Trevor Knight and the read option

A big takeaway from the last two games in particular is that Knight really needs to improve his reads here. He seems to get into zones where he either exclusively keeps or exclusively hands it off. The reads are so poor at times I'm beginning to wonder if the decision isn't always or often predetermined by himself or the coaches.

For instance, Tennessee COMPLETELY ignored him for the most part in the second half until he broke that long TD. The end crashed hard everytime, yet Knight kept handing it off time after time. Then he breaks the long run (which I'm convinced was predetermined out of the TO because Mazzone saw this and knew it would be an easily first) and Tennessee actually played the QB from there on out. On Tray's long run where it was punched out on the next series he made the right read to hand off. However, in OT he missed an EASY read at the goal line and kept in the face of TWO defenders playing the QB. It would have been a loss if Knight was a lesser man physically.

Watching the game on TV last night for the first time confirmed what I saw at the game: He missed the read A LOT. 11 times I counted he made the wrong read in fact. Again, I suspect this is often predetermined because it happens so often. If this is the case, the coaches simply don't trust him based on practice to make the right read. My issue with this is there were multiple times where the DE crashed, the linebacker attacked the A or B gap and the only timing between Trevor and the endzone was a single high safety. This was especially true in three missed reads where the read was to the weak side and the weak side linebacker was so far inside he wouldn't have had a chance. On one play in the third quarter, Knight hands it off and Tennessee has a safety blitz on AND the end crashes. Trevor could have slow jogged for 40 yards before he would have had to beat the high safety on the opposite hash mark.

The bottom line is Knight is DEADLY when he keeps and it's the right read. He is incredibly strong for such an elusive player, not many guys his size are that good in the open field. He just tosses safeties aside. He has five HUGE runs on correct keeper reads this year. If he actually gets good at it, we would be the best zone read team outside of Louisville. Defenses for some reason don't respect him and largely ignore him even now.