Film Study - Andy Kotelnicki Sugar Huddles

[CaliLION79]

SUGAR HUDDLE FILM STUDY

See link. We had Codutti unpack Andy Kotelnicki's use of up-tempo 'Sugar Huddles' and how they might be utilized this season with Penn State's personnel (it's an Allar-friendly, TE-friendly wrinkle). Yes, it's gimmicky as hell, which a lot of people will hate...but as far as usage rate and success rate, the Sugar Huddle at Kansas almost mirrors the production Yurcich got from the T Formation (which Penn State fans definitely had a love-hate relationship with).

 

[ftlpsu]

Love it---need to be creative when you are sometimes over matched on the line.

Hopefully AK has autonomy.

No one says "Yeah, they only won cuz they ran trick plays"

 

[Obliviax]

wow....well, you can't, not like this. The players are going to have a thick playbook and know their assignment pre-snap. But this puts a ton of pressure on the defense to stay alert for all of the formation and plays off of formation.

I'll make a prediction....with the talent PSU has on offense, this OC will be a HC in a very good program by the 2026 season.

 

[brupsu]

I guess the days of a successful coordinator remaining for more than a two or two or three year cup of Java are a thing of the past

 

[PSU2UNC]

I like this for two reasons:

1) Giving the defense very little time to diagnose what is happening means everyone on the defense needs to be able to instantly understand and react (and communicate, see below). The likelihood of a defensive player making a mistake when adjusting this quickly is high.

2) There's barely any time to communicate between the defenders so it's almost impossible for everyone to be the same page. Seems like this might be especially effective on the road when crowd noise makes defensive comms more difficult.

 

[The Spin Meister]

First, title scared me. Thought it meant that stupid huddle with everyone running a circle before breaking. Thank God it is not that garbage.

This is great. Always wondered why people didn’t do more of it. Why come up, look around, shift formation, go into motion….giving the d ten seconds to be set.

This is great. Make them think. Distract them. Make them look around a lot. Make them talk.

This will be especially helpful on teams that flop cornerbacks in man coverage, putting their shut down corner on the offenses best wideout. They will have to play straight up or risk having people seriously out of position at the snap.

And do it for five plays in a row and tire out the d. And restrict substitution.

 

[Obliviax]

First, title scared me. Thought it meant that stupid huddle with everyone running a circle before breaking. Thank God it is that garbage.

This is great. Always wondered why people didn’t do more of it. Why come up, look around, shift formation, go into motion….giving the d ten seconds to be set.

This is great. Make them think. Distract them. Make them look around a lot. Make them talk.

This will be especially helpful on teams that flop cornerbacks in man coverage, putting their shut down corner on the offenses best wideout. They will have to play straight up or risk having people seriously out of position at the snap.

And do it for five plays in a row and tire out the d. And restrict substitution.

i can see it being a bit of a challenge for the OL because if the D is moving around, it is hard to know the blocking assignments. But it looks like they take tight stances and block a zone and combine it with quick-hitting passes.

 

[PSU2UNC]

i can see it being a bit of a challenge for the OL because if the D is moving around, it is hard to know the blocking assignments. But it looks like they take tight stances and block a zone and combine it with quick-hitting passes.

Yeah, this all seems to be very quick developing so no one needs to hold their blocks for very long and it seems to be very much "block the guy in front of you".

We'll see how it works against better opponents but I like it as a wrinkle to use a few times a game.

 

[Obliviax]

Yeah, this all seems to be very quick developing so no one needs to hold their blocks for very long and it seems to be very much "block the guy in front of you".

We'll see how it works against better opponents but I like it as a wrinkle to use a few times a game.

Agreed. I am not saying it is right but I always think offenses let the defenses settle because so much of offense these days is based on reading the defense. Zone or man-to-man? Who has single coverage? Tight or lax corners? Safties up or back in coverage? Is somebody blitzing? All of those go into the read and routes.

In this offense, like we are hearing about making the D react, we come up and run a play looking to catch the defense off guard. In the early part of the video, the run unbalanced with often takes the D a few seconds to read. Who is on the ball and how many do you have left and right of him? Then you need to align the DL. In all of that, you miss the coverages of WRs.

You also see a lot of value in RBs who can get out on a pattern and catch a pass. If you had to stack WRs, you can tip the offense. But if you keep a Singleton, Qinton Martin or Corey Smith in there (who can run from the backfield or run a great route from the wideout position) you've really got the D having to make a lot of reads and adjustments to not get caught out of position.

The pendulum swinging back the other way.

 

[The Spin Meister]

Agreed. I am not saying it is right but I always think offenses let the defenses settle because so much of offense these days is based on reading the defense. Zone or man-to-man? Who has single coverage? Tight or lax corners? Safties up or back in coverage? Is somebody blitzing? All of those go into the read and routes.

In this offense, like we are hearing about making the D react, we come up and run a play looking to catch the defense off guard. In the early part of the video, the run unbalanced with often takes the D a few seconds to read. Who is on the ball and how many do you have left and right of him? Then you need to align the DL. In all of that, you miss the coverages of WRs.

You also see a lot of value in RBs who can get out on a pattern and catch a pass. If you had to stack WRs, you can tip the offense. But if you keep a Singleton, Qinton Martin or Corey Smith in there (who can run from the backfield or run a great route from the wideout position) you've really got the D having to make a lot of reads and adjustments to not get caught out of position.

The pendulum swinging back the other way.

Another huge advantage: if you run this just five times per game you force defenses to spend a lot of valuable practice time the week before.

And that gets into players heads creating doubt and confusion. Almost makes them fear it more,

 

[voltz99]

Love it---need to be creative when you are sometimes over matched on the line.

Hopefully AK has autonomy.

No one says "Yeah, they only won cuz they ran trick plays"

Yet. Psu fans will say it after every win.

 

[The Spin Meister]

Yet. Psu fans will say it after every win.

And…..all our opponents are just Youngstown St😹

 

[voltz99]

Yeah, this all seems to be very quick developing so no one needs to hold their blocks for very long and it seems to be very much "block the guy in front of you".

Good. It beats having OL run into each other.

 

[OKLionFan]

I'm cautiously optimistic about coach K. I was a big Mike Yurcich fan when he was at Oklahoma State and was extremely excited about his hire but with the caveat that his offense was impressive against Big 12 non defenses. Same concern here. I don't recall seeing a B1G team using these concepts. I'm rooting big time for Andy to succeed. Fingers crossed........

 

[Obliviax]

I'm cautiously optimistic about coach K. I was a big Mike Yurcich fan when he was at Oklahoma State and was extremely excited about his hire but with the caveat that his offense was impressive against Big 12 non defenses. Same concern here. I don't recall seeing a B1G team using these concepts. I'm rooting big time for Andy to succeed. Fingers crossed........

Agree but anything "innovative", as the name suggests, has never been tried before.

Andy K has been OC at

• Wisconsin Whitewater (won a national championship),
• University of Buffalo where they took an awful MAC team to 3 consecutive Bowl Games
• Kansas where they took one of the worst programs in power 5 to two consecutive bowl games

I've been a big fan on head coach Lance Liepold who Andy K followed around. But Andy may well have been the brains behind all of that. Having said that, Lance's record at Wisconsin Whitewater was 109–6 and most of that was before Andy got there