Break It Down: Nova Uses Trips to Tear Up the Hogs

Gary Nova enjoyed by far the best passing game of his young career against Arkansas two weeks ago, as he completed 25/35 passes (71%) for 397 yards (11.3 per attempt) with 5 touchdowns and no interceptions. With a performance like that following a break out game against South Florida, Rutgers' fans confidence in Nova has sky rocketed, and it appears that he can be more than just a game manager this year. Now that the schemes no longer need to be vanilla, Nova has been able to use his arm strength to beat opposing defenses deep, and the multitude of deep threats he has at receiver have allowed him to put up big numbers.

Against Arkansas, Dave Brock took advantage of an inexperienced Hogs secondary that seemed to be poorly coached, by using trips formations. A trips formation is exactly what it sounds like: three receivers are lined up to the same side of the formation. Normally, defenses will play zone to the trips side, and leave few defenders on the backside, where the offense knows they will get man coverage almost all of the time. Nova bookended his day with two touchdowns out of trips.

Down 10-0 early in the second quarter, Rutgers had their drive extended after an Arkansas defender jumped offsides on a field goal try. On the first play after the penalty, Nova tossed a 10 yard score to Jawan Jamison. (Click to view full size. Video is here.)

Arkansas had their base 4-3 personnel on the field, while Rutgers lined up in a four receiver shotgun formation with trips to the left. The Hogs rotated their defense over to the trips side, with the corner, strong safey and middle linebacker over the three receivers, and the free safety over the top of them. The SAM backer blitzes from the trips side, and for some reason, Arkansas played man coverage* with the free safety playing deep half. As you can see in the picture above, the right side of the field is wide open and Rutgers takes advantage. Kaleb Johnson kicks slides back to pick up the blitzer off the edge, and Brandon Coleman ran the corner out of the play by running a 5 yard dig, leaving Jamison a ton of grass to out run the outside linebacker, who was directly across from him. Nova delivers a nice touch pass, and Jamison out jumps the defender for the score. This route design is similar to a post/wheel combination, which is one of the oldest and best route combination used today.

*Man to man usually spells disaster against trips, since the offense usually designs the receivers to cross paths and rub defenders, and I can't recall a defense doing that before. That's just bad coaching. Tyler Kroft, RU's inner receiver, runs a flat route to the side line and the guy covering him thinks he's switching men with the corner, so there's nobody even close to him.

Nova threw his final TD pass of the day when Brock called a pass out of trips after Arkansas pulled to with in 2 in the fourth quarter.(Click to enlarge, here's the video)

Rutgers comes out in basically the same formation as the first TD pass Nova threw, but the receives are a bit more spread out, and Arkansas (I think) brings their nickel package in and once again plays man to man with the free safety covering the deep half over the trips. On the back side, Mark Harrison shakes the corner and runs past him on a go route, catches the pass from Nova in stride and scores a 60 yard touch down to put the Scarlet Knights up by two scores.

With Rutgers big, fast, physical receivers and a strong armed QB, running isolated routes on the back side of trips should be a major part of their passing game going forward. The receivers are capable of over powering or out running almost any corner in the Big East, and with no safety over the top, they should be open deep, and Nova is capable of making those kinds of throws. If teams start defending the backside of trips formations more, the trips receivers could be dangerous running route combinations with more room to work with.