Notre Dame Making Mike Denbrock's Red Zone RPO Deadly
Mike Denbrock’s goal line RPO is an easy yet complicated play and it’s a staple in his offenses at Cincinnati, LSU and now Notre Dame.
The effective piece of the puzzle is it gives the quarterback multiple options as he can hand it to the running back, keep it or throw it to the tight end, who is often times coming from across the formation to the opposite flat.
“I think we do a good job of selling the run with our run fakes and getting our offensive line to have their first step really downhill to sell the run,” stated Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard. “I’m able to make quick decisions off the safeties or whatever it may be. We’ve been punching it in. It’s been working.”
Let’s quickly break down this play.
- Riley Leonard (13) reads the Stanford defensive end (11)
- The defensive end crashes, so it’s an easy read for Leonard to pull it.
- Tight end Eli Raridon (9) comes across the play into the flat and puts the defensive end in conflict
- The end can’t get out to cover Raridon, which makes it an easy pitch and catch.
Now, if the end didn’t crash, Jadarian Price would get the rock. If the defensive end shows high IQ and picks up Raridon, Leonard walks in for a touchdown.
“I think it puts the defense in conflict,” explained Denbrock. “When you have a quarterback who can use his feet and makes plays, and you have very talented running backs, and you have a third option in the flat you can spit out to if they’re overplaying either one of the first two, that becomes a pretty hard play to defend. It makes us pretty versatile at the same time.”
Notre Dame is currently No. 47 in red zone efficiency as the Irish have scored 30 touchdowns and four field goals on 39 trips to inside the opponents 20.
It wouldn’t be a shock to see Denbrock start to build off the RPO playas the Irish have utilized similar actions the last few weeks. The
Denbrock and Jayden Daniels destroyed opponents with the play as it fully utilized the Heisman Trophy winner’s athletic ability similar to Leonard. Kris Mitchell and Jayden Thomas scored touchdowns against Stanford off play-action looks, while Cooper Flanagan scored a touchdown off a hard play-action look last weekend versus Virginia.
And perhaps the best part of the scheme is that the offense can still be right even when the defense is right.
If you look at this play from LSU’s 2023 season, Mississippi State does a great job of taking away the running back, the tight end leaking to the flat and even a defensive line is in position to tackle Daniels, but the better athlete wins. Now, on this play, it’s worth noting the safety takes one wrong step towards the back and it prevents him from getting out to Daniels, but it’s why the play works.
Against Georgia Tech, Leonard scored from 12 yards out. The Yellow Jackets crashed hard on Jeremiyah Love and then inexplicably had two guys covering Evans in the flat, which made for a very easy read for Leonard.
“There’s three or four ways we can go in that one play,” said Evans. “Riley has the power to do whatever he needs to do to score, whether it’s handing the ball off to Jadarian or JLove, pulling it, reading it, and if I’m not covered, throwing it to me. I had two people on me, so he just walked in. It was cool. Just old school option football.”
In the coming weeks, Notre Dame needs to build on it as the RPO game as a whole can be a game-changer if the Irish were to make the College Football Playoff. Leonard can be the difference against elite competition as he showed against Texas A&M’s defense in week one and how many times has a dual-threat quarterback hurt Notre Dame in big games - or taken teams on runs in past years.
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