BREAKING DOWN THE BRONCOS: HOW BOISE USES LEVERAGE,

NUMBERS, AND GRASS TO GASH THE OPPONENTS

It’s no secret that Boise State knows how to move the football — its 42 points per game last
season led the nation — but it’s exactly how Boise moves the ball that makes them unique. I
became privy to this information when I spent a week with the Virginia Tech coaching staff back
in early April as they prepared for their opener against the Broncos, a September 6 bout at Fed
Ex field pitting two top ten teams against each other. Indeed, the mere fact that Va Tech’s staff
was breaking film down more than five months before gameday tells you something profound
about how much respect Boise head coach Chris Petersen’s offense commands. I sat with
Virginia Tech defensive backs coach Torrian Gray and defensive graduate assistant Steve Canter
(who has since become Norfolk State’s QB coach) as they scouted Boise State’s games against
Tulsa, Nevada, Fresno State and finally TCU last season. Canter was given the important but
not-so-glamorous task of charting every snap that Boise took on offense last year. And after just
a few minutes of watching tape with them my head began to spin, but Canter couldn’t spare to
take his eyes off the screen.

To me, every play seemed like an entirely different scenario — a tiny but perfect little strategic
masterpieces carved out by Petersen and his offensive staff for that situation alone. While I
struggled just to follow the ball (apparently the filmer in the press box had the same problem, as
the camera often got faked out along with the defensive end or safety Petersen targeted) Canter
diligently worked his craft, jotting each down and distance, all the personnel used, every
formation, any motion and play. It’s a process he’s engrossed himself in as a former head coach
himself: he mentored Vikings receiver Percy Harvin at nearby Landsdown High School
(Virginia) and won a state championship in 2004. He’s earned the respect of defensive
coordinator Bud Foster, one of the best defensive minds in the game. “[Boise] tr[ies] to do a ton
of different things, but there has to be a reason for what they are doing,” said Canter.

Five months and a dozen scratch pads later, I’m not sure that the Hokies have Boise all figured
out yet, but knowing Foster, they’ve certainly gotten some insight on them. I took all the
information from that visit and — mainly out of curiosity for my own purposes as a coach to see
how a great offense works and how a great defense might prepare — to thoroughly study what
Boise State does on the offensive side of the ball. Once the studying was complete, I compiled a
detailed and definitive report on what makes Boise, well…Boise. And more importantly, what the
Hokies must do to win.

Personnel

“Maximizing personnel,” one of those football buzzwords that sounds like it was invented by
Peter Drucker, is nevertheless essential to making an offense dynamic — and arguably nobody in
the college game knows how to do it better than Petersen. He learned it from his days working
as the offensive coordinator under previous head coach Dan Hawkins where his direction thrust
little known talents RB Ian Johnson and QB Jared Zabransky onto the college football landscape
in 2006. [Ed. Note: Petersen also credits former Southern Cal head coach and longtime NFL
offensive coordinator Paul Hackett for his football development, along with the time he spent
under Mike Bellotti at Oregon where he worked alongside Dirk Koetter and Jeff Tedford.] Boise
doesn’t always have the Tarzan’s on film — they don’t bang heads with the Oklahomas and
Floridas in the recruiting wars — but they don’t need to. Petersen is schooled in the art of
allocation: he wants to best utilize the talent he has. For example, five-foot-nine senior running
back James Avery, rushed for 1,151 yards last season for the Broncos. He’s not the fastest, but
he’s elusive with an explosive burst. “He’s not the fastest guy in the world, you rarely see him
get long runs” said Virginia Tech’s Gray. “But like most Boise backs he has terrific start and
stop skills; he can change direction quickly and he knows how to read blocks.”

Avery is a patient, zone style back who looks for creases in defensive fronts. His skills are
modeled after guys like Ian Johnson who had a stellar career running the same zone type runs.
Of course, it helps when those blocks are created by an offensive line that only surrendered five
sacks last season. And that success against the pass rush must be attributed to their knowing
their protection assignments when picking up various blitz packages that teams throw at them at
a weekly basis. In the Fiesta Bowl last season, TCU appeared to be in dial-a-blitz mode for most
of the first half but still couldn’t get to Boise quarterback Kellen Moore, before largely giving up
that approach as Moore never got flustered. He knew where the weakness in his protection were
and found a way to escape at the right times to avoid losses.

Moore is another anomaly: not scary on paper, frightening on film. Despite being barely six-feet
tall, he has tremendous presence in the pocket. He knows exactly where to escape when the
pocket collapses and often finds receivers downfield simply because the defensive backs got
tired of covering. He’s quick and decisive with the ball — he threw only three interceptions in
431 attempts last season. His career completion percentage has been in the mid 60%s, he
finished seventh in Heisman voting and was the WAC offensive player of the year. His main
target, senior Austin Pettis, had 63 catches from virtually every spot on the field: flanker, slot,
split end and even out of the backfield; Petersen loves moving his chess pieces around.
Referring to Pettis, Virginia Tech’s Gray said: “He’s their tallest guy at 6-3 and they move him
around a ton,” adding, “In the red zone, he’s lethal.” Indeed, Pettis had 14 touchdowns last
season, mainly on bootleg schemes — a Boise favorite in that part of the field.

Schemes

Boise State’s linebacker coach, Jeff Choate, once told me at coaching clinic two years back, “We
run plays, we don’t have an offense. It makes it difficult to defend.” At that time he was
working with the running backs. Before this project, I wondered how an offense can’t be a
system. Coordinators pride themselves on establishing identities: “It’s what we do” is a common
mantra among the coaching profession. Urban Meyer at Florida has his spread option, Chip
Kelly at Oregon has his QB run game, Steve Sarkasian at Washington has his pro-style offense
that he developed at USC. Well, apparently Boise was the Seinfeld of college football — their
lack of identity is their identity. Although I may not have understood it then, the method behind
this apparent lack of cohesion became much clearer to me after hours of study.

Boise specializes in getting defenses out of position to make plays by utilizing the three major
essentials in offensive football: numbers, leverage and grass. “Numbers” means outnumbering
the defense at the point of attack — i.e. more blockers than defenders on the edge, more
receivers than zone defenders, etc. “Leverage” refers to out-flanking a defense at the point of
attack — i.e. you may not have numbers but the angles are on your side. “Grass” harkens to
Willie Keeler’s baseball adage, “hit ‘em where they ain’t.” Run the ball where there are the
fewest defenders. As it turned out, Choate was right: Boise spends more time on distracting you
then developing themselves. But don’t get confused: the point is that although the Broncos have
the talent to be one of the best teams in the country and could simply overrun certain opponents,
their modus operandi is to be patient and to take what the defense gives them — a true reflection
of Petersen, their coach. The quintessential underdog philosophy, they wear you down by
picking at four and five yard gains until they pop a big one. Watching them on film, it’s never
surprising they score, but to a football junkie, the methodology of how they score is a work of
art. Basically, Boise uses three distinct ways to score: (1) pre-snap leverage by the use of
formation, (2) post-snap misdirection and (3) calling the unexpected — the dagger after lulling
you to sleep.

1. Pre-Snap Leverage

Boise moves before almost every snap. In the four games I broke down there were only seven
plays (out of 162) that someone didn’t motion, trade or shift their alignment. It’s not surprising
that of those seven plays, their net yardage was a mere twenty-four. They are comfortable
moving. Choate calls it “a show game to the defense,” meaning that there may be no distinct
reasoning behind their shifting at all. [Ed. Note: I'm reminded of the old coaching saw, "Motion
causes emotion."] But after studying each play that corresponds with it, its apparent there is a
method. The Broncos are naturally a 12 personnel team, which means they play with one
tailback (Avery) and two monstrously large tight-ends who are monstrous — Tommy Gallarda at
6-5 and Kyle Efaw at 6-4. Having two tight ends in the game at the same time, especially with
that kind of size, provides for excellent blocking surfaces. Even Boise’s fullback, Dan Paul 6-0
and 240 lbs. will line up at the tight end spot from time to time. One of their favorite schemes is
to line up in a pro wing formation on one side of the formation (Diagram 1) and quickly shift to
the opposite side of the formation (Diagram 2).

Efaw will start in the fullback

spot and move to a wing alignment as Paul moves from a wing alignment to the fullback spot,
his natural position. While it may
seem elementary to the normal football watcher, what Petersen is doing is intricately planned.
He is overloading one side of the formation with a tight end plus wing set, thus creating an extra
gap to the strong side of the formation that the defense must worry about. With the addition of a
fullback who can be moved anywhere in the front, another gap is created and has to be defended,
often too quickly for the defense to adjust to adjust to it. By the time the ball is snapped,
Petersen has created a defensive dilemma, too many gaps to cover in too little time, and he is
able to run his base run schemes, like the Power O (Diagram 3) by gaining a numbers advantage
in the tackle box.

A couple plays later, as he did against Nevada last season, Petersen will line up Gallarda in a
traditional I formation set with two tight-ends, and, as Moore gets under center, as shown in
Diagram 6. While most opponents may expect another strong side run scheme and rotate their
coverage and bump their front to the strong side, Petersen will run his inside zone scheme and
watch Avery cut it back weak where there are voided lanes in the defense (Diagram 6). [Ed Note:
For space constraints there are no diagrams 4 or 5.]

It’s a scheme Boise expects because of how defenses adjust to their motion. It’s a called scheme,
not a spontaneous cut by Avery. Avery knows he’s going there pre-snap. Petersen and offensive
coordinator Bryan Harsin make their adjustments from the sideline after seeing how a defense
reacts to their movement. “The way their offense is designed, there are plenty of schemes to cut
the ball back,” said Gray. “When you have a back that is patient, and can change directions
quickly, it works.”

A cornerstone staple of the Broncos offense is to overload formations: they will line up in a
traditionally 3×1 trips set (Diagram 7) which already puts a tremendous amount of horizontal
stress on defenses. But Petersen will take it one
step further, often motioning out Avery (Diagram 8 ) to get into a 4×1 formation which gives

him two options. If the defense overloads the

coverage by cheating one of the safeties to the four side set, Moore will often bang the slant
(throw it right away) or comeback route to the split end (Diagram 9) — against Tulsa last year he
hit two of them.
 Then when
teams start to stay in a two deep rotation as Nevada did three weeks later, it frees the middle of
the field up for a potential seam route by one of the strong side receivers (Diagram 10).
Instead of motioning to empty, Boise will also start in empty and motion Avery back into the
backfield (Diagram 11). The main idea here is for Petersen to see what defenses empty
adjustment is. Most teams have only one, and usually it is man coverage.

If he gets what he wants, he’ll run the jailbreak

screen to Avery (Diagram 12). If everyone handles their blocking assignment, it’s usually Avery
in a one on one situation with the defender assigned to cover him. It’s a win/win situation.
“Jailbreak is such a scary play,” said Gray. “Once you realize it, the linemen get on you and they
hit that thing in the alley and you have problems.”

2. Post-Snap Misdirection

If all of the shifting, motioning and trading doesn’t get a defense where they want it, Petersen
and his staff will wait to the snap of the ball to undress them. Like most offenses, Boise
packages their plays, which means they may have two particular options on any given play.
Case in point is Boise’s tight trips formation (Diagram 13) where they will overload the field
with three receivers while keeping Gallarda, the tight end,
away. Since most defenses declare their strength
to the tight side, they may have some players playing out of position on the trips side. The
“stressed” defensive player in this set is the trips side alley player, usually an outside
linebacker. If Petersen sees that that innermost receiver to the trips has a leverage advantage on
him, Moore will just take the snap out of gun and throw a bubble screen to him (Diagram 14).

However, if that alley player starts to cheat his

alignment to the trips side, it means that the offense has a number’s advantage to the tight side in
which case Harsin may call some sort of speed option (usually to the boundary as it did against
Nevada) picking up six yards a clip (Diagram 15) while the slot still gives the illusion of a
bubble screen forcing the backer outside and away from the play. Either way, the Broncos have
the advantage.
Over the four games I watched, I also a lot of unbalanced formations where the tight end and
flanker were both on the line of scrimmage while the X receiver, usually junior Titus Young, off
it. They’ll run some form of fast flow jet sweep to Young (Diagram 16).
Young isn’t your prototypical running back, but he doesn’t need to be. Petersen just wants to set
up the defense. Regardless of the yardage gained on the play, all he looks for is how the defense
reacts. Once the defense rolls its coverage to the side of the jet sweep, as TCU did in the Fiesta
Bowl, Petersen will run the jet sweep pass off of that action. Kellen Moore fakes the handoff to
Young, and throws a post/wheel combination with the Z and the fullback (Diagram 17). He hit it
for 19 yards against the Horned Frogs to set up Boise’s initial score.

3. Bold, Calculated Risks

Sure, offensive coordinators give lip service about taking shots, but most play it close to the vest
during crunch time. Not Petersen and the Bronco staff. They’ll pull the trigger with any play at
any time and are willing to live with the consequences — though most have been quite positive.
We all remember the stunts he pulled against Oklahoma to win the Fiesta Bowl in 2008. Yet
Petersen managed to do it again against TCU when his punter Kyle Brotzman tossed a 29 yard
completion on fourth down. Besides his already non-conformist approach to offense — like
lining up in unbalanced sets and running to the short side of the field — Petersen takes specific
risks at various stages in the games. Their first possession of the TCU game reflected this.
Insider their own twenty yard-line, where most teams don’t like to take chances, Boise State
threw three pass plays in a row. The Horned Frogs were playing quarters coverage, a scheme
deficient against double post routes. So, Petersen and his staff wasted no time in trying to
expose them by lining up in tight spread sets and trying to get over the top. Because of their
athleticism on defense, TCU kept up, but Boise managed to convert a few of those double posts
later on in the game.

Even when facing a third and seven and beating Nevada in third quarter by six and in scoring
position inside the forty yard line, Petersen easily could’ve tried to convert a quick slant to move
the chains. Instead, he opted for an outside zone play — into the boundary side of the field.
Petersen saw that Nevada’s defense was playing a soft cover two zone anticipating the throw
(who wouldn’t be) and he took what they gave him. The play only yielded six yards. Didn’t
matter. They picked up the first down on a QB sneak the very next play. It’s that free-spirited,
offensive creativity that makes the Boise offense amazing to watch — and so difficult to defend.
“It’s truly a beautiful offense. You watch every game in awe,” said Gray. “They throw screens,
they throw underneath high percentage passes, they throw hot (right away) to outside pressure
and they max protect when they need to. Seeing what you are in defensively, you’re up against
the clock on defense.”

How to Stop Them

Gray and the rest of the Hokies staff are done with preparations for their nationally televised
game against the Broncos on September 6th. Now the game must be played. Boise has won
fourteen straight games and have their best ranking in their history. Moreover, essentially the
entire offense, including Kellen Moore, returns, and there is even talk of a National Title. If
Virginia Tech wants to thwart that dream in week one — or to have any shot themselves (the
Hokies are ranked in the top ten as well) — they will need to do some very specific things:

1. Pressure Moore: TCU was the only team to do all season last year. Although they
couldn’t get to him, they pressured him into plenty of incompletions- his 58 percent
completion percentage in the Fiesta Bowl was ten percentage points lower than his
average. Moore is lethal when he’s in his comfort zone, so the Hokies need to change up
their blitz packages. Va Tech has the athletes to cover, so on third downs expect them to
lock up in man situations and bring six defenders at Moore.
2. Come up with simple adjustments to their motion package: No matter how you slice
it, Boise will come out with one of four types of formations, each based on eligible
receivers: 2×2 (four wides, three wides and a tight-end, two wides and two tightends,
etc), 3×1 (trips), 3×2 (no backs), and unbalanced sets. After studying Boise’s film, I
noticed that only their fullbacks and tight ends shift and motion on each play, which
limits the teaching (for the offense) to just focusing on those players. But it also helps the
defense in their preparation. Virginia Tech must have an answer for each of those
formations and rep against them continually in practice. Petersen must continually shift
and motion until he gets you in what he wants. The Hokies must communicate their
adjustments and get set before the ball is snapped.
3. Die Slowly: It sounds pessimistic, but is essentially what the Hokies must go by to
succeed against BSU: let Boise work for their yards; don’t give up the big play; and
don’t get caught up in all the misdirection post-snap. Va Tech needs to be disciplined,
read their keys and not get caught up in the “show game” that Boise State presents. Make
them earn it. (And hope Tyrod Taylor has a big day!)
Linemen Splits
This doesn't always come up, but one of the most interesting games
within the game in football are the splits between the offensive
linemen. Some teams use a lot of wide splits, with as much as three to
even six feet between linemen, while others keep it closer to roughly a
foot, or even toe-to-toe. But like everything else in football, what kind
of splits you take is informed both by what the defense does and what
your philosophy is.

To understand why splits matter, you need to understand how

defensive fronts align. Typically, most defenses are taught to align on
the basis of where the offensive guys align, which makes sense
because those defenders are trying to get through or around the
blockers to get to the running back or quarterback. So defensive
linemen and linebackers were told from the earliest days of football to
align "on the inside eye of the guard," "heads up the center," or "on
the outside eye of the tackle." The linebackers had similar
instructions, though they aligned behind the offensive line. Over time,
defenses got better at mixing up these alignments, even before the
snap. We've all seen linemen shift from the outside eye of the guard to
the gap between the guard and center, or simply align late. All this is
designed to confuse blocking schemes.

So as offenses became more complex, it became necessary to give

linemen rules that would allow the run play to be blocked no matter
what games the defense played, and to do that you needed a
nomenclature that could be communicated via playbook as well as on
the sideline (or at the line) in the heat of a game. This system became
known as the assignment of defensive "techniques" to each defensive
player. The credit for it is typically given to Alabama's legendary
coach Bear Bryant, though he gives much of the credit to Bum
Phillips. Below is an example of the numbering system.
Note that this is not the same as "hole numbering," because it is about
where the defender aligns not where the run is designed to go.
Although it looks a bit confusing, this system is used at literally every
level of football, from pee wee football to the NFL. Below is another
diagram with slightly different nomenclature, though it also specifies
the "gaps." (Hat tip to the USC Trojan Football Analysis site for the
image.)

So now that we know that

defenses align based on where the offense aligns, and we know that
offenses identify defenses based on the alignment, we can discuss
splits. It's a bit of an oversimplification, but the choice is basically
between tight or wide splits. I begin with tight splits.

Tight Splits

Tight splits are the most common. In fact, most people probably don't
think of them as tight, but merely notice when they see "wide splits."
Below is an example of a typical alignment.
The advantage of tight splits are easy to see: Linemen are close to
each other so you can get good teamwork between them; there are
few or at least narrow gaps between them; and the line is constricted
to keep defenders away from outside runs and quick outside throws.

The teamwork part cannot be underemphasized. One reason that tight

splits are so common is because zone running and slide protection is
so popular today. Zone running requires linemen to step in a
direction, double-team guys in their area, and then one of them works
up to block the linebacker. If the linemen are too far apart, you cannot
get a good double-team, and the play won't go. For slide protection,
linemen slide into a gap, and work together to create a fence for the
QB. Any unblocked rushers must come from the outside, as the
priority is to prevent a blitzer or linemen up the middle.

The point about gaps is similar. But the point about constricting the
line for outside plays is underemphasized. Most teams, when they
want to run an outside option play or a sweep of some kind, will have
their line condense in by cutting their splits. That way a fast runner
can get outside quickly.

Wide Splits

Wide splits are more interesting. Traditionally, the teams with the
widest splits were option running teams. That might sound surprising,
but the reason was is that they used a lot of man blocking rules (i.e.
block your man, rather than zone an area). More importantly though,
by splitting out, because the defense aligned on the basis of where the
offensive linemen were, the guy the QB was reading was split out. So
if on the triple option you wanted your QB to first read the defensive
tackle ("T") and then the defensive end ("E"), you'd split your linemen
out to give him more time to make each successive read. (Hat tip:
Hugh Wyatt)
You also simply created wide running lanes inside by having your
linemen split out so wide. If you watched the old Nebraska teams,
while they didn't take enormous splits, they did have wide ones for
both their inside option plays and inside man blocking runs.

But there's a new trend for wide splits, and that's with air-it-out
passing teams like Texas Tech. Traditionally passing teams took very
narrow splits to stop inside penetration, Texas Tech takes
exceptionally large splits. Their rationale is a few-fold: (a) make the
pass rushers come from farther away and enlarge the pocket, (b) open
up throwing lanes for the quarterback, and (c) because they throw so
much, all they need is a block or two to have an effective draw play --
the defensive ends aren't even really a factor. They can do this
because they are almost exclusively a "man" pass protection team,
just as the old Lavell Edwards BYU offenses were. (Indeed, Mike
Leach's offense is a direct descendent from BYU's offense, he spent
time there as an assistant, and many of his other coaches had
experience at BYU as players or coaches when Edwards and Norm
Chow were there.)

The obvious concerns are that if one guy gets beat in pass protection
then there is no help, and also that there are wide gaps for
linebackers to shoot through. For the latter, Tech feels like they can
hurt that in other ways, through quick passes, screens, outside run
plays, and traps. And they also feel that they can simply teach their
linemen to be smart and reactive, and still stop that kind of
penetration.

For the former problem though, the answer is simply that they have to
have good blockers. They freely admit that they put their linemen one
on one a great deal of the time, but their philosophy is that if someone
gets to the quarterback, everyone knows who got beat. More and
more teams have been adopting this strategy.

As a side note, I observe that Leach went to this trend after he got
away from having a two-back formation as his primary one for passing
downs. With a two-back offense you can stop a lot of overload passing
threats to either side, but with a one-back formation -- Leach's current
primary version -- the wide splits were necessary to take those extra
rushers out of the play. For more on all this, see my old article here.

Conclusion
So in sum, the choice of what splits a team uses will vary by play.
Some will rely on teamwork and overwhelming force to overpower the
defense, others will play games with varying them to set up the play
they have called, and others, like Texas Tech, build it into their
philosophy. As a final thought, many of you might think: Hey, if you
always go tight splits for outside runs and wide for inside runs, won't
the defense catch on? The response is the same one Bill Walsh would
give when he heard this concern: If you have built a tendency (like
running inside whenever you go wide splits), you simply self-scout,
figure that out, and then confuse the defense by breaking your own
tendency. Some of his biggest plays came when he broke his own
tendencies.