Anytime a team burns a secondary for a long passing play, there’s that deflating feeling a defense will feel. It can even lead to a passive style of defense afterwards.
For the UCF Knights and how they approached playing the Florida Atlantic defense, they wanted to power the football between the tackles, utilize a heavy dose of the screen game, and use play-action passes. Tight end Alec Holler was involved across the board.
He was a part of the blockers opening up running lanes against the FAU front seven that gashed the Owls for 314 yards and four touchdowns on the ground. Holler helped to overpower FAU, and that’s a prime reason why the UCF passing game excelled.
It’s well known that head coach Gus Malzahn likes to throw screens to shifty playmaker Ryan O’Keefe, but teams find different ways to slow him down. A great way to offset that trend is having blockers fake like they are going to block and then become the intended receiver.
Seeing Holler properly execute his 62-yard reception on the fake screen pass was a thing of beauty. He did not take off too fast, selling the run blocking action he usually goes through.
Excellent job by Holler for doing his part, as well as quarterback John Rhys Plumlee for accurately throwing him the football. That same theme transpired over and over in the game.
For the entire game, Holler had three catches for 115 yards. He led all UCF players in receiving yardage. It’s still the ground game that Holler was involved with that arguably deserved to be mentioned the most.
With the Owls being hammered by Holler and everyone blocking for runners, the play-action game was there whenever the Knights wanted it. Plumlee sometimes had linebackers and defensive backs moving towards the line of scrimmage at the snap of the football.
It certainly helped wide receiver Javon Baker and the Knights overall passing attack move the football. Plumlee threw for 339 yards.
Again, Holler was directly involved with this because of how he helped to block. It’s the dirty work that’s not often discussed, but yet well deserved credit. Hats off to Holler for his overall efforts.
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