Film room: Tre King, another good game

During the game, in the super-secret blog staff chat, someone wrote something like “Today King’s the best running back on the team, as he doesn’t fumble and gains some yards”. It’s sad but it’s true as both Justin Stockton -who left the game and is under concussion protocol- and Desmond Nisby had problems all game long, meaning that the junior from Kansas was the only back offering some sort of reliability. As usual, we selected four plays to show how he worked.

On a 2-and-7, Texas Tech lined up with King, three receivers, and fullback Tyler Carr, a freshman who was removed from his redshirt year to play this game. At the snap, Carr, the offensive line, and the receiver on the left, Derrick Willies, tried to open a hole to the left (all yellow), while left guard Madison Akamnonu (blue) pulled to the right.

Probably, the call was an off-tackle run to the left side, but King (red) saw no space and cut to the right, where there was a big hole. So, the key blocker became wide receiver Keke Coutee (pink), who stopped the linebacker and allowed his back to gain the first down after a spin move.

The spin move was Tre’s trademark during the game, as he showed it on many occasions, like in the following play.

Texas Tech used three receivers to the left side (black), one to the right, and King, while Iowa State answered with a 3-man defensive front and three linebackers who blitzed when they saw it was a running play.

At the snap, the five offensive linemen blocked the three defensive linemen (yellow) but left linebackers (orange) freedom to the outside. Once again, King (red) was intended to run into one direction -right, in this case-, but had to cut to the left, avoided the linebacker with a spin move, and gained another first down.

Third play. We were almost at halftime and the Red Raiders had to cover 60 yards in 13 seconds to score. Running play, why not?

This run was particular, as with little time on the clock Iowa State ran a prevent defense, with three defensive backs (orange) lined up 15 yards away from the line of scrimmage, and linebackers playing way off.

Consequently, Tre (red) had more space to run and gained nine yards, helped by blocks led by both the offensive line (yellow) and Willies (blue). The tackler was linebacker Joel Lanning (white), who was dropping in coverage and quickly covered the distance between him and the runner.

And now, let’s go to the longest run of the entire game, 14 yards.

In this very particular play, Iowa State went very aggressive, blitzing outside linebackers (orange and blue). The one on the right (blue) was taken by Akamnonu, while the one on the left was free to come to quarterback Nic Shimonek.

At the snap, King took the ball, went to the left, and with two moves exploded into the secondary. He also avoided the pressure of the defensive back with a nice juke and was tackled by Lanning (white) after a gain of 14 yards.

In fact, Tre was the only offensive player to emerge from the general mediocrity represented by Texas Tech’s offense. There are never too many playmakers on the field, so let’s hope he’ll continue his progress next week in Norman