Wisconsin Football: The Jet Sweep Play Isn’t Working
Wisconsin football had lots of success with the jet sweep in 2016. But the play hasn’t worked well at all in 2017.
The jet sweep play was a nice wrinkle to the rushing offense in years past. But this season, the jet sweep play has offered next to nothing for the Badgers.
Unfortunately, opposing defense appear well prepared this season. Thus, the jet sweep is not helping the Wisconsin rushing game.
In 2016, Wisconsin football wide receivers ran the ball 26 times for 343 yards. Jazz Peavy was by far the most prolific with 21 carries for 318 yards and a touchdown.
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I wrote about why I love the jet sweep in an article about Jazz Peavy that has not aged well. To be clear, neither the Peavy part or my affinity for the jet sweep. Although I maintain the initial reasoning holds up.
"The threat alone forces defenders to account for it so even as a decoy it removes one defender from the box. Used sparingly it adds width to the rushing attack. The play punishes defenses who overload the line of scrimmage stacking defenders to snuff out Wisconsin runs between the tackles."
So far this season, Wisconsin has rushed for 1,583 yards. Three wide receivers and cornerback (Derrick Tindal) have carried the ball. The numbers are not impressive.
- Jazz Peavy, 3 carries for 7 yards
- AJ Taylor, 2 carries for 5 yards
- Danny Davis, 2 carries for 4 yards
- Derrick Tindal, 2 carries for 14 yards
So that sums to nine carries for 30 yards an anemic 3.3 yards per carry average. The play just isn’t effective anymore.
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Losing the jet sweep limits the offense in that the play itself is struggling. Therefore, it also is feckless as a play fake sending the man in motion since teams can defend it fine.
In part, I think Wisconsin runs it to the short side of the field too often. In addition, the play call can be somewhat obvious based on personnel and alignment.
Wisconsin will typically put a TE in the slot and a receiver to whatever side the jet sweep action moves. The idea being, get you some lead blockers.
So what should Wisconsin do? Just excise the jet sweep from the playbook entirely?
I would go the other direction and start using the jet sweep action more often. Just so it’s used in a variety of alignments. The Badgers could modify the jet sweep by throwing to the receiver on a wheel route as the other receivers to that side clear space on a legal pick.
I’m not giving up on the jet sweep play just yet. But admittedly that’s best on hope and not production in 2017.