A few years ago, Cal caught the Cats flatfooted by subbing in Luke Rubenzer for Jared Goff on plays during their first two series, scoring touchdowns on both drives. Anyone thinks there's a chance McCall would insert Alviti on an early drive for a few downs to confuse the Badgers? With the bye week, they would have time to script the situation and calls - for example an Alviti keeper on a second and 3 - and could insert and go with little confusion.
Mindless speculation since it's bye week
- Thread starter eastbaycat99
- Start date
We could, but I'm not sure it would get us much. The reason the Cal trick worked is that Goff and Rubenzer had completely different skillsets; Goff was basically a statue in the pocket of the Bear Raid and our defense would have prepared accordingly, while Rubenzer was clearly a pretty good athlete (has since moved to safety, starting a handful of games there last season) who was almost exclusively a runner. Thorson is still enough of a running threat that defenses will have to account for QB runs in their game plan, unlike Goff (owner of -144 career collegiate rushing yards).
Add it all up and I don't think there's enough "surprise factor" to make an Alviti run package terribly successful, especially if it's only used in short-yardage situations as you described.
I don't mind the idea of mixing it up a bit every now and then by giving Alviti, say, a couple/few snaps each half, just to keep the defense honest and give the D maybe one more thing to think about. However - and I'm not saying I want to see Alviti chucking it all over the yard, BUT - any edge we may gain here by mixing it up a bit is, IMO, lost if the insertion of Alviti AUTOMATICALLY means a running play (most likely a QB keeper). If putting Alviti in means Wisconsin immediately moves eight guys into the box, and we still run it anyway, that doesn't sound like a recipe for much success. Nothing wrong with Alviti taking a handful of snaps each game, but it's not really useful if the defense hardly has to honor the pass at all. Matt doesn't have a cannon, but there are plenty of short and intermediate throws he's quite capable of making. Obviously, Thorson is the guy we want in there the vast majority of the time, but I'd be on board with giving Alviti, say, 5-6 snaps per game just to toss a different look at the defense.
Wouldn't hurt to use the bye week to prepare some trickeration. But against a fundamentally sound team such as Wisconsin the main thing is to just refine some basic blocking and tackling skills to ensure we don't have a repeat of the first two weeks. Also need to tighten up the depleted secondary and avoid assignment mistakes. Hornibrook hit 18 of 19 passes against BYU, and the Cats will be in for a long afternoon if he's anything close to that when we play them.
Part of the advantage of inserting Alviti for a few situations on the first drive is that it makes the Wisconsin coaching staff spend time after the first possession going over what changes with the position groups with Alviti in rather than adjusting to the more regular Thorson sets. Essentially, since the Cats have scripted it, it does not affect their adjustments while Wisconsin has to burn focus reacting.
I agree. However, Alviti looked pretty good passing in limited action against Duke. How about a rollout for Alviti where he has an intermediate pass option but would run if it's not there? Probably not earth shattering success rate but if you did that early on, it would make them back off on D, and potentially open up some running room on later Alviti plays.
Very interesting game, Badgers of course would love to run it down NW's throats but we have the most talented WR corps, maybe since Chris Chambers and Lee Evans, so we want to keep throwing too.
Danny Davis, AJ Taylor, Quintez Cephus, Jazz Peavy and the TE's led by Fumagali are a very talented group, if the OL can continue to protect, Badgers should score a lot of points this season.
Yeah, last time we tried this (ex garbage time situations) was against @OSU last year for a few plays (once in the red zone). It didn't work great, not sure if they had scouted it and knew to play for the QB run, or just beat our OL off the ball. Probably both.
I think it's worth a try for a few plays as a wrinkle, would agree though that you shouldn't just straight QB run - mix it up a little bit, he did look better throwing against Duke.
Remind me, was Alviti throwing against Duke with the game on the line, with Duke going all-out on defense?
Didn't think so.
I'm happy for him that he's making the most of his playing time, and it's great to see that we have a fairly capable backup should anything happen to Thorson, but this idea of doing a two QB scheme is nonsense.
How about just getting the OL to protect well on regular plays, and the WRs actually getting separation against Power 5 defenses?
If NU could run the option, Alviti could be the better option QB. Might have to reclaim Long for the dive back, cause that guy will have to do serious blocking on this team, but it would be nice to have Alviti and JJTBC running wide, looking for gaps.
Think you'll see a lot of surprises against Wisky. Not expecting Alviti to be one of them, though.
The more we can confuse Wisconsin, the greater chance we have to beat them. They are and always have been a very conventional and unimaginative team, which doesn't respond well to things they don't expect, if done well. What will beat us is that we play into their strengths, which is their running game that allows their passing game. If we can score on offense, by mixing it up, we will win.
Agreed.
In 2009, we saw a similiar approach with the Persa package and it wasn't that successful either in large part because defenses were prepared for the running threat Kafka presented. While there was value in getting Dan live action reps (NU needed to call on him later in season), it's a different story with Alviti. It really comes down to allocating limited practice time. Bang for the buck and whatnot.
As far as "suprises" are concerned, I'm not sure we'll see anything other than perhaps one of Fitz's classic trick plays (WR pass series) if the situation presents itself. The staff tends keep those under wraps until conference play begins.
Schematically speaking, McCall could opt to use some tactics we haven't seen much of this year like RPO's, bubble/boundary screens, or the inside zone (see @MSU '16), but that would be more dependent on how much confidence he has in their execution and what the Badgers are currently implementing defensively (of which I have little knowledge).
Last edited:
