This Week in Badgers: Braelon Allen and Those Stacked Boxes
Welcome to This Week in Badgers where we don't think about the basketball team and instead go long with some Braelon Allen theories. But first, some things that caught my interest.
Interesting Things:
Enjoyed Colten’s profile of the person behind the social media strategy. This staff doesn't do anything without letting you know about it, which I complain about and also love.
Colten also profiled the “chief of staff” who has an interesting personal history and talks about Fickell like he is an actual President. I know who to bring my BRING BACK THE BLOCK W idea too.
Jesse broke down the returning production, lots of PFF snap count numbers which I appreciate. Reading everyone listed, I’m pretty bullish on the OL group this year if they can adjust to a new system.
If I ever start talking about how fast a former Badger runs at the combine do a wellness check. Despite being extremely online and inundated with tweets about it, I will not fall for it!
Braelon Allen and the Air Raid
We are officially in Projection Season. Temple busted out the snap counts, BuckAround broke down the offense, Bill Connelly is starting to stir, rosters are mostly set and we’re so close to getting more information on what 2023 will look like with Spring Practice The Launch approaching.
I don’t need to tell you Wisconsin’s offensive projections are more of a guessing game then they’ve been in a while — a brand new offense and a ton of new players will do that. Reading and listening to various guesses out there, they mostly make logical sense even if they’re sure to be wrong. Look at current players, Longo’s past offenses and slot guys in accordingly. Done.
In projecting current players a common theme is that Braelon Allen will be much improved with a “lighter box” aka fewer defenders around the of scrimmage.
Braelon Allen himself seems to subscribe to this theory.
What I want to propose today is, maybe it’s not that big of deal?
I’ve got two thoughts here
Do lighter boxes actually equal a better running game?
Did Allen actually benefit from more people around the line of scrimmage?
Lighter Boxes
In theory, spreading everyone out means RBs have fewer guys to beat and voila, but defenses have spent 30 years improving how they defend this strategy. Just think about how the Badgers wasted Jim Sorgi's prime by having no idea how to defend the spread-option in the early 2000s and how Leonhard’s defenses rarely seemed to struggle with it. It has sort of become like every other strategy, with the right (good) players it works and with the wrong (less good) players it doesn't.
Let’s look at Longo’s top two RBs during his time at UNC:
2022: 4.3 ypc
2021: 6.5 ypc
2020: 7.6 ypc
2019: 5.6 ypc
I’ll say this a few times in this newsletter, these numbers are devoid of any context and we shouldn’t take too much from them, BUT I think a takeaway is that Longo’s system will work perfectly fine, even great for RBs (2020) but isn’t going to be a cure-all (2022). We can all probably agree Braelon Allen is some level of good, and it’s a fair assumption that the Longo offense won’t hurt his production too much.
But how much will it help, and will there be a learning curve?
I bring up the learning curve just because I somehow think this offensive change is being underrated by Badger fans. Former UNC RB Michael Carter, the decorated college player and NFL Draft pick is at least one example of a recent RB transitioning to a Longo offense. He put up 84-597, 7.11 YPC in 2018 under non-Air Raid OC Chris Kapilovic, then 177-1003, 5.7 ypc his first year with Longo before breaking out at nearly 8 ypc in 2020. Again, there’s a lot that goes into these stats, just throwing this out there as a data point that sometimes it takes some time.
Even if Longo says it can be installed in 4 hours, learning and adapting your playing style to a entirely new offense is hard! It’s not just Allen that needs to adjust, it’s the OL, TE and WRs who will be blocking for him adjusting as well.
Stacked Boxes
Anyways back to Allen. Have “stacked boxes” hurt him as a runner?
Common sentiment on this one seems to be if he had 847 yards against 8+ man boxes, just imagine how well he will do with 5 or 6 guys near the line! I don’t think anyone is saying “wow he’s really good against 8+ man boxes they should try to get him in those situations more often” and while I won’t go to that extreme, it's worth exploring.
Allen is a unique player in that while he’s big for a RB size-wise, his running style up to this point has been using his strength to withstand the first line of defense and then popping big runs. Despite his size he isn’t the John Clay/PJ Hill type to plow ahead and turn a 1 yard hole into a 4 yard gain, in fact he’s mostly been the opposite. His game lines usually include a handful of 0-2 yard gains with some 20+ yard bursts.
The team put together some examples for us below:
His stats bear that out too. It was a big talking point last year the Badgers were predictable on 1st downs and the opponent was geared up for the run, but that was actually where Allen performed best:
First Down: 142-852, 6.0 per rush
Second Down: 66-298, 4.52 per rush
3rd down: 20-90, 4.50 per rush
AGAIN, some context with these numbers. The first down numbers are greatly helped by the 96 yard run against Illinois State (a classic crowd the line with nobody behind it defense), but if we want to be generous and take that out we’re down to 5.4 per carry, still a big jump from 2nd and 3rd down stats.
If you’re a certain kind of RB stacked boxes don’t necessarily matter. Melvin Gordon absolutely did not care about stacked boxes, which he saw a lot of, because he was basically fast enough to outrun the first level and then it was all over. You could argue at the time it was the wrong strategy to bring that safety up to the line when Gordon was on the other side. Allen is like a lesser version of this where he’s not outrunning the first level but is strong enough to stay on his feet and look for an opening for big yards.
To use a car analogy, I feel like when evaluating college RBs you look at the first and second gear they have. First gear is quick hitting the hole before the defense can react. Anthony Davis, Brian Calhoun, James White and Montee Ball are a few recent-ish guys that had an amazing first gear. Jonathan Taylor was amazing at both. Gordon was fine with the first gear but absolutely insane with the second gear. So far I think Allen has some question marks on the first gear but when he has an opening and needs to shift gears he can accelerate quite well.
With 5 or 6 guys near the line of scrimmage there will obviously be fewer guys to beat at the line but also a lot more behind them that could limit big runs. Air Raid RBs have stereotypically been the quick/nimble guys who can burst through the hole before the back-end defenders realize it’s a run, and Allen to this point has been much more patient in his approach and goes against the stereotype.
Ultimately my question is — if the defense is more spread out and some of the big play chunks are reduced, can Allen adapt his style to be more of the consistent 5-6 yard per carry, quick burst guy instead of the boom or bust guy we have seen so far? I think he could. You could argue he was just playing the role he needed to play with Chryst’s offense and taking what the defense gave him. That might be true to some extent but does feel like had some struggles figuring out when to wait and when to plow forward.
But ultimately we just haven’t seen it yet, I think if it does happen it might take some time as he gets some reps and is much more of an unknown than the off-season unstacking the box hype train would have you believe. ✌️
I've been yelling into the internet void about Allen in this offense all offseason. My main concern is how effective he can be running out of the shotgun. To your point, I feel like shotgun runs tend to favor smaller, nimbler backs. Handing off to a bigger back when he's flat-footed feels sub-optimal to me, especially with how indecisive Allen was last year. I feel like he'd be at his best going down-hill at the point of the handoff (but what do I know?). Also, remember a few years ago (can't remember if it was under Andersen or Chryst) when they introduced more shotgun runs and the fanbase went berserk?