Note: Article originally published on Jan. 23.
It is a commonly accepted maxim that a modern college football team is maximally positioned to succeed if it has a head coach with an offensive background.
The thinking, which I subscribe to, goes that while assistants and position coaches will come and go, the overarching through line of a consistent offensive philosophy will allow for continuity in institutional knowledge, recruiting tactics and overall program ethos.
For the first time since the Bobby Williams era, Michigan State has a head coach with an offensive background: Jonathan Smith. He also brings with him a young offensive coordinator with a dynamic offense in Brian Lindgren.
As the winter strength and conditioning regimen is under way in East Lansing, and with spring football to follow, I think it would first be useful to review the formations you can expect to see from Lindgren's offense in 2024 and beyond.
Please read the caption in each photo below.
If you watched the Detroit Lions' 31-23 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL playoffs this past Sunday, some of these formations will be very familiar to you.
My first thought when looking at Lindgren's offense was "this is a Big Ten offense" in the best way possible, not in the Iowa-esque way.
Lindgren mirrors different successful Big Ten offenses in constructing an innovative throwback-style offense that has befuddled much of the Pac-12. Lindgren's tight splits, usage of tight ends and motion to create more run gaps is evocative of Michigan's run-heavy offense, and his proclivity to stack receiver is reminiscent of how Ohio State aligns its offense to create pre-snap leverage.
The efficacy of these "stacks" can be seen below:
The defense is forced to play "banjo" out of a stack, where one defender takes whoever breaks inward, and one whoever breaks outwards. If routes are run effectively, someone is almost always at least nominally open.
Putting Detroit's formation here again below for reference, something that Lindgren uses a lot to create leverage and spacing is a three-by-one tight bunch, with at least one tight end in the bunch as an actionable threat to meaningfully block.
From the opposing end zone, it looks like this (below). Note how many extra gaps are out there for the defense to account for — it stresses the linebacker level quite a bit, and ties down resources from the secondary as well.
The play above, an outside zone (which Lindgren runs quite a bit of) is unsuccessful because of a missed assignment on a linebacker, but it is representative of what fans can expect from a baseline schematic point of view.
Lindgren runs a primarily zone-focused scheme when appropriate. In fact, according to Pro Football Focus, the Beavers ran 249 zone runs compared to 112 gap running plays in 2023.
Above, the play is an inside zone with a fullback counter-stepping and inserting on the back side.
Lindgren uses a lot of tight end-shaped players as H-back/fullback types to insert in the run surface and make kick-out blocks, as well as catch passes. In that regard, look for players to assume a type of 2021 Connor Heyward role.
