Tennessee, the Inside-Zone, and the Smashmouth Spread
The Smashmouth Spread is reclaiming power football
The Spread offense has received a reputation as being somewhat of a “finesse” attack. Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, et al. Throwing the ball all over the field and featuring the passing game ahead of the run; gone are the times of big-boy collisions in the box, and fans have even bemoaned the loss of their father’s game.
But the “Smashmouth Spread” is reclaiming power football.
It features many of the same principles of some of the best downhill attacks of old, albeit out of the shotgun or pistol. Like any “smashmouth” team, running the ball inside installs confidence in the offensive line. They know their assignment, can fire off the ball, and they get to play physical football while on the front foot.
The bedrock of the Smashmouth Spread is the inside-zone.
The inside-zone is one of football’s great equalizers. It is a ground-and-pound play, forged from basic mathematics.
Like all running plays, the goal is to get a “hat on a hat” and have one blocker for every defender. Unlike other running plays, the inside-zone hopes to achieve more than that, generating a double-team on each play and giving the offense a numerical advantage at the line of scrimmage.
Butch Jones has made his living on the offensive side of the ball. He’s coached running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, and orchestrated prolific offenses at Central Michigan and Cincinnati before taking over at Tennessee.
Jones is part of the modern-age smashmouth coaches, using spread concepts, philosophies and alignments, while prioritizing running the ball down opponents’ throats.
Tennessee’s offense all springs from the inside-zone. Like many spread offenses it is their base play.
The philosophy of the play: explode off the ball, be physical, penetrate the defensive front, generate different levels to the defense, and generate double teams.
In its basic form the play is as simple as the come: hand the ball off inside, let the running back press and read the line, find creases/holes and explode through them.
But when perfected it becomes the base of some of the country’s most explosive offenses.
The concept of the play begins with the center ID’ing the “Call Point,” often referred to as the “MIC.” The offensive line is able to block five playside defenders. If there are five defensive players in the box the assignments are easy, the offense has a “hat on a hat.”
If the defense has six defenders in the box the quarterback becomes responsible for the sixth man. While he cannot physically block the defender (he’s the only guy on the field who can’t play with a bruised right shoulder) he is able to control the defender by reading him, and optioning plays off him.
In essence, a classic “zone-read” play that you hear about and see every Saturday is the quarterback blocking a defensive player mentally.
When the center is ID’ng the front, again, basic math is used; is it a 4–1 look? A 4–2? A 3–2? Or 3–3? As a spread team, the Vols are able to stack the deck for themselves by using the entire width of the field, and multiple receiver sets, to stretch the defense and unload the box. Adding in pre-snap movements and shifts is another way for the offense to move defensive players around before the snap and get themselves in the best situation to execute their combination blocks and double-teams.
The beauty of the spread offense and the inside-zone is that it strips away many of footballs great complexities. “Is that an over front?” “Under front?” “Bear front?”
Instead, the center simply counts how many guys are in front of him, and how many guys are to the side and behind him. If the count is even, the offense is in business; if the count is plus-one, they’re set for an explosive play, and if it’s a negative-count it is time for the play to be switched.
Tagging packaged plays to the inside-zone has been a modern phenomenon. In order to maintain the break-neck pace of no-huddle offenses, coaches have begun to tag in extra plays alongside base and constraint plays. Rather than the quarterback changing the play himself, or looking to the sideline for assistance, the option to change the play is packaged in either pre- or post-snap.
Pre-snap is similar to that of a “kill call” if the offense sees an unfavorable look or matchup they’ll “kill” the first play and move onto the second play. The most common package is to tag an inside-zone concept with a quick pass or screen pass. Again, this can be done as a pre-snap judgment or as a post-snap run-pass option play (RPO) in which the quarterback will read a defender, traditionally a linebacker, and opt where to go with the ball.
As mentioned, the object of the inside-zone is to consistently generate double-teams upfront.
The center begins by identify the “point,” the player closest to the playside A-gap. The center and playside guard double team the nose tackle, once the block is sealed the guard progresses and hunts for a linebacker at the next level.
On the backside of a play, if a read is built in, the offense will build in a second double team. The tackle crashes inside and doubles the nearest player to the guard. Once that block is sealed, the guard will again move on to the second level.
The double-teams are obviously a huge advantage, they get the offense immediately to the second level, disrupt the defensive wall, and get more powerful players stuck on linebackers. Explosive high-end talent has more opportunities for huge plays, and downhill thumpers like Jalen Hurd can consistently churn out 6–7 yards per carry.
Although the inside zone is a physical play, the “smashmouth” element of the Smashmouth Spread comes from the gap principles sprinkled throughout the offense.
Gap principles have traditionally been run from under-center or in split pistol sets. But they have now become the foundation of many spread offenses, such as Clemson under Dabo Sweeney, and Tom Herman whether at Ohio State or at Houston.
Gap principles get offensive lineman pulling and moving, out on the boundary and playing with moment. They look to shift the point of attack to the boundary or create mismatches at the line of scrimmage.
They’re difficult to implement, are detailed and intricate, but when perfected they are deadly.
Tennessee has added a number of gap principles to its offense. Consistently pulling their lineman or kicking them to the perimeter in order to distort the defense generates very favorable matchups.
And although gap-schemes use man-blocking concepts, with an athletic quarterback you are able to maintain a numerical advantage by reading the backside end, or reading the interior on a counter or push play.
Given that teaching a gap-scheme is difficult, many of those coaches who have incorporated the classical “power” and “counter-trey” plays back into their zone-based offenses, have taken to replicating the same angles, techniques and footwork over and over again, with the advantage of having the athletic quarterback read the backside defender and almost eliminate him entirely from the defensive structure.
Tennessee, given their athletic quarterback Josh Dobbs, is able to build in gap-principles with the same techniques used over and over again, from the same formations, but with different plays called.
