This week, we take a look at a run play set up by taking advantage of the offense’s own tendencies as Demarcus Felton scored his second career touchdown.

Design

The offense is aligned with in a 3×1 formation to the left, with Felton aligned in the backfield slightly behind Mahomes. The receivers are spread out Baylor wide, with the outside receiver to the right and the inside receiver to the left are set very wide off the offensive line. The call itself is an inside zone read run.

Execution

Arizona is aligned in an overload blitz on the right side of the offensive line. Texas Tech hasn’t shown a lot of inside zone runs, instead running outside zone opposite of where the running back lines up pre-snap. There is actually unblocked defenders on both ends of the line, one by design of the offense and the other because the blitzes outnumbered the offensive blockers. Terence Steele lets the defensive end get upfield as the read man (look at where Mahomes is looking when he’s handing the ball off). Steele instead takes the inside defensive tackle, and the left guard (Baylen Brown?) moves upfield to take on the linebacker. The safeties are moved up on the right side of the line for the blitz and covering the outside slot receiver. The middle of the field is left wide open once Mahomes makes the correct read.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, this play is set up because Tech has not run a lot of inside zone and was taking advantage of Arizona State blitzing (another key here is using ASU’s aggressiveness against them and running away from the blitz) to take away the outside zone read to the right of the formation. Great work along the offensive line actually run blocking to spring the runner.