Plays Of The (other) Day: 2nd Layer Base Concepts vs. Washington

Just like airing the Whiteout on a terrible streaming service, what’s Old is suddenly New in Andy Kotelnicki’s Offense

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In an offense where the highlight play typically comes in wild, unorthodox fashion – stuff we haven’t seen before — Saturday’s Whiteout game featured several gains for first down that were simply second layers or iterations of base concepts – stuff we HAVE seen before…just slightly tweaked.

What I mean by this: rather than building a game plan around gadget, gimmicky type plays (to be clear: not saying there’s anything wrong with this), Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki focused on peeling back the 2nd layer to the go-to concepts that the Nittany Lions consistently run.

While the plays themselves may not be all that exciting, hopefully getting inside Coach K’s brain is.

Play 1 on Paper:

We’ve highlighted “Power Shovel” on multiple occasions this year. Thus far, the sweep action has either come in the form of jet motion or simply the RB coming across the QBs face. The QB reads the unblocked man at the end of the line of scrimmage – if he dips inside, hand the ball to the RB on the sweep; if he stays wide, flip the shovel to 44-Tyler Warren.

Thus far, every Power Shovel has had one thing in common: the sweep runner and the shovel receiver have come from the same side of the ball. This creates a tendency. You can bet any time Warren and Nick or The Fatman are on the same side of the ball, defenses alert to power read.

So How did Kotelnicki break this tendency this week? You guessed it… don’t put the RB on the same side as the Y…the next layer of this concept.

The adjusted alignment creates added difficulty for the offense, however, because you can’t hand it to the back on the same side. So, instead, they use a toss action. UW is unprepared to deal with Power Read from this formation and it’s an easy first down, twice.

Power Shovel 1:

Power Shovel 2:

Our next example is an alternation I’ve been begging to see for weeks now (not to brag).

Last year at Kansas and this year at Penn State, Kotelnicki has fallen in love with this rub-flat concept on third down. Rightfully so! Get the ball to Tyler Warren in a man-to-man likely scenario, give him a shot at RAC.

Kotelnicki Rub-Flat:

It’s also become a tad predictable. There are a plethora of examples of this concept, but we’ll use this one vs. Ohio State to show how defenses are starting to expect it.

So, what does Kotelnicki do? Builds a 2nd layer off it.

Play on Paper:

Play on Film:

Everything looks the same pre-snap. 3×1 formation, Warren the #3, UW’s defense knows what PSU’s favorite 3rd down man-beater is… and instead of the arrow/flat route, Warren sells it and cuts back inside on a “Loop” route. Watch UW’s safety trigger to the flat. Although it’s almost negated via batted ball…Warren is wide open.