What was with all the motion?

guffus

Well-Known Member
It was obvious early in the NW game that Iowa was putting a lot more players in motion before the snap, sometimes even having 2 players in motion.

My question is, since I don't have a good understanding of why teams do this, i was wondering what was Iowa trying to accomplish by having so many players go in motion?
 
A lot of it is to make teams adjust their alignment which will give the offense a chance to call plays based on the adjustments. Does the DL shift to gaps, LB's slide, etc. A lot of Iowa's run game is based on body count. People always rag on Iowa about changing to a run to the boundary, but it's all about count. For example, if we have 5 bodies to their 4 on that side, the play may get changed or if the numbers aren't in our favor, a play may get changed (not necessarily at the LOS, but in future calls to that motion). That's just one example. It's the same with post-snap "motion" with a jet sweep motion to see what the defense does to account for it. I'm guessing something Iowa saw made us run it more than most weeks.

The other thing is to see which pass defense a team is in. If someone follows motion, it's man. If not, it may be zone. If it's zone based on a certain motion, we can call plays to attack that zone. If it's man, we can use certain motion to get matchups we want or get an area to our advantage (to run a rub, get one particular receiver with a favorable matchup on an island, etc).

Other things could be to simply set up tendencies to break them later, such as motioning a FB or TE to load up a side to run behind.

Against different defenses, there are a lot of reasons to use motion, so I can't say exactly why all of the motion was used. As much as so many will disagree with me, BF really does know what he's doing (some do it better than others, though). There's a lot more to it than just looking at a play sheet and randomly calling something. People say we have such a simple offense, but there's so much more to it than thinking we're seeing the same plays over and over again.

By no means does this all apply to Iowa or the Iowa/NW game, just general reasons teams use motion. I've been a HS DC for 25 years and the more I know, the more I realize that I don't know much at all, so I'm positive there are many more intricate reasons for using motion.
 
A lot of it is to make teams adjust their alignment which will give the offense a chance to call plays based on the adjustments. Does the DL shift to gaps, LB's slide, etc. A lot of Iowa's run game is based on body count. People always rag on Iowa about changing to a run to the boundary, but it's all about count. For example, if we have 5 bodies to their 4 on that side, the play may get changed or if the numbers aren't in our favor, a play may get changed (not necessarily at the LOS, but in future calls to that motion). That's just one example. It's the same with post-snap "motion" with a jet sweep motion to see what the defense does to account for it. I'm guessing something Iowa saw made us run it more than most weeks.

The other thing is to see which pass defense a team is in. If someone follows motion, it's man. If not, it may be zone. If it's zone based on a certain motion, we can call plays to attack that zone. If it's man, we can use certain motion to get matchups we want or get an area to our advantage (to run a rub, get one particular receiver with a favorable matchup on an island, etc).

Other things could be to simply set up tendencies to break them later, such as motioning a FB or TE to load up a side to run behind.

Against different defenses, there are a lot of reasons to use motion, so I can't say exactly why all of the motion was used. As much as so many will disagree with me, BF really does know what he's doing (some do it better than others, though). There's a lot more to it than just looking at a play sheet and randomly calling something. People say we have such a simple offense, but there's so much more to it than thinking we're seeing the same plays over and over again.

By no means does this all apply to Iowa or the Iowa/NW game, just general reasons teams use motion. I've been a HS DC for 25 years and the more I know, the more I realize that I don't know much at all, so I'm positive there are many more intricate reasons for using motion.
This is a damn good explanation.
The second paragraph is key. It gives the QB more info before the ball is snapped.

The offense last Saturday looked a lot more like the offense we ran against USC that had them on their heels - the motion and realignments.
(I think, that game has become a little fuzzy as we were partying pretty decently that day).
I think it was more representative of what BF wants to do on offense and less of what KF does.
 
This is a damn good explanation.
The second paragraph is key. It gives the QB more info before the ball is snapped.

The offense last Saturday looked a lot more like the offense we ran against USC that had them on their heels - the motion and realignments.
(I think, that game has become a little fuzzy as we were partying pretty decently that day).
I think it was more representative of what BF wants to do on offense and less of what KF does.

KF doesn't like it because it dramatically increases the chances of a pre-snap motion penalty and negative play as a result.
 
It was obvious early in the NW game that Iowa was putting a lot more players in motion before the snap, sometimes even having 2 players in motion.

My question is, since I don't have a good understanding of why teams do this, i was wondering what was Iowa trying to accomplish by having so many players go in motion?

The main goal of motion really isn't to "trick" the defense. These players and coaches have been around too long now.

The goal of motion is for two reasons. 1) Information gathering for the QB - The guy goes in motion so the QB can see if the defense is going to play man or zone. This will give the QB a heads up and advantage. 2) Motion can get certain defenders out of the play or box on occasion. Maybe put a guy in motion to pull a defender away.

I don't know why they have been going away from it, to be honest. Iowa used to put players in motion all the time in previous years. I clearly remember Urban Meyer breaking down a Hawk game on the BIG network in his segment a couple years ago and did a great job of explaining the reasoning of doing it.
 
This is a damn good explanation.
The second paragraph is key. It gives the QB more info before the ball is snapped.

The offense last Saturday looked a lot more like the offense we ran against USC that had them on their heels - the motion and realignments.
(I think, that game has become a little fuzzy as we were partying pretty decently that day).
I think it was more representative of what BF wants to do on offense and less of what KF does.
You weren't the only one partying. I had my own pick six that night.

From the garage. And it was more than six.
 

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