BC's surprising play-action success

Boston College was not good at running the football in 2020. But it was great at play-action.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s already been proven by analytics.

There’s a lot of NFL research on this topic. In February 2018, The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin wrote a guest column for Football Outsiders, in which he used NFL play-by-play charting from 2011-17 to show that neither the frequency nor success of rushing attempts prior to play-action passes had an influence on the effectiveness of the play-fake.

About a year later, FiveThirtyEight put out a piece that evaluated the NFL’s Next Gen tracking data from 2017, which included 91 games and 1,235 play-action snaps. The article illustrated how middle linebackers bite on the play-fake regardless of how many times a team runs play-action in a game. In fact, writer Josh Hermsmeyer determined that, from the provided sample, middle linebackers covered an average of 7.5 yards of “wasted ground” (distance of a middle linebacker moving forward toward the line of scrimmage on a play-fake) per play-action pass. What’s more, in the seven games where teams called 15 or more play-action passes, the average wasted ground was actually even higher: 8.2 yards.

In a nutshell, rushing statistics and play-action percentage don’t dictate the success of the play-fake. And while the aforementioned stats may pertain to the NFL, Pro Football Focus’ analytics from the 2020 college season point to the same answer.

Half the quarterbacks who finished the year ranked in the top 20 of play-action passing yards played for programs that clocked out in the bottom two-thirds of the FBS in rushing offense this season.

Sure, you had UNC’s Sam Howell (third in PA pass yards; team was 11th in rushing), Coastal Carolina’s Grayson McCall (11th in PA pass yards; team was 15th in rushing), and Liberty’s Malik Willis (15th in PA pass yards; team was 9th in rushing). But you also had Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence (ninth in PA pass yards; team was 75th in rushing), Florida’s Kyle Trask (14th in PA pass yards; team was 96th in rushing), and, of course, BC’s Phil Jurkovec (17th in PA pass yards; team was 118th in rushing).

The Eagles went from averaging 4.99 yards per tote in 2019 to 3.10 in 2020. The transition to a zone run scheme, the rearrangement of the offensive line, and the lack of a complete spring ball and normal training camp all factored into BC’s drop-off in the rushing department.

While the Eagles improved on the ground as the season progressed and ended up churning out 180-plus yards in three of their final six games, their lack of explosiveness and consistency still subsisted. BC’s rushing attack could sustain drives and helped the Eagles rank fifth in the ACC in time of possession, however, it produced just eight runs of 20-plus yards (only half of which were from RBs) all year.

And yet BC was not only succeeding on play-action but exceeding its performance in traditional passing formations.

Of the 25 quarterbacks with the most play-action passes this season. Jurkovec had the fourth-biggest jump in completion percentage from non-PA attempts to PA attempts. He completed 75-of-113 attempts on play-action, in other words 66.4%—8.4 ticks higher than his completion percentage on traditional passing attempts. Although Jurkovec’s touchdown-to-interception ratio wasn’t much different (9:3 with PA vs. 8:2 without PA), his yards per pass attempt average also increased on play-action, rising from 6.7 to 9.4.

Play-action occurred on 33.2% of Jurkovec’s plays this season. It was called at an even higher clip (40.7%) when Dennis Grosel was on the field. It’s a much smaller sample size, but Grosel experienced a 1.9% bump in completion percentage (from 67.7% to 69.6%), and his yards per pass attempt average skyrocketed from 7.8 to 14.2.

When both quarterbacks hit the home run ball, it was almost always on play-action. Jurkovec and Grosel combined for 11 pass plays of 40 or more yards in 2020. Nine of them were the byproduct of play-action passing.

Not only did play-action move defenders and open up bigger passing lanes for Jurkovec and Grosel, but it also frequently segued into quarterback rollouts, which suited the strengths of both mobile passers. And, on a game-by-game level, play-action success was hardly dependent on the Eagles’ run production. Take BC’s final outing of the season. Even though the Eagles clocked out with -7 yards on the ground, Grosel tossed three play-action passes of 45 yards or more (all to Zay Flowers, by the way).

This isn’t to say that BC doesn’t need to or shouldn’t run the ball. There are several arguments in favor of maintaining a respectable rushing offense. The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen outlined a handful of them in a July 2019 piece.

Running avoids the risk of a sack and minimizes that of a turnover. It also can keep defenders guessing and committing to their gap responsibilities. And, as Hafley mentioned throughout the season, when a team starts popping chunk runs, defenses will typically move a defensive back into the box, leaving a single-high safety, which makes wide receivers like Flowers salivate.

There’s also the point that mixing in the run can help pass protection because it prevents D-Linemen from hurling themselves at the quarterback every play. That’s something to monitor when watching BC next year considering that Jurkovec was pressured on 40.7% of his dropbacks in 2020, according to PFF (he mostly thrived in those situations, though).

So, the run is far from dead, and it’s apparent that Cignetti and Hafley intend for it to be a part of BC’s offense. Yet, regardless of how effective it is next year, play-action can still do the trick.

The Eagles’ 2020 season simply confirmed what analytics have been showing for years.