Football Film Study: The Unstoppable Jordan Lasley

Well, football season’s over, and UCLA WR Jordan Lasley is largely to blame. Lasley put up 227 receiving yards in the Bears’ loss on Friday. That was well over half of the Bruins’ passing offense, and just under half of their total offense. If we had been merely adequate against Lasley, then the season wouldn’t be over.

Central to these struggles was Camryn Bynum, who’s otherwise been outstanding for us as a redshirt frosh. Up until now we haven’t had to do much to help Bynum, but that changed against Lasley, and our back-seven as a whole was unable to come to the rescue.

In this video, we look at three different strategies for covering Lasley, including playing press-man, playing off in a Cover-3 shell, and bringing a safety over the top in Cover-2. We see that when a CB is struggling it’s up to the remaining players, and especially the LB’s on the inside, to take the pressure off of him, and that Cal couldn’t get the support that they needed to play 2-deep coverages. Although the big plays down the sidelines were the most glaring, therefore, this game was really a failure of the entire back-7. This is an area that we’ll have to address in the off-season if we’re going to limit good receivers going forward.