The Josh Innes Show - Another Dumb USA Today Story

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

I enjoy making fun of USA Today. It's incredible that this large publication puts out so much garbage. Usually, I'm making fun of Nancy Armour or some crappy "Winners and Losers" headline... But, today I'm tickled by a story about goal line offenses in college football... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's about 433 here in downtown Detroit. well, Eastern Market, Detroit, and the shadows, damn near in the shadows of Ford Field and Comerica Park, we're walking distance to two great baseball and football facilities. So I'm glad you guys are listening. Appreciate everybody who does. Tell your friends about it, please. As football season rolls around, you know that we will be having a good time. I know that some of you don't have betting at all.

Some of you don't have prop bets for college athletes, but I feel like this weekend, we may be able to get in a college prop to you drop, and then we're less than two weeks away from a real full-on NFL prop to you drop, which is exciting. That is an exciting time to be alive, man. A full-on NFL prop to you drop. That's when you know that we are back. We are back. We are back.

So I appreciate you guys. You're beautiful. I love you. All right. So I'm scrolling through. I've got a lot of stuff to get into today. some stuff I didn't get to yesterday. So we're loaded.

However, I go to USA today this morning, and I see a headline that reads, Shotgun or Undercenter, research of college football goal line plays reveals a clear winner. All right, you have my attention. Let's get into that after these words. Let's find out what research says is the right approach at the goal line. I will tell you my right approach of the goal line, whether it's the pros or whether it's college.

Line up under center and push the dude in. It is called the tush push. I don't know why everybody doesn't do this when you get down to the goal line. There's no reason to hand the ball off to anybody. There's no reason to throw from the goal line. There's no reason to run out of the shotgun and run a quarterback up the middle. You put the quarterback under center and you push him forward. Like thinking about this, though, how many colleagues are,

teams ever go under center at all? Like, that's a legit question. Like, how often do you see a college football team under center? Like, I need a percentage. Maybe this story will tell us. But I need a percentage of times that college football quarterbacks are ever under center. Not at the goal line, just ever. You don't see it.

So let's get into this story. Midway through the second quarter of Alabama's 2023 home defeat of Mississippi, Jacori Brooks blocked a punt that gave the Crimson Tide offense a first and goal from the Rebels one-yard line. But instead of plowing ahead with a quarterback sneaker calling a running back to plunge over the top, Alabama took a loss of 13 when an errant shotgun snap got away from Jalen Milrow and Alabama was forced to kick a field goal. Two days later, legendary coach Nick Saban was asked whether the shotgun formation was a wise alignment. It was not smart on our part to do what we did, but we get a bad snap after all that, Sabin said.

I agree with you at a time when it's first and goal on the one, why do we need to be in shotgun? A more profound question from the opponent's goal line, why would any offensive coordinator ever employ the shotgun? USA Today's sports reviewed every goal line offensive play last season for 15 of the top programs in college football, spanning all four power conferences and found that the shotgun formation resulted in significantly fewer touchdowns than plays called with the quarterback taking the snap under center. From the opponent's one-yard line, those teams scored on just 56% of shotgun snaps compared to 73% of touchdowns under center. Yet, despite that disparity, offensive coordinators called shotgun formation more than 90 shotgun

looks versus 72. Well, the reason is because these dudes aren't used to be in under center. I would imagine they don't practice much under center at all either, right? Like, I would think. Like, that would be my guess is that you just, like, they just don't bother practicing. A, because you don't find yourself in very many goal-line situations anyway. Like, how many times are you at, like, the zero-yard line? So that would be the only time most of these teams would ever need to be under center.

Or to take a need in the game, and a lot of these teams still take a need. out of the shotgun. You see that a lot of the time. Here's what I'm a believer in. There is one surefire way to get the ball into the end zone. And that's the tush push. That you're not guaranteed to plow ahead with a running

back, a dive over the middle. You're not guaranteed to get in out of the shotgun. You're not guaranteed throwing from the one yard line to get the ball in or like a sprint out that gives you an option for the quarterback to run or pass from the one yard line. Here's the way you are guaranteed to score a touchdown.

especially if you have like a first and goal from inside the one you let the quarterback run the damn thing and when I say run the damn thing I'm not talking out of the shotgun I am talking about the tush push like you watch the Eagles and the Eagles obviously do it better than anybody and that's pro versus college so it's different but why you would ever do anything other than run a quarterback sneak from the one yard line is beyond me just do it four times there is no way they're going to stop that play four times now all Also, though, is the tush push legal in college? I guess I should know that. Let me look that up really quick. Is the tush push legal in college? Let's see. Then that could totally change my viewpoint here. Yes, the tush push or quarterback sneak with a forward push is legal in college football.

While there are nuances and specific rules against pulling a runner forward, the fundamental act of pushing a ball carrier in the NFL style of the tush push is permitted. Then why would you ever do anything? other than run the tush push from the goal line unless you just want to get somebody else a touchdown unless the situation doesn't really matter like let's say you're Georgia and you're playing mercer and you're up by 50 and it's like oh let's just give the ball to our running back and pat his stats get him another touchdown something like that you know somebody wants to score we want to get them in the end zone we're good folks we want to get them hooked up you know

like that's one thing but if you're in a situation where you're you're in a situation where you You must get it into the end zone. It is not a, oh, it'd be cute if we scored here, but we're up by 45 with eight minutes to go. It's, hey, it's a tie game. Hey, we're up to. Hey, we're down to. And we need to push the ball into the end zone from the one yard line. I would never line up out of the shotgun and I would never hand the ball off.

I would eliminate every variable and I would give the ball to the quarterback and I would push him forward. Undercenter versus shotgun from the one-yard line. TD success rate during the 2024 season. Here are the teams they use. Alabama under center scored 100% of the time and scored a touchdown only 43% of the time out of the shotgun. That is wild. I am actually, I'm genuinely intrigued by the percentages here.

Who had the best with both of them? Let's see here. Penn State scored 100% of the time under center from the one yard line and 78% of the time out of the shotgun and who knows how many of those snaps came where the 78% came from how many times they ran out of the shotgun could you imagine a universe where some of these teams

really all of these teams but can you imagine a universe where you know it's the 1970s Joe Paterno is the coach of Penn State and they're running from the one yard line out of the shotgun. Can you imagine LSU under less miles? Imagine LSU under less miles running that many times out of the shotgun at the one yard line. Like back, you know, old school, mid-2000s, less miles, Jacob Hester, and LSU's like, yeah, we're going to run out of the shotgun from the one yard line. Like it just wouldn't happen. Now, here we are in 2025. LSU, this is sad. Maybe this is why LSU sucks. Under center, this is snap.

So under center versus shotgun from the one yard line. Touchdown success rate. All right. LSU 67% under center and 33% out of the shotgun. Those are pathetic numbers from the one yard line to score on only 67% of your snaps from the one. Now, how many times you're actually at the one yard line over the course of a season is probably not that many times? You might find yourself there a handful of times. Again, because there's a difference between snapping from the two and the one.

a three and the one. While they're all close, the one is the one. The half yard line is the half yard line. The two is the two, the three is the three. Old Miss scored 100% of the time under center. I'm going to guess those are quarterback sneaks with Jackson Dart in 2024. And then you've got Ole Miss at 60% out of the shotgun. So the data, I mean the data that they have compiled here would indicate that the play is to go under center. There's only three teams that scored 100% of the time from the one yard line out of the gun. And that's Arizona State, Boise State, and Miami. That's in the 2024 season.

Dig on this. Michigan in 2024, 75% of the time from the one yard line they scored under center. Zero percent of the time did they score out of the shotgun. Again, we have no idea if Michigan actually ran any plays out of the shotgun from the one yard line. We have no idea how many plays in general they ran from the one yard line. That's the biggest question here. Like, does this really tell us anything if it's like, oh, LSU ran four plays? from the goal line, right?

Like, if you do the math on it, like, if LSU's, because LSU's numbers kind of break it down this way, 67% of the time they were under center, 33% of the time. That to me is like, hey, you know, what would that be like three out of five? Maybe they had five goal line, you know, and goal plays from the one yard line all year. Perhaps that might be what we're dealing with from the one. So, again, maybe it's not. Maybe it's a different number. but I don't think these teams have that many plays from the one yard line.

But if you want to debate shotgun versus under center, the obvious play is go under center, let your quarterback plow ahead, push him forward and get in. And I think more college teams need to start doing that. Teams researched were Alabama, okay, you got all that. And while 15 is a far cry from the entirety of the whole FBS, it is a strong representation of the sports elite. 12 of the 15 made the college football playoff final rankings. Eight qualified for the 12-team playoff.

Across a 40-year coaching career from 1982 to 2021, David Cutcliffe witnessed Undercenter lose its grip as the foundation of college offenses everywhere, slowly giving way to the shotgun formation as the modern play starter. Cutcliffe noted that the shotgun has so overtaken the sport that most quarterbacks know nothing else at the youth level, particularly with the proliferation of seven-on-seven passing tournaments. Meanwhile, in the coaching profession, there is a progressively shrinking understanding. of how to teach under-center play. An entire generation of coaches grew up on the shotgun, and many of you under-center play as a little more than a relic. Quote, it's easy to sit in the nickel seat I'm in now

and sound like I'm criticizing coaches. I'm not because I'd tell any of them, teach what you know. If you don't know it, you can't just look at film and say, let's do this. At the same time, I'm not sure that offensive coordinators, as a group fully understand all the idiosyncrasies of under-center goal-line offense. anymore. It's taught at some places. It's not taught everywhere. I will say this. Obviously, with the boom of the tush push and how prevalent that is becoming, especially with the Philadelphia who does it better than anybody, from the goal line, there's no reason to run anything other than

the tush push. That said, my favorite all-time goal line play is when you line up in the I formation and you fake it to the running back and you throw it to the fullback and the flat. That is my favorite play maybe in the history of football. The Saints used to run it so well. You'd run like a play action and throw a touchdown to John Carney.

You know, like that's the kind of, wasn't John Carney? John Carney was the kicker, but who's the other Carney? Whoever the fucking fullback was for the Saints. They would throw that play, and it was a thing of beauty, one of my favorite plays in all of sport, play action to the to the back going through tight in out in the flat or the fullback out in the flat bang

usually your two options on that play would be get like a corner route from the tight end or you would get the fullback out in the flat and you'd get a touchdown on that play one of my favorite plays in all of sport is that play but you don't see that anymore because you don't see any fullbacks first of all very rarely do you see a fullback and second of all you just run the quarterback or you have someone go over the top. Keep in mind, Drew Breeze also went over the top a lot for the Saints, too. I feel almost like a dipshit that I've read this whole story for the most part, or the fact that this was like the dynamic lead on USA Today,

debating whether or not you should go out of the shotgun. Like, my guess would have been that the story was going to indicate, like, it was going to be, like, different than you'd think, because you would think, oh, under center would make the most sense. Because you go under center and your quarterback sneak it and you score, But no, the story actually just told you what you thought was right, that under center is the answer and that shotgun is not the answer. Because that was the indication from that story. Like, my thought would have been, boy, we're going to find out that the shotgun scores like 100% of the time and under center fails.

No, what we found out is for the most part that if you go under center from the one yard line, you're more likely to score in college football than you do out of the shotgun, which is duh, like obvious. So whatever. perhaps we just wasted a lot of time. Anyway, more to come.