Film Study: Jaxon Smith-Njigba Was the Centerpiece of Ohio State’s Rose Bowl Game Plan, and He Didn’t Disappoint

347 yards is a lot. It’s 90 yards more than Utah’s scored as a team at the Rose Bowl. He’s just five yards lower than Keegan Jacobs, the main receiver for Big Ten West Iowa Hawkeyes, all season. It’s clearly more than Ohio State Buckeyes produced in a single game.

So, while I’m sure many of you have questions about what happened with Ohio State’s defense in the second half of the Rose Bowl, there’s plenty of time to discuss that over the coming months. Instead, let’s take a few minutes today and enjoy Pasadena’s legendary Jaxon Smith-Njigba performance:

Jackson Smith-Nigba is different Tweet embed

pic.twitter.com/AHmiS6Xepq

– PFF College Football (PFF_College) January 2, 2022

“The landing lane throw, the inside hole fade, the cast, and the catch there is probably as good as I’ve ever seen in a big spot,” Ryan Day said of the sophomore’s third catch of the day, echoing the thoughts of pretty much everyone who watched it.

Although it is easy (and still true) to simply abbreviate the play in JSN DifferentAnd as the tweet announces, that hides the serious work that went on behind the scenes. While Kirk Herbstreet may have declared that you “can’t teach” what Smith Nggba did in this pass, Brian Hartline and Keenan Bailey certainly tried:

/ WIND IT /
verb.

Placing a deep pass catch out and in front of your body, to create a Ball-Me-Defender relationship at the point of capture.

paying off MustafaHosny Oh God, Amen Roll it up in a workout, in training in college, and then in the NFL. # Developed here pic.twitter.com/oXF6vDKhRL

– Keenan Bailey (@CoachKee) March 3, 2021

The combination of great talent and great coaching deserves credit for the record performance of Smith Ngigba and quarterback, CJ Stroud, in last Saturday’s Rose Bowl game. Without Garrett Wilson and Chris Olaf lining up his side, it soon became apparent that Smith Ngigba was the focal point of Day’s game plan to beat the Utes.

This doesn’t mean just throwing the ball at him He goes Knocks per play There was a way to go crazy by throwing 17 passes, 15 of which were caught. Early on, JSN was big on screens and designed to launch the ball into space, but Buckeye’s attack remained fairly level throughout the first quarter.

Once they began to recognize patterns in Utah’s defensive plan, Dai and his team were able to attack the weakest points of the high school. While Clark Phillips III, a former offense of Buckeye, was playing a whale in the game himself as Utes’ left cornerback, allowing only 5 catches for 38 yards in 9 passes thrown his way, Smith-Njigba often lined up away from him for most of the game.

Although the slot receiver was received by trade, it was lined up as an outside receiver when Ohio had two narrow ends, removing the slot. This means that he has often been compared head-on with the return of Micah Bernard in such situations.

While the Buckeyes intended to run the ball out of these heavier formations, they also built Stroud’s pre-read to check the outside corner’s coverage against his star’s receiver, with the duo being single with the numbers on the contrary. field side. Without the safety to assist, Stroud knew the Smith-Njigba would be open at a glance at the “glimpse” concept, in which the receiver takes up the open space given to it, either on a ramp inside or faded outside.

When Bernard closed in hard on the inside to clear the ramp and observe what was happening on the backcourt, he gave Smith-Nigegba plenty of room to break outside and slash the sideline on a dull track. While the rest of the Buckeyes made a running play in the other direction, Stroud pulled the ball away from his run of the back and landed on a perfectly thrown ball giving his goal a chance to run after being caught right in the end zone.

Running pass options (RPOs) have been a consistent part of Day’s game plan throughout the afternoon. While some fans will criticize the imbalance between run and pass, never disregarding the run first attitude inherent in Woody Hayes or Jim Trissel, this was not by design. Stroud simply threw when Utes played the run too hard.

“I thought we had a good mix of running and passing,” Day said after the match, anticipating criticism from a never satisfied fan base. “Some of the things that will appear on the stat sheet as passes are the sprint pass options, whether it’s bubbles or tossing on the field. I thought CJ did an excellent job of executing in those locations.”

Not all of Stroud’s prior readings were surprising either. With all-American quarterback Devin Lloyd sitting in the middle of the field, Buckeyes looked to give him the wrong signals to get him out of the way and open windows that Stroud could throw under.

For example, watch as the Buckeyes actually played three plays in one in the clip below:

While TreVeyon Henderson and the offensive line performed a mid-zone Julian Fleming ran to the border, and ran a bubble screen in the same direction. This action was enough to make Lloyd turn toward him, leaving a window wide open in the middle of the field as Smith-Njigba ran a sloping course that led to a yardage post-hunt.

Moving Lloyd away by creating space for Smith-Njigba between the hashes has been Day’s continued focus as a play communicator, with many of his tactics easily overlooked.

Utah State used more deep peeks in the early drop zones when Ohio State was in the gun, with Lloyd sitting mid-cover. Although the Buckeyes would have liked to align in 2×2 formations, they would fire the run out to the narrow side, causing Lloyd to drift that way, as the rear became the third receiver in that track group.

However, this meant that Lloyd was moving away from where the Smith-Njigba was working between the njigba and safety zones, leaving a window open in the middle of the field.

But despite the talents of Lloyd and fellow supporter Navi Sewell, Day knew they had no chance when they were forced to match up with the star slot man. In order to ensure JSN would be picked up by the linebacker, Day went so far as to line up in the backcourt rather than run backwards before being released, leaving Lloyd and Sewell in the dust.

Although Smith-Njigba was the centerpiece of OSU’s game plan, it was not complete. The Buckeyes struggled to move the ball to the ground in the first half as Utes caused problems along the line of scrimmage.

All season, the Buckeyes favored better ball play than gun looks with Henderson lined up just behind Stroud. However, the opponents were picked up on this direction It was sold to stop running whenever Ohio State lined up this way. One of the ways Utah exploited it was by ‘stopping’ defensive tackles, meaning they would run into one gap just before the ball cut through, creating confusion for Ohio’s offensive linemen.

After the break, the Buckeyes gave up the pistol entirely and moved Stroud under center often. With QB in this mode, he can change the number of shots more easily with his voice, rather than relying on clapping a hand or any other signal to catch the ball. This meant that the Utes had trouble timing their movement before the snap, which meant that they often weren’t set correctly when the ball was caught.

Plus, this under-center movement means OSU will see more men’s coverage, especially when there are two tight ends in play. Utah apparently expected Ohio State to escape these lineups and responded by playing without a man (cover 1) to bring Cole Bishop’s safety into the chest, giving JSN plenty of room to run in the space vacated by defenders who bought the action fake.

All of these minor tweaks allowed the Buckeyes to fight back and eventually hook the game in the fourth quarter. When Ohio State desperately needed a ball move, they looked back at No. 11.

In a decisive fourth place late in the game, the Buckeyes went with an empty formation, and they split Smith-Njigba into the slot on the weak side. Since the outside receiver to this side fired straight in the opposite direction, it meant that Sewell, the weak linebacker, was in charge of defending Smith Ngigba down below as Utes played Quarters High school coverage.

What happened next was something Utah coach Kyle Whittingham knows all too well, given that he was the defensive coordinator for Urban Meyer in Salt Lake City during 2003 and 2004, and took charge of the program when Meyer left for the University of Florida. At that time, one of Meyer’s favorite pass plays was known as H . option, where the aperture receiver runs 8-10 yards straight down the road before breaking in or out, depending on coverage.

One of the keys to the Smith-Njigba’s Elite Road is its ability to shift gears, both when running in a straight line and while getting in and out of breaks. Both were on display because he implemented this concept perfectly.

Watch as he seems to explode down the field after a few stuttering steps on the line, causing Sewell to panic and trying to slow him down by contact. But JSN was hoping to get Sewell to do something like this, knowing that he was immediately cut to the outside before the slower defender could achieve a clean hit, leaving the receiver wide open and Sewell holding the air.

Not many veteran NFL receivers would be able to run such a route perfectly, but here’s Smith-Njigba, just a sophomore and with the Rose Bowl on the line, making it look easy. No wonder Pro Football Focus gave him the third-highest receiving score of any player this season, trailing only a pair of receivers from the service academies who saw just a fraction of Smith-Njigba’s goals.

His PFF score of 92.0 surpassed Pete winner Jordan Addison of Pelletnikov (88.3), finalist David Bell of Purdue (86.9), and Jameson Williams of Alabama (84.4). In a year where the broad-based NFL draft class is exceptionally deep, Smith-Nigegba also outperformed predicted first rounds as USC’s Drake London (91.8), and OSU teammates Garrett Wilson (84.5) and Chris Olave (79.9), Arkansas . Treylon Burks (90.8) and Jahan Dotson of Pennsylvania State (87.2).

While Stroud is already considered Heisman’s frontrunner next season after finishing fourth in the poll last fall, Smith Ngigba has cemented his place in the conversation as well, thanks in large part to his performance on one of the sport’s biggest stages. .

“Sure, some of the plays he did tonight were phenomenal,” Day said after the match. “We relied on him a lot.” “I once asked him, ‘Are you tired? In the play I caught Clark he looked at me like What are you asking of me? Are you crazy? I’m going back there. And I played one of probably the best games in Rose Bowl history.'”