB to the right and then the left WR stepped off the line to get 4 eligibles back in the backfield. Neat stuff, but didn’t affect why the play didn’t work. Onwards.
This play didn’t work — Milroe didn’t see the open guys and scrambled left then right for about 40 yards all for about 3-4 yards. Though he did pick up the first down since it was 2nd down. Regardless, that was not the design of the play and there appeared to be opportunity.
Take a look at the play drawn up before we dive in
Figuring Out the Concept
Who knows what the Alabama’s QB Jalen Milroe is taught to read on the play — however, the criss-cross 3 verticals out of bunch, while neat, doesn’t change the spacing you’d get out of a normal 4 verticals concept between a crosser, seam, and outside vertical where you’d work inside out. The two hitches on the outside are there for check downs.
Take a look at the Y-off player’s route — he is slowly shuffles to get width, and then gets into his vertical. If I had to guess, they probably wanted to get him the ball since they put that detail and effort into his release plus working out of bunch helped to eliminate any threat to collision him.
Following Milroe’s eyes, it appears he reads the play outside in, which is somewhat odd. You’d think he would want to start inside to hold any safety in the middle and if they play open he might have a chance on the crosser.
What Went Wrong
As mentioned, Milroe’s drop and eyes make it tough to decipher the play what the design of the play was. When taking a look at plays that don’t work for our own players, I always ask myself “did our fundamentals show up?” If they didn’t that might be one of the first reasons the play didn’t work.
One key QB fundamental is the drop syncing up with the progression (eyes and routes). Milroe’s progression is entirely unclear to me based on his drop and eyes. Because his eyes appear to start outside to the vertical from the point on the bunch, you might expect his second read to be the delayed seam. If it was, I’m not sure why he didn’t throw it.
Milroe took a tiny punch step into a shuffle three step. On rhthym, he had the outside vertical open since the field safety had turned his hips to the middle of the field. Though the cornerback had his eyes on the QB, the TE running the vertical had good leverage and had cleared any underneath threat. Milroe would have had to rip the ball to beat the cornerback, but it’s a basic seam-like throw he should be used to.
I’m not sure where he moved on after that with his eyes, but the next inside route was the delayed seam. Georgia’s LBs bumped wide and didn’t carry any vertical until the delayed seam was already running by them. So the design of the play (if it was to get the delayed seam open) worked pretty well. However, the TE running this delayed route didn’t get vertical with speed, but almost turned around and shuffled. He had tons of space to split the middle of the field since the field safety had at this point realized the first vertical outside was a threat.
Lastly, if Milroe was confused by what he saw, then I’m not sure why he didn’t get the ball to one of his check down hitches on the outside. Those would have been good for the first down and been in the rhythm of the play.
Conclusion
This biggest factor that caused this play not to work was an unclear read. The bunch formation always has the potential to cause chaos — the defense might mess up their assignments passing things off and throw the QB off because they don’t do something he anticipates. That appears to be the case here.
Here’s the lesson I learned from this play:
The play is a cool play on the white board, but when the QB doesn’t know where to go with his eyes and doesn’t trust his drop in relation to the progression, the play is fruitless.
Because the QB didn’t have a clear progression that he followed, he didn’t give the play a chance to play out against the look. Georgia’s LBs did not do a great job carry the two outside verticals and benefited from Milroe’s indecisiveness.
If Milroe had been quick to pull the trigger, this play would’ve been a nice piece to the Tide’s bunch attack they used all throughout this game.
Check out the full clip here:
Until tomorrow,
Emory Wilhite
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