When the Badgers traveled to Evanston, Illinois 13 months ago, Northwestern’s offense ran all over Dave Aranda’s defense en route to a 20-14 win. The Wisconsin defensive coordinator wants to make sure this Saturday won’t be the same.
“It’s a big challenge,” Aranda said. “I don’t know if there has been one team that has been able to really stop them running the ball.”
The Wildcats’ rushing attack is led by sophomore running back Justin Jackson, a shifty runner who is on pace to eclipse 1,000 yards for the second straight season. He excels at remaining patient, reading the defense in their zone blocking scheme.
One particular type of run they execute well is the outside zone, “stretch” run. This gets the offensive linemen moving laterally, and the running back picks his rushing lane based on how the blocks play out in front of him.
The running back reads the block on the defender outside of the offensive tackle in order to determine whether the run should go outside or inside, and if he goes inside, the runner reads the interior blocks to see how far back to cut back, and picks his hole.
Because there’s not a specific lane that the line is setting up for, it forces the defense to account for each gap in the run game, and if any individual defender doesn’t do their job, it creates an opening. All 11 players on defense have to be disciplined to stop it.
“Well you want to be able to set an edge so you dictate the force, as opposed to them cracking your edges and them dictating it,” Aranda said. “So you want to get that, and then you want to try to stay alive inside. They do a great job of pinning the inside defenders, trying to eliminate the [Arthur] Goldberg’s of the world.”
As the coach alluded to, stopping the outside zone starts with the outside defender in the front seven. The running back is going to read him first, so he has to be strong to force the running back away.
The defensive linemen have to hold the backside to contain, and then it’s on the linebackers to float over and fill the gaps between the linemen. They can’t over-pursue to the outside and let running backs work back inside across them, and they can’t be too hesitant and stay inside, or else the runner will break it to the edge.
Wisconsin has really struggled to defend outside zone runs this season. In one game in particular, the Badgers were worn down by the zone runs the same way they were last year against Northwestern.
“I think it almost brings it back to the Iowa game, to be honest,” redshirt freshman inside linebacker T.J. Edwards. “There was a lot of outside zone they ran against us, and I think stopping it is just staying square with your shoulders, especially with linebackers.”
His coach pointed to issues from the same game.
“I go back to the Iowa game,” Aranda said. “We had some issues with the stretch runs with us over-running it to get to the outside, and then they were hitting it up inside.”
It was Edwards and redshirt freshman Chris Orr who led the defense from the inside against Iowa. Certainly they weren’t the only ones who made mistakes in the game, and it’s on the whole defense to step up against Northwestern.
“You have to see the flow of the interior guys,” Edwards said. “You have to see which way the guards are working, and then once they’re moving, you know it’s a shuffle, and you’re going with them and playing to the ball.”
Iowa this year and Northwestern last year are two of the few teams that have been able to beat Wisconsin recently, and they did with their stretch runs. Stopping these on Saturday will be key to avoiding the same end result.
