Big Plays, Small Spaces, Short Amount of Time
Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich’s use of Formation Into The Boundary (FIB) alignments mixed with an up-tempo pace has produced positive results during his tenure in Happy Valley.
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Football is a game of acronyms. PAT. LOS. TD. DL. OL. QB. FF. FR. FG. Then there’s WTH when Miles Sanders gets the handoff on a game-deciding 4th and 5. And, for our degenerate readers, we can’t forget ATS and ML.
Today, though, we’re going to unpack two lesser-known acronyms that show up fairly regularly on Penn State OC Mike Yurcich’s playsheet, both conveying the same premise: FIB and/or FSL. That’s “Formation into (the) Boundary” and “Formation (into the) Sideline.”
Before we get super technical, let’s begin with the basics and explain why all of this is a bigger deal in college football compared to the NFL.
When we speak of “boundary”, we’re talking about the shorter side of the field depending on where the ball is placed down to down – meaning the boundary side of the field isn’t always the same. The wider side of the field is known as the “field” (pretty sure that term must’ve been workshopped at 5 p.m. on a Friday before a holiday weekend).
In college football, the distance between the hash marks is more than double the space separating the hash marks in the NFL…meaning when a ball is placed on the hash marks on Saturdays, the discrepancy between the “boundary” and “field” sides is substantial.
Make sense? No…OK, well here’s a visual aid.
Ball on the hash marks in College Football:
Ball on the hash marks in the NFL:
The college splits are so wide that you can’t get the right hash in the camera frame from the end zone.
These severely spaced-out hash marks on college football fields often lead to offenses being aligned far left or far right. Typically, offensive coordinators will place the strength of their formation to the “field” side…which makes sense, more room and open space for route concepts and for receivers to separate.
BUUUUT on the rare occasion when an offense chooses to put the strength of the formation to the short side of the field, it is classified as FIB or FSL (they’re interchangeable and mean exactly the same thing, yes it is incredibly annoying that football folk can’t just choose one) . Here’s an example of FIB/FSL:
It seems counterproductive to only use a fraction of the field, right? It’ll seem even sillier after we publish tomorrow’s blog post that outlines Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich’s strategic use of wide splits to take advantage of the entire width of the grass/plastic grass. But, in football as in life, balance is key.
During his time as a play-caller at Oklahoma State, Texas, and Penn State, Yurcich has found tremendous success marrying FIB/FSL with hurry-up tempo – concepts run in crowded, confined spaces that when executed within 10 seconds of the previous play make it tough for support defenders to funnel to the football. Therefore, let’s explore a couple ways the Nittany Lions offense combined FIB and Tempo in 2022, like peanut butter and jelly, and why it was successful.
The first one is an RPO concept that mirrors the old school triple-option Nebraska ran decades ago and remains a staple in service academy offenses today…only difference is instead of a last-ditch option pitch to the tailback on the edge, the quarterback tosses a pass to the tight end hugging the sideline.
Yurcich dialed up this modern triple-option concept 30 times last season and averaged 6.6 yards per play – a half-yard greater than Penn State’s overall yards per play average.
In this play, the quarterback has up to two post-snap reads, depending on the decision made on the first read.
READ 1: What’s the C-Gap or D-Gap defender doing? If the end man on the line of scrimmage hesitates, or cheats toward the tight end, or just kind of “surfs” in No Man’s Land and doesn’t fully commit, typically the right read is to hand the ball off to the running back. See below:
Purdue defensive end 44-Kydran Jenkins makes this read fairly elementary thanks to his pre-snap alignment, because even if he did pinch down and play the RB, it’d be a tough ask to be in on the tackle. Regardless, Jenkins doesn’t crash down…leaving 5 defenders vs. 5 blockers in the box. Easy handoff read for Sean Clifford. Sidenote: heckuva cut by the departed 24-Keyvone Lee here.
Another “give” read example:
Minnesota defensive end 92-Danny Striggow surfs in the grey, not tipping his hand, so Clifford gives to 13-Kaytron Allen. Same deal as the Purdue play above…same decision-making process. So why did we insist on showing you this clip? Well, to illustrate the stress Yurcich’s up-tempo attack causes defenses. Watch again…look at the absolute chaos created, fingers pointing all over the place, gold helmets hurrying to get lined up! I knocked the digital dust off my DVR to find this play on the TV broadcast: Penn State snapped the ball with 27 seconds left on the play clock – 16 real-time seconds after the end of the previous play. That’s not a lot of time for a defense to get set for this key 3rd Q 3rd and 2.
But what if the DE/OLB overcommits and pursues the RB before/during the mesh?
Glad you asked…
READ 2: If the end man on the line of scrimmage causes the QB to “pull” – not hand off to the RB/keep the ball – then the second read of this RPO comes into play. The QB’s eyes now flash to the alley defender (typically a linebacker). The alley defender is caught in the “in-between” and forced to choose whether to press the QB or cover the arrow-route by the tight end. As long as the QB executes and doesn’t have several tons of sand in his pants (i.e. he can run a little), the defender can’t be correct.
FIB forces defensive coordinators to answer a tough question: do I prioritize defending players or space?
Here, Allar gets a pull read and the SAM linebacker fits the run as well. This leaves no one for the QB. A miscommunication credited to using tempo and FIB/FSL to confuse responsibilities. If the SAM wasn’t so overaggressive and attacked Allar post-pull, then Allar could have hit tight end 16-Khalil Dinkins hanging out near the visitors sideline. Admittedly, it’s a difficult, risky, uncomfortable, blood pressure-rising throw for a QB.
That might explain why we didn’t witness any second-read throws out of this SPECIFIC formation last year, although we did clip a couple from slightly different alignments (but same boundary, triple-option concept…cousin alignments, basically) from 2022, 2021 and 2020…and, as you’ll see, they’re worthy of circus music.
2022:
2021:
2020:
One of the negatives in using tempo and running the same multi-pronged play over and over again is that, eventually, it gets predictable. You can only sprint to the line of scrimmage…run triple-option…to the short side of the field…from the same formation…a handful of times before Big 10-caliber coordinators and football players start to figure out that Rubik’s Cube.
Knowing that, Coach Yurcich loves to set-up FIB counterpunches: variations to the same play that punish defenses who think they’ve figured stuff out. It’s a football tale as old as time: keep defenses honest by threatening to run right past them. Amazingly, way back in Week 1 2022, we saw Yurcich deploy three distinct, tempo-fueled FIB wrinkles on the same drive – the high-stakes, game-winning 75-yard march late in the 4th Quarter.
Here’s the FIB concept – Trips bunch cluster outside the numbers to the boundary. Penn State ran this a bunch vs. Purdue, either out of an empty set or with the RB in the backfield. This was actually the concept in which Drew Allar completed his first collegiate pass, if you recall.
Play 1:
3rd and 2. Clock is stopped following an incompletion, so Yurcich doesn’t have his foot on the gas…yet. That’ll change after this play. 1-KLS motions into the FIB Trips Bunch. Purdue doesn’t adjust. Easy candy-from-a-baby conversion. Up-Tempo pace begins.
Play 2:
2nd and 2. Two plays later. Same Trips Bunch to the boundary, only out of a 3×1 now. With KLS’ Now Screen first-down fresh in their minds, Purdue rotates extra help to the short side of the field. In doing so, the Boilers leave 5-Mitchell Tinsley 1-on-1 with acres of space to the wide side of the field. Noticing he no longer has advantageous numbers to the boundary but drool-worthy numbers to the field, Clifford flips to Tinsley. Big gain. Tempo doesn’t stop despite the long jaunt downfield.
Play 3:
2nd and 5. Two plays later. Exact same formation as Play 2. Penn State subs personnel, so Purdue does the same. The refs, however, don’t hold the play for that long and the Boilers are scrambling pre-snap. Tempo is a mutha. As the Nittany Lions hurry to get lined up in the distinct Trips formation to the boundary, you can see Purdue’s DB pointing and yelling — likely telling his teammates what he sees coming (or thinks he sees). All it takes is a slight bluff from 44-Tyler Warren to get the outside backer to trigger on the screen — this opens a void inside to set up the game-winning score.
At its core, FIB/FSL opens up an entire book of new questions for the defensive staff to answer prior to gameday. Do you want to align your nickel to the passing strength or to the wide side of the field? How are you defending the zone read? If you have a blitz called, does FIB alert you to check out of it? Now, imagine having to think of the answers to these questions, get lined up properly, and execute…when only 8-12 seconds have passed since the previous play ended.
Like I said, Formation into the Boundary and Tempo go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly.
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