Key play breakdown: The onside kick

After Duke took a 7-3 lead in the first quarter of yesterday’s game against Middle Tennessee State, the Blue Devils surprised everyone by going for an onside kick.

Coach David Cutcliffe said he decided the team was going to kick onside on their second kickoff of the game, after watching film last Sunday.

The film work:

Here’s what Coach Cut may have seen:

Middle Tennessee goes with four men on the front line of its kick return team. As can be seen in this shot, there’s one man in the middle, two on his left, and one on the far right. It almost looks like someone forgot to show up for the inside right spot.

Most teams have a balanced five-man front line, as you can see from Duke’s first two kick returns of the game.

Middle dropped one person back, however, to help set up the return. This created a no-man’s land on the right-hand side, which, not coincidentally, is right where the onside kick was targeted.

The set up:

Coach Cut would tinker with the setup to his normal kickoff in order to increase the odds of coming out of no-man’s land with the ball. But in order to hide his intentions, he did the same things on the opening kickoff (which went to the end zone) as he would do when he pulled his onside trickery on kick two.

First, he had his kickoff team huddle in two groups, one on each side of the kicker. This is fairly common on kickoffs, and the groups then usually fan out on their respective sides.

Instead, as kicker A.J. Reed dropped back to start the kick, the two groups swapped sides, with the group on the left side running past Reed to fan out to the right, and the group on the right fanning out in the opposite direction.

Next, after everyone swapped positions, the resulting lineup was skewed to the left (Middle Tennessee’s right), with six men on that side, to just four on the other side.

Cut didn’t do this against Alabama, kicking with a more balanced lineup on either side of Reed. This was put in to get extra personnel on the side the ball was going.

Armchair special teams coaches may be shouting that it should have been obvious to Middle that this was going onside. Except for one thing. Those screen shots are from Duke's OPENING kickoff, when they went deep.

Duke made the change one kick before going onside. That gave Cutcliffe a chance to see if Middle made any adjustments to fill no-man's land or sensed that something was up.

The Blue Raiders didn't. So next time they kicked, Duke again started in two groups.

They again swapped places just before the kick.

And they were again unbalanced on the no-man's land side of the ball.

The decision to go on the second kick of the game may have sounded random, but it was part of the set-up, hiding Duke's intention in plain sight.

The kick:

Reed pulled up as he reached the ball and kicked a grounder to his immediate left. This is an interesting choice. Obviously, a bouncing ball is harder to predict than a short pooch kick, but by bouncing it, he removes the chance that Middle can call for a fair catch.

Plus, Cutcliffe has put in a few more wrinkles to make sure his team can retrieve the bouncing ball.

First, he puts in a safety on the play. You can see that the Duke player on the far left (bottom of the picture) lags back as soon as the ball is kicked. That’s Damond Philyaw-Johnson, who will eventually end up with the ball.

His job appears to be to lag behind the play and wait for the ball to squirt free as players from both teams collide, trying to cover it.

Duke’s first man to the ball is redshirt freshman safety Nate Thompson. He attempts to cover the ball, but, just as importantly, gets there just as it bounces, keeping it from bounding high in the air. The ball deflects off of him, just as players from both teams pile onto him.

Junior safety Antone Williams arrives next, going over the top and clearing out two Middle Tennessee players in position to dive on the ball.

That paves the way for Philyaw-Johnson, who is in prime position to dive on the ball.

The play gives Duke the ball just past midfield. Five plays later, Duke reaches the endzone to take a 14-3 lead.

Middle Tennessee would get no closer, all thanks to a play that looked like chaos and luck, but actually had some intricate design behind it.