Game Week: Houston

2020 is a strange year for everyone, but Houston got a head start a year early.

There was a lot of excitement surrounding Houston football after they hired Dana Holgorsen away from West Virginia. Taking a head coach from a Big 12 program was a testament to their ambitions. Talent has never been too much of an issue at Houston, at least over the last 20 years or so. Keeping a coach long enough to build a program around that talent, however, has been a different story. Art Briles, Kevin Sumlin, Tom Herman... As soon as it looked like something special was being built, a Big 12 school whisked them away. Turning the tables on the Big 12, on top of being cathartic, made a statement that Houston was building for the long term.

The vision was clear, but the plan got off to a rocky start. The Cougars started the 2019 season with losses to ranked Oklahoma and Washington State teams before a loss to Tulane had them at 1-3. That’s when plans changed. The NCAA had recently altered the rules around redshirting by allowing players to appear in up to four games without that season counting toward their four years of eligibility. Houston could effectively sacrifice 2019 for the sake of being stronger in 2020 if players were willing to take a redshirt. Several did, and the depleted Cougars ended up a disappointing 4-8. The hope now is that last year’s lumps will become this year’s rewards thanks to a lineup stocked with returning talent.

And boy, do they have a lot of returning talent. In terms of last year’s production, you won’t find a team more experienced than Houston. The players responsible for 70.3% of their rushing yards, 72.8% of their passing yards, and 92.7% of their receiving yards are back in 2020. On defense, the Cougars retained 90.8% of their tackles, 83.1% of their tackles for loss, and 72.7% of their sacks. Quarterback Clayton Tune threw for 1,533 yards in seven starts. All of his favorite targets are back, including wide receiver Marquez Stevenson, who has a combined 274 yards in two career starts against the Mids. It isn’t just about last year’s returning starters, either. Houston has transfers from other programs that have also cracked the starting lineup, including cornerback Marcus Jones (Troy) and SAM LB/nickel JoVanni Stewart (West Virginia).

Of course, in true 2020 fashion, it’s taken forever for Houston to find out just what they have. Week after week, the Cougars had their would-be season opener canceled on them after opponents had COVID-19 issues. Here we are at the end of October, and Houston has only played two games. They did a lot of good things in those two games, though. Houston fell behind early against Tulane before roaring back for a 49-31 victory. The roles were reversed against BYU, as Houston had a 26-14 lead in the third quarter before the other Cougars exploded for 29 unanswered points and a 43-26 win.

Even in defeat, though, Houston showed promise. Offensively, the statistics were remarkably similar in both games. Against Tulane, Tune completed 20 of his 33 passes for 319 yards and two TDs. He was 21-33 for 310 yards and two TDs against BYU. Defensively, Houston held both teams under 80 rushing yards, which is a considerable improvement for a unit that gave up 188.2 yards per game a year ago. Without question, this is a team that not only is greatly improved over last year but can contend for a spot in the American Athletic Conference championship game.

Holgorsen is well-known as one of the original practitioners of the Air Raid offense. You might not have guessed that after last year when his team was 91st in the country in passing yards (203.3 ypg) and 37th in rushing (188.2 ypg). However, the one difference between Holgorsen and other Air Raid coaches has been his willingness to run the ball.

The basic idea behind the Air Raid is to have five receivers on every play, spread across the field and in short, medium, and long patterns. In theory, a zone defense would be stretched thin enough to always leave an open receiver. Against a man defense, the offense counts on their fifth receiver being better than the defense’s fifth defensive back. If the defense tries to bring extra pass rushers, the offense will throw a tunnel screen. In a way, it’s like an option offense in that the quarterback has certain keys, and what those keys do determines what the quarterback does with the ball.

Holgorsen approaches the concept from a different angle. By using the run as more than just a novelty, defenses have to make it more of a priority. That makes the passing game more of a big-play generator. At 3.28 yards per carry, Houston isn’t the greatest running team, but with more than 40 rushes in both games so far, they’ve shown that they’re committed to it. Holgorsen isn’t looking to have his quarterback throw the ball 60 times per game like you sometimes see from Air Raid QBs. However, he wants to make the most of whatever passes are thrown. So far, he has, with Houston ranking ninth in the country at 9.5 yards per passing attempt.

You can sort of get a sense, then, of how Houston’s experienced offense is a bad matchup for a young Navy defense. How do you attack this? Last year, the Mids tried to come after Tune, but they had difficulty getting to him. Brian Newberry relies on creating confusion along the offensive line, but Houston countered this by simply using max protect on several passing plays. Leaving extra blockers in pass protection ensured that even if one blocker was confused, there was usually someone around him to pick up the rusher he missed. Even with only two or three receivers running a route, as talented as Houston’s receivers are, they’ll eventually get open with enough time. And they did; Tune had a career day, with 393 passing yards and four TDs.

So what are your options? If you bring extra numbers, you leave your secondary in one-on-one matchups against the most veteran receiving corps in the conference. If you zone blitz but can’t get to the quarterback, then you risk having a nose guard covering someone like Keith Corbin on a crossing route. That’s a potential YAC bonanza. If you just sit back, then Tune will nickel and dime his way down the field. None of these options are appealing.

If there’s one wild card in all of this, it’s that I have a sneaking suspicion that Newberry might have something different up his sleeve. Against Temple and ECU, Navy was fairly vanilla in pass defense. At first, I thought it might have been due to the Mids’ lack of experience, with so many starters missing against the Owls. After most of Navy’s injured players returned last week, I thought that perhaps things were scaled back a little because the focus would be on ECU’s running game. There is a third possibility, though; Newberry might not have wanted to tip his hand before facing the league’s top passing offenses. We’ll see. Either way, Navy will have to take some chances; there are no easy answers this week.

Defensively, Houston runs sort of a base 4-2-5, but with a hybrid DE/LB similar to Navy’s Raider position and a hybrid nickel/LB similar to Navy’s Striker. Last year, they lined up in an odd front against the Mids. Their initial plan had the safeties play man defense on Navy's slotbacks. The dive key and pitch key would take the fullback and quarterback, respectively. By playing man-to-man with the slotbacks, the defense hoped to outnumber the offense on the play side by bringing the backside safety to the pitch.

It’s a similar approach to what ECU did last week, and we saw similar adjustments in response. By far, the most effective was the fullback trap.

The biggest reason that the fullback was so effective was that the defense thought it had accounted for him. After all, the dive key on the triple option was always taking the fullback. The problem with that approach is that the triple option isn't the only play in Navy's arsenal. By trapping the dive key, the Mids could still run up the middle with the fullback. The safeties were playing man defense, so the slotbacks ran them to either side of the formation, opening up the middle. The linebackers ran toward the quarterback's first step, anticipating the play to go in that direction. Instead, it was a trap that went the other way, and Jamale Carothers ran to the end zone untouched.

After that, the linebackers became confused and didn't seem to know which way to go for the rest of the game. Navy continued to focus on the safeties, who were still playing man-to-man with the slotbacks. They would motion in one direction, then run the fullback trap in the other direction, where there was no run support available from the secondary.

Unfortunately, last year’s success might work against Navy this year. After the fullback ran wild, you know that defensive coordinator Joe Cauthen will make that his focus on Saturday. It’s a potential issue for Navy since the fullback is the one thing that has been consistently successful for them over the last two weeks. Now, focusing on the fullback doesn’t necessarily mean that the Mids won’t be able to get the fullback going; one could argue that ECU tried to take away the fullback, too. However, it does mean that the Mids will likely need to make plays on the perimeter, which has been a hit-or-miss prospect so far.

That’s the main issue facing Navy this week. This isn’t a game where the Mids can take two or three drives to figure out what works; Houston’s offense can make it 17-0 before Navy knows what hit them. This is a game where Navy will have to work the clock and play with efficiency. They’re at their most efficient when they can effectively run the option. Last week, they couldn’t. Against Temple, they did a little better. I’m not sure that either performance is where it needs to be to hit the ground running against Houston, especially given that we don’t know what the Cougars’ plan will be.

We may have some clues, though. Houston made an interesting personnel change this season, moving Grant Stuard from the SAM/nickel position to the WILL linebacker spot. Stuard was a second-team all-conference performer last year, registering 97 tackles. If Houston’s goal is to indeed force Navy to the outside, then Stuard has the kind of speed you’d want in the middle of the field to track down the ball carrier.

There’s a hint of this in Cauthen’s past. He was the defensive line coach at Middle Tennessee State when the Mids faced them in the Armed Forces Bowl. In that game, the Blue Raiders made extensive use of the EZ stunt, where the dive key and the pitch key exchange responsibilities. It’s designed to confuse the quarterback into making the wrong read, giving the ball to the fullback, who would be met by a stunting outside linebacker. Even if the quarterback makes the right read, though, a fast enough inside linebacker may be able to get to him before getting blocked.

There are many ways to beat this look, but again, it would take consistent execution that we’ve yet to see out of the Navy offense. And like I said, it’s only a guess, anyway.

I don’t mean to sound as doom and gloom as I do. There is a roadmap to a Navy win; control the clock, limit possessions, make the most of every drive, and win it in the fourth quarter. Houston isn’t the 2000 St. Louis Rams. However, they are very talented, and they match up offensively in specific ways that can take advantage of a less experienced Navy defense. If Navy is going to come out on top, they will have to play at a level that we haven’t seen out of them yet.