Interesting article from SBNation's "Football Study Hall" about the read option

[Prediction? Pain.]

http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2015/9/17/9345633/what-happened-to-the-zone-read-how-to-defend-spread-offense-urban-Meyer

As we've all been discussing the evolution (or regression (or face-plant)) of our running attack so far this season, I found this article interesting, especially given Urban Meyer's quote about Ohio State not being a read-option team anymore.

Any of y'all with X's and O's experience have thoughts on this, be they MSU-related or not? What adjustments did we make (or not make) to our version of the zone read as the season progressed last year and the run defenses started getting stouter? Also, has anyone watched Ohio State's offense enough this year to know what Meyer has shifted to as he's moving away from the traditional read-option?

[Bullmutt]

The very last sentence of the article regarding the zone read:

Teams that hope to rely on the play as an every week strategy now need to have multiple ways to run and protect the play because defenses have caught up.

True or false?

[Leroy Jenkins]

Any offensive scheme can be slowed once people have film and gameplan to stop it. Its a matter of where the defense is willing to assume risk. The key to not getting stopped is having a complement to the staple. For example, if you pick any of those defensive strategies in the article and then add the wrinkle of running the zone read with the option to hit the TE or H with a pop pass down the seam none of those strategies hold up. OR if you ran a zone read look with a bubble to the slot, same thing those defensive schemes wont work unless you have the athletes to man up on the edges. In that case you are just better anyway.

[PassInterference]

We're on a 6 to 8 game streak of really ugly football. All that time last year we thought J Rob was holding back...did our offense get "discovered"?

[Prediction? Pain.]

We're on a 6 to 8 game streak of really ugly football. All that time last year we thought J Rob was holding back...did our offense get "discovered"?

I don't know. Part of me doubts it's that straightforward. Plus, remember that our last three SEC game last year -- Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi -- were against three of the best rushing defenses in the conference. Each of those teams allowed 3.8 ypc or less in conference play. And, sure enough, that's about what we got in each -- 3.66 vs. Ark, 3.45 vs. Bama, and 3.47 vs. U. Miss. J. Rob averaged less than 3.7 ypc in each of those games, and Dak only average more than 4 ypc in one (Ark - 4.7 ypc for him).

Now, I guess that doesn't mean that we didn't get "found out" late in the season, at least on the ground. But regardless of system, running was apparently tough for everyone against those teams.

(As an aside, if J.Rob. was holding back at times, I'm not sure it had anything to do with the weak running results against Arkansas. I still remember his awesome one armed catch in that game. He may not have been huge on the ground, but he showed up as a receiver. (He had 110 yards receiving against Ark.))

Been reading a bit about "wham" blocking as an additional wrinkle to the zone read that OSU has been using at least since last year. Again, my X's and O's aren't close to up to snuff. Any of y'all at higher pay grades seen us incorporating that into our read plays much?

[Really Clark?]

The wham is dependent on a good h-back, TE or fb (depending on your offensive scheme). Hutch is big enough and Johnson. Walley may not be able to attack many DT and really help sill off that lane. You could throw a wrinkle and use Shump as an H-back and another RB to confuse some people.

[Todd4State]

The wham is dependent on a good h-back, TE or fb (depending on your offensive scheme). Hutch is big enough and Johnson. Walley may not be able to attack many DT and really help sill off that lane. You could throw a wrinkle and use Shump as an H-back and another RB to confuse some people.

We could, but we don't/won't. It drives me nuts.

[Todd4State]

We're on a 6 to 8 game streak of really ugly football. All that time last year we thought J Rob was holding back...did our offense get "discovered"?

No, we just have to make adjustments. When have we thrown a pop pass? If ever? We haven't used a FB since Sylvester Hemphill graduated.