Maybe the coolest play in college football’s Week 5 — and definitely the one with the best catch at the end of it — happened in the second quarter of Sam Houston State’s 34-31 win against Central Arkansas. This was the highlight of their ranked FCS battle:
College football’s CATCH OF THE YEAR so far, explained by the OC who drew up the whole weird play
An exotic formation set up an unreal grab, with a sensible plan behind it all.
The Bearkats faced second-and-five just outside the Bears’ 20-yard line. SHSU came out in a weird formation, with four of five offensive linemen basically on the numbers on the right side of the field. The snapper was back near the middle, along with the QB and two fullback/tight end-type blockers.
A lone receiver, Davion Davis — one of the best in FCS — flexed out wide to the left. He’d be the touchdown-scorer.
Why’d SHSU need such a weird formation to do something as simple as throwing up a 20-yard lob to a single-covered receiver?
A fair question. Let’s talk to offensive coordinator Ryan Carty about it.
The formation is exotic, but its goal is the same as any other: to give the Bearkats the right matchups in a certain space and get the ball wherever that is.
Sam Houston State operates out of a similar formation once or twice per game. The Bearkats use that set for run/pass options, with different concepts built in.
“It’s not always the same thing,” Carty says. “We try to kind of vary it out, move the linemen around a little bit in different places. Usually, it’s to either throw some sort of perimeter screen or maybe run some inside zone from a little bit of a stretched out look. And sometimes to isolate a one-on-one and give a lot of space to one of our best players.”
This formation creates three options, generally. But without a running back next to him, the QB has to make the read before he takes the snap:
- A pass to the receiver on the left side of the field
- A QB run behind the three blockers in the middle
- A pass to the right — probably a screen, but maybe a throw to the receiver on the end of the line, who’s also eligible because of how the Bearkats line up
“It’s something that we wanna make sure we do in design,” Carty says. “Make sure that everyone’s eligible that can be, so we can make sure that they have to cover them. You don’t wanna get out there and waste people.”
But the UCA defense didn’t give SHSU any obvious numbers advantages.
SHSU didn’t have an opportunity in the middle of the field, where three blockers had defenders to occupy them, and at least one free runner was there to counter a quarterback run.
The Bearkats might have had numbers on the right, where five potential blockers stood in front of five defenders, with a man behind them who could catch a screen pass. The receiver on the end of the line was eligible to catch, too. But a Central Arkansas safety was lurking nearby and threatened to imbalance the numbers:
Thus the UCA defense made SHSU’s picture hazy in two sectors of the field.
“We have no idea how somebody’s going to align to that,” Carty says. “It’s not something that you have seen on tape. It’s something that we’ve imagined as an offensive staff and decided that we wanted to do that this week, so it’s something that’s gonna obviously be a free-flowing, fluid type of quarterback read there.”
But one part of the field gave the Bearkats something they loved: a clear one-on-one for Davis, a senior who had 17 touchdowns and 1,200 yards last year.
Nathan Stewart, another top-echelon FCS receiver, was the man on the other end of the formation. When the Bearkats get either guy singled up, they like it. They’re fine using the spread to create isolation, even if they can’t outnumber the defense anywhere.
“I said it from the sidelines: ‘Oh boy, this is not extremely high-percentage,’ but it’s still two of the best players in the country at our level,” Carty says. “So, they’re gonna be in a one-on-one? A little bit more high-percentage than some other places.”
When the defense covers the formation this way, football becomes what Mike Gundy calls “basketball on grass.” SHSU cleared out the paint and let an elite receiver drive to the hoop.
With the defense showing its cards and Davis on the outside, all QB Ty Brock had to do was put some air under the ball.
Davis handled business from there. The Bearkats got down to the UCA 2 on the play, and Brock punched in on a QB keeper the next play.
This play’s really cool, and the brilliant catch at the end makes it memorable. But it’s not a ridiculous gimmick.
Carty’s a former New Hampshire assistant and comes from the Chip Kelly coaching tree. At Oregon in the early 2010s, Kelly was among the coaches who popularized the swinging-gate formation on 2-point conversions, with large sets of blockers situated far away from the snapper and kicker. Kelly would send film to his old school, UNH, where Carty was the offensive coordinator.
And Carty had a thought about unusual spread formations: if they could work on 2-pointers, why couldn’t they work in bigger areas of the field?
“In the open field, you actually have to consider covering deep as well, so you can probably even gain some more leverage on the run game stuff as well if you’re getting safeties that play high,” he says now. So the Bearkats use the formation in open play, too.
“We wanna make sure that we’re getting 4 yards on that play” he says. “If we can get more, tremendous. But we wanna make sure that it’s just a normal first- and second-down call to just move the chains, stay on pace, stay on schedule, and if we can get a big play out of it, that’s outstanding.”
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