If you didn’t know any better, you might have thought JMU lost to a team from the Football Bowl Subdivision on Saturday. No, Maine isn’t playing in the ACC or anything, and I’m not implying that their athletes are of the highest caliber either. I’m talking about schemes.
The Football Championship Subdivision (the level of competition that JMU, Maine, and others play on) can be described with one word- traditional. I hear people complaining all the time about Mickey Matthews’ ultraconservative style of play calling- that run-first, run-second, probably-run-third type of attack that makes a lot of fans question whether our quarterback is capable of doing anything other than handing the ball off. But if you’ve ever watched FCS football, you know it’s not just our school that keeps the fans wondering. JMU’s coaching staff may have perfected the art of one dimensional play calling at times, but it’s not like we’re doing things any different than most of the other teams out there in FCSland.
FBS, however, is very different. Unlike JMU’s level, the top teams in the country love to follow whatever offensive scheme is popular or trendy at the time. The preferred method of moving the football these days? Spread offenses. Spread options like Oregon and Auburn seek spread the field and run the ball behind a lightning fast ground attack. Both teams have landed in the national spotlight recently by putting up huge offensive numbers in just about every category, with Auburn winning the national championship last season. Meanwhile, Air Raid Spreads put up even more gaudy numbers. Teams like Oklahoma State and West Virginia regularly throw for 400 yards with a healthy mix of deep passes and little screens to the outside.
So what in the world does any of that have to do with us here at JMU? On Saturday, we saw the effects of a whole new trickle-down theory. JMU likes to pass so that we can run the ball; many big time FBS teams like to run so that they can pass the ball. Maine’s offensive strategy definitely fell into the latter of those two categories. From the second quarter on, Maine’s quarterback threw little four and five yard passes to the outside at will, and our defense wouldn’t really do anything to stop it. Only after passing it four or five times in a row, Maine would then break off big runs up the middle for seven and eight yards at a time- way too much given the caliber of our run defense. Then they would go back to short passes on the outside.
Nothing explains Maine’s FBS-style quite like that last two point conversion play in overtime though. That formation- the “Swinging Gate” scheme- is utilized in special short yardage plays by Oregon, USC, and other successful teams. The fact that Maine used it on what would have been the last play of the game whether they scored and won or failed to score and lost means that they were actively creating plays based on successful FBS schemes for this game. Maine is out to win this year. Conservatism be damned, as long as there’s a W next to your team’s name on the score sheet.
JMU has to be more flexible defensively. Our offense looks fine, even with a freshman quarterback calling the plays, but we can’t be so caught up with defending “traditional” FCS schemes that we can’t defend anything else. Sometimes, we just need to throw tradition out the window and do what makes sense.
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