Now that Vernon Adams, Jr. is enrolled at Oregon, I thought I'd watch all the film of his play that I could get ahold of to learn more about his abilities and tendencies, as well as try to understand Eastern Washington's playstyle for the 2015 opener. This project differs a bit from previous season reviews I've done for Oregon's opponents (Auburn, Wisconsin, K-State, Texas, Michigan St, Florida St, and Ohio St), in that I watched 10 games over three seasons, all non-conference or playoffs games since those were the only ones televised, and only watched the EWU offense to save time. But I kept notes on my tally sheet in the same way, which I'm getting pretty experienced at, so hopefully this will produce unbiased commentary.

Offensive Scheme

Several observers have noted that EWU's scheme is similar to but not the same as Oregon's, and I see that's correct. Similarities:

• Mostly operates out of the spread with shotgun snaps, and uses the core spread concepts of space, isolation, and deception.
• Deploys the hurry-up and seldom huddles, getting the play calls in from the sideline.
• Uses zone blocking for almost all run plays and often the inside- and outside zone read.
• Lots of passing from outside the pocket.

Differences:

• A surprising amount of pro-style snaps, under center, power-I or single set formation with two TEs.
• Most plays eat up the whole play clock, with hurry-up being used just as stress after big gains.
• Almost no option pitches or RPO plays.
• Deep passing opportunities created by fitting the ball in the window instead of schematically creating wide open receivers.

Passing game

There's just no denying that Adams has a great arm, and that's obvious regardless of the division of play. His motion is smooth and compact, he can hit the entire field with accuracy, and he can do it on the move as well as in the pocket. In pocket or designed rollout passing (I counted passes when scrambling separately), I tallied up 89% in short passes, 73% midrange, and 66% deep, with no preference or difference in accuracy for the side of the field, and only about a 6% drop-off in 3rd down passing. In particular he throws some of the prettiest rainbow passes I've ever seen. While he hits his first read most of the time, I definitely see him go through his progression when he needs to and rarely force a ball, and on several passes yelped at the screen when I saw a fantastic look-off of a safety.

But what really impressed me, as someone who has probably suffered permanent eye-roll damage from the Winston-Mariota debates, is that he is totally comfortable putting the ball in very tight windows, even deep downfield. I have no idea how this will translate to play at Oregon -- Will he be asked to cut that out in favor of more open receivers? Will better secondaries in FBS play make him pay for higher risk passes? -- but I can say that his low interception numbers are impressive.

I've seen a lot of commentary about his stature, but I didn't really see this materializing - I only counted seven swats at the line in ten games, which is a pretty comparable percentage to taller QBs. I suppose he might have less an ability to survey the field, but I think his accuracy numbers speak for themselves.

Running game

Coach Baldwin's is clearly a pass-first offense; 58% of all non-scramble plays are designed passes, three-quarters of which are downfield. (While Oregon has gotten to be more run-pass balanced under Coaches Helfrich and Frost, I still consider it a run-to-pass spread, and EWU the other way around.) However, it's still the case that a third of all plays are designed runs. Three-quarters of those are clearly designed handoffs, often from under center, with the back doing all the heavy lifting - this offense is clearly comfortable with signalling they're going to run and just going straight ahead or off-tackle.

About a fifth of EWU's designed runs were inside- or outside-zone reads, usually of an unblocked DE but sometimes a midline read (the play is structurally identical to Oregon's staple). Adams almost always made the correct read, though the handful of times he did make a mistake it was always in giving instead of keeping. There were also a small number of delayed QB draws that I'm sure weren't scrambles; Adams did fine on these, almost always getting the desired short yardage and occasionally breaking something big. Adams is not an incredibly fast runner, I don't see him outrunning FBS secondaries for long touchdowns, but he gets it done and is very elusive.

I'm not sure where else to put this observations so I'll say here: Adams has fantastic handling of the football. In over 650 snaps I watched him take, I literally never saw him botch a single handoff or bobble a single snap, including pulling in a couple wild ones. He rides the handoff in the read-option very well and gets that key extra split second of deception that freezes the defender's feet. He's also the ball holder on extra points (though I doubt he will be at Oregon), which requires some pretty reliable dexterity.

Scrambles

I counted 16% of all offensive plays resulting in Adams scrambling or getting sacked. That's pretty high, and a big part of doing this project was to figure out why that was. At that, I wasn't too successful - when ESPN senses some drama in the backfield they zoom way in and I can't see what kind of coverage he's dealing with. He runs on about half of those scrambles, and is successful in gaining yardage 78% of the time, which is amazing enough, but what's even more astonishing is that he throws with 80% accuracy off a scramble. His typical move is to spin away from the blitzer, snap his eyes back downfield to reacquire a target, and nails him on the move with the same kind of jumpy leg scissor thing that Mariota would do. My heart just about leapt out my throat the first time he did that. And then every other time.

The bad news is that I watched him get sacked 17 times off of about 100 backfield spins, and only successfully escape to throw it away 11 times - now on most of those sacks I thought that the defenders just got too him so fast that there's nothing he could have done, but a few he managed to have time to throwaway but kept trying to find a receiver for too long. I would definitely say that his tendency is to keep the play alive for as long as possible, occasionally counterproductively.

Also, I'm not a fan of how cavalier he is with the ball and his own body on scramble-based runs (oddly, on draws and RO keeps he's much more conservative). I don't believe that I ever saw him get stripped of the ball off one of these runs, but still something about the way that he'd go into contact and hold the ball made me very nervous thinking about FBS-level defenses.

Questions

1. Anything I've missed, or am being unfair about?

2. With the exception of one playoff game against Montana, all the games I watched were against non-conference opponents. What am I missing from not being able to see EWU in conference play? Did the Eagles tend to benefit from familiarity with their opponents, or vice versa?

3. It strikes me that Adams did at least a little bit of almost everything that Oregon does, and very competently at that, but also a lot of stuff that Oregon really doesn't. My attitude is that Adams is prepared to handle the change since it's just an expansion on what he already does, though of course practice if going to be vital - agree or disagree?

4. Did we ever get an answer on the source of leg cramps in OSU and UW games? It seems like it wasn't an injury, and there was some discussion of his sickle-cell trait, but is that something that came up frequently?

5. In the 2012 semifinal vs Sam Houston St, I understand EWU was operating a dual-QB system between #2 Padron and Adams, but the former was completely ineffective. Coach Baldwin waited until they were losing 28-0 in the 2nd quarter before pulling him for Adams, who then led the offense to score 42 points. Why was there any hesitation about Adams at all?

6. I could see three reasons for the high number of scrambles: deliberate coaching strategy, problems at offensive line, or Adams having "happy feet". How much do you put on each factor?

7. What prompted rise of 2-TE power run sets? They're definitely less present in the 2012 and early 2013 games I watched. Any reason to think it was some concern about Adams' ability to run a purely spread-HUNH offense all the time?

8. Any concern that Adams is over-reliant on Kupp? Sometimes it seemed to me that he would get locked onto Kupp and try to force throws his way when there were more open receivers.