The most successful football coaches are the ones who put their players in the best possible position to produce. When a player is struggling, the best coaches make things more simple for them to allow that player to emphasize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
This is what Wisconsin Badgers head coach Paul Chryst and his staff have done this season with redshirt senior quarterback Bart Houston, who struggled early in the year before finding a rotational role in the offense.
With redshirt freshman quarterback Alex Hornibrook's presence questionable for Saturday’s Big Ten Championship Game due to a head injury, the No. 6 Badgers (7-2 Big Ten, 10-2 overall) may have to rely on Houston once again to lead them to victory against No. 7 Penn State (8-1, 10-2) the way he did last week against Minnesota.
Chryst and the coaching staff do an excellent job of making things easier for their strong-armed senior, who has a tendency to make poor decisions with the ball. They don’t ask Houston to do too much, but they still find ways for him to give Wisconsin an effective passing attack to complement its ground game.
One of the main things they do to accomplish this is simplifying the read for the quarterback. Rarely does Chryst ask Houston to go through a full progression, and certainly never more than once on the same play. The Badgers’ passing offense instead features a lot of rollouts, play-action fakes and quicker throws that all make it easier on the quarterback.
“Coach Chryst, he knows me very well and knows what type of player I am. Those are just some easy, 1-2-3 reads that are really simple [and] get the ball out really quickly,” Houston said. “It gets you into a rhythm and it gets the offense into a rhythm.”
Wisconsin’s first touchdown-scoring drive against Minnesota was a great example of how the offense as a whole functions to put Houston in position to succeed, which in turn put points on the board.
It was a 10-play, 80-yard, touchdown-scoring series that saw the fifth-year quarterback go 3-of-3 for 48 of those yards. After starting the drive with a short run, the second play call had Houston rolling out of the pocket to fire to an open junior wide receiver Jazz Peavy.
The rollout specifically cuts the field in half for the quarterback, and any routes run on the half he is rolling away from essentially become distractions for the defense. Houston knew pre-snap based on the defense’s alignment that Peavy would be open on the deep curl route, and he never had to look anywhere else on the completion for 14 yards.
— Lorin Cox (@CoxSports1) December 1, 2016
Chryst followed that up with a jet sweep handoff to Peavy that picked up 15 yards and another first down, and all of a sudden, the Badgers were at midfield and rolling. Then they came back to Houston, giving him an easy 1-2-3 read for another first down.
His “1” was redshirt junior tight end Troy Fumagalli, and Houston could tell before he finished his dropback that he was going to throw that way. Fumagalli took an outside release off of the line of scrimmage, and the cornerback shifted inside as a result, so when the tight end broke to the outside downfield, there was plenty of separation for the catch.
— Lorin Cox (@CoxSports1) December 1, 2016
After that completion, the Badgers ran the ball two more times, one of which was the exact same play and formation as the first run of the drive. The threat of Wisconsin coming back to the same play paid off on Houston’s third throw, when he ran a play-action fake to Peavy on the jet sweep motion.
That sucked in the coverage defenders in the middle of the field, creating more vertical space for his two receivers to run deep crossing routes over the top. Houston only had two route-runners on the play as his tight end and running back stayed in to block, so all he had to do was read the safety in the middle of the field and wait for him to pick a receiver.
With good pass protection from his seven blockers, he was able to wait for the play to develop and find wide open true freshman wide receiver Quintez Cephus across the field. Houston actually underthrew the ball, and had he led Cephus with a better pass, it would have been a 30-yard touchdown.
— Lorin Cox (@CoxSports1) December 1, 2016
Instead, he got 22 yards, and three runs later Wisconsin had a 7-3 lead. Houston didn’t have to try and read the whole defense on the fly; all he had to do was watch one or two specific defenders in the same area and make the easy read and throw. It was simple, yet effective, and it’s exactly what the Badgers will need against the Nittany Lions.
It’s up to Chryst to continue to find route concepts that are easy, but not too predictable in order to keep Penn State’s defense guessing, instead of his own quarterback. Combine that with a reliable rushing attack and a strong defense, and that’s the formula for winning the Big Ten.
This is exactly why Chryst won Big Ten Coach of the Year. He continues to find ways to put his players in the best position to succeed, and they have a championship berth to show for it.
