Maryland Maze

I hope everyone managed to read the last Maze. There was good information in there for you on how to set up your playbooks and formations. I know the information might have been different from what you run but considering it was coming from blitziscomin who is a studly coach I would pay attention and think about what he said. We have looked at a conference as a whole and dove into their offenses, and today we focus on Maryland with their first year coach Philfulmer98.

We are going to start by asking do they throw more or do they run more? This would be the first question on my mind if I am preparing to face Maryland.

It looks like the coach likes to throw the ball, 88%, that is a lot of throwing. Now that has been answered the next question is when does he like to throw the most, first, second or third down?

So across the board it seems like the coach likes to chuck the ball in the air, which is no surprise. Throwing seems to work for the most part or maybe it is just that a lot of people throw. The coaches that run also seem to be successful but there are very few of those, the most famous is chrondon. Maryland on fourth down seems to run more than any other down which surprises me, I would think he would go all out throw to get the first down but I guess he might want to throw the defense off by running. Now who is making the plays on offense?

In the passing game WR2 seems like the one who makes the most plays, I know it's just a few more than WR1. I would have thought WR1 would be leading the way in the pass game. I wonder if the defenses have just been taking him out. The TE has been making more plays than WR3. The QB has been scrambling a bit too much it seems, definitely need to upgrade the offensive line to keep him upright so that he throws the ball considering how much the coach likes to throw the ball.

Considering the formation breakdown, it makes sense that WR3 does not make a lot of plays but WR1 has to be making more plays and I am surprised the RB is not involved in the pass game according to the data I managed to pull. There might be some data that I am missing which shows him making plays in the pass game.

Now we see that the coach likes Pro Set but the higher formation IQ is with the Trips formation, which tells me the coach is switching formations or maybe just adding a new formation to the gameplan. He is running a formation with a low formation IQ and is managing to win games, that tells me he knows how to gameplan and use what is available in his toolbox. Imagine how he is going to do when the formation IQ is high and he has had a few seasons to recruit the guys he want for his philosophy. Maryland might be one to watch out for.

Also want to know the passing distance.

The coach is going medium, 85% of the time and the remaining is all short. There are no long or deep throws, which is somewhat surprising. I would have thought there would be at least a few in there but that data says nope. With him throwing medium and just winning he is saying my guys will beat your guys and bring it on. Again imagine a few more seasons with him recruiting and this gameplan, the ACC might be in trouble, nah I will take it a step further, Wilk might be in trouble.

Now here is a breakdown of how the distances go by down. On first as shown above is mainly medium and it decreases as you go towards the fourth down. The offense keeps closing down the distance to the next first down so they start throwing shorter as expected. This should be no surprise, it is not rocket science. I believe this just confirms somethings we already knew, which never hurts.

Now also have a further breakdown. We break it down by formation. It seems as if with Trips it is almost always medium distance and with Pro Set we have some medium and short passes. On fourth down the coach only runs Pro Set and mainly goes short which makes sense, you expect the offense to only go for it on short distances and they would have moved the ball down the field a bit.

On first down the WR go medium, second down there are some short routes and this is true the rest of the downs. Now we want to know the average yardage per down, the team is getting.

If you are getting 8 yards on first down on average I think it is safe to say your offense is clicking well. Once you have such a huge chunk of the needed yardage I think the likelihood of getting a first down increases. Whatever he is doing is working, all of this shows kind of what he is doing to get the results he has been getting, win after win after win.

I think his might be a safe spot to stop. We have confirmed a few things that we thought we knew about Maryland. They are who we though they were, a passing team that is switching offenses from Trips to Pro Set. They are potent on offense and the results show. I will end the Maze here so that we can all watch some football tonight. Until the next time, take it easy.