DR. SATURDAY’S PEARLS OF WISDOM: UF’S RUNNING ATTACK DECONSTRUCTED

With its reputation for passing and a certain degree of gimmickry on the ground, it might come as some surprise that Florida’s rolled up over 300 yards rushing in each of its last three games, and averaged nearly 280 in the eight games since being held to 124 in its loss to Ole Miss. It is, without question, the most explosive run offense in the country.
Percy Harvin is far from the only bullet in that gun, but he’s the deadliest and most versatile, and his pending absence could be as critical to the way Florida sets up defenses with personnel, formation and presnap motion as it will be to just running by people. As much speed as Florida has at its disposal, it doesn’t have anyone else who can get the ball in his hands in as many different ways or serve as an unusually dangerous runner or receiver at any given moment; if he can’t go, life will be much easier Saturday for Alabama’s first-rate run defense.
Let’s Talk Game Plan
Florida can attack a defense sideline to sideline, and specifically because of its speed at every skill position, defenses are necessarily somewhat obsessed with containment. When Harvin — or Chris Rainey, of Jeff Demps, or Brandon James — is moving left-to-right, the defense has no hope unless it can diagnose the play and get to the sideline first.
Though Florida is ostensibly a “spread offense” and works almost exclusively out of the shotgun, the running game is essentially an old-school single wing attack, made all the more deadly by the addition of a truly lethal vertical passing game — with an all-purpose quarterback like Tebow, Urban Meyer’s offense is one of the very, very few that actually forces defenses to “cover the entire field.” But the first step in any philosophy is keeping the defense honest up the middle. On that front, Florida doesn’t have much a power running game outside of Tebow on predictable short-yardage plunges (the Tebow Child is only averaging 3.7 per carry, down from 4.3 last year and 5.3 as a freshman), but it does take advantage of the defense’s tendency to spread itself too thin in overpursuit out of respect for the Gators’ speed an option threat on the perimeter to gash teams up the gut on misdirection plays. And it takes specific advantage of Harvin’s ability to become a runner from anywhere in the formation.
Here, Harvin demonstrates, as a true freshman in the 2006 SEC Championship game against Arkansas, then as a seasoned junior on a pair of long touchdown runs against South Carolina last month, all on the same call:

That kind of misdirection out of the gun looked novel against Arkansas — it requires someone with Harvin’s unreal change-of-direction and acceleration to break into the open; you wouldn’t dare try it without a Harvin-esque talent — but South Carolina just didn’t have the athletes to keep the play from getting to the second level, or to lay a hand on Harvin when it did.
Let’s Go to the Game Tape.
The first thing you’ll notice about South Carolina’s defense is that, even on first down, it’s wary enough of the Gators’ deep speed to keep a safety deep — in this case, he’s over Harvin, who starts out in the slot. Florida is in a three-wide set, a spread set, and South Carolina is responding with only three down linemen. The look is a sort of ramshackle 3-3-5, with one of the two-deep safeties creeping toward the line when Harvin goes in motion before the snap …

The motion turns the formation from a three-wide, possible passing set to essentially a wishbone, a fully-loaded backfield with Tebow, Harvin and Brandon James as possible ballcarriers and H-back Aaron Hernandez running interference. But South Carolina still has only three down linemen, allowing the Gators to pull Hernandez and right guard Mike Pouncey in front of the counter while the left guard and center execute a critical double team on the nose tackle, who is nearly head-up on the center and just asking to be caved down:

With the defense already influenced by Harvin’s motion to the right, his and and James’ first steps to the right sucks the middle linebacker into that side of the line and both outside safeties into contain mode, while the double team buries the nose tackle in the middle and Hernandez and Pouncey are able to get in front before Harvin has made his cut:

By the time Harvin has changed direction and is hitting the line of scrimmage, the successful double team in the middle has allowed the Gator line to form an absolute wall, while the kickout blocks from Pouncey and Hernandez have opened up a lane to a one-on-one matchup with one very nervous safety:

Percy is through the lane so quickly and decisively that the secondary tackler almost literally has not moved in the time it takes Harvin to get on top of him …

… and false steps and indecision here gets the safety left woefully behind:

There are several keys here — influencing the defense by the initial presnap motion and counter action, making the kickout blocks by the fullback and guard, Harvin’s sheer burst through the seam — but maybe none more crucial than the double team in the middle. If the defensive tackle holds his ground, it not only occupies blockers and frees up linebackers to flow to the play (assuming they haven’t run themselves out of it, as the middle linebacker does here) but also potentially disrupts both Harvin’s lane and his lead blockers’ paths to the outside. Any decent penetration in the middle prevents Hernandez and Pouncey from getting to their blocks in time.
The first thing the Tide must do, obviously, is make tackles in the open field when the opportunity presents itself. Before that, though, is where Terrence Cody comes in. If Alabama’s mountain of a defensive tackle can hold his own against double teams and control the interior of the Florida line, the Gators may not have the time to allow counters and misdirection to develop. Cody’s presence inside is almost like having 12 men on the field for the attention he commands in the middle of the line; the freedom of the faster guys to patrol behind the line (eight of the team’s top nine tacklers are linebackers or DBs) is a key reason Alabama is second in the nation against the run, and dominated every ground game it’s faced with the exception of the very physical, straight-ahead attack of LSU. Mt. Cody doesn’t get caved to the inside; quite often, it’s the other way around.
On the other hand, Cody isn’t so much of a sideline-to-sideline guy, and Florida can do that, too, to powerful effect on a 380-pounder’s breathing rate. Much depends on the Alabama offense’s ability to control the ball for as long as possible behind its own burly running game, but if UF breaks a big play up the middle, expect it to come well into the second half, and serve as a nail in the coffin.