Illini Film Review: How Matt Robinson was propped up well by coaching staff Saturday

This week we look at how Illini offensive coordinator Rod Smith helped out his redshirt freshman quarterback in his first start.

With a week of practice to prepare with the first-team unit, Matt Robinson proved Saturday he can be a reliable option behind center.

And so the question remains, how did that happen? The redshirt freshman looked lost and out of place at Minnesota but from the final drive of the first half to the final drive of the game, Matt Robinson was an effective signal-caller against a Michigan defense that had trouble defending short, quick passes and a tempo running game for 25 consecutive points. A lot of credit would need to go to offensive coordinator Rod Smith for doing one of the things that look to be the basic definition of coaching Saturday: putting your players in the best place to succeed. The play calls, receiver routes and the ability to get to tempo offense was exactly what Robinson needed in his first career start against a nationally-recognized and unbelievably aggressive defense.

NOTE: We should always preface this by explaining to the reader that we aren’t exactly sure what each Illinois player is being asked to accomplish in this scheme. So this is never intended to be an individual indictment or compliment on a player’s ability to execute his job but simply pointing out a noticeable difference in either scheme or execution.

The short, quick throws by Robinson works with Illini’s tempo offense

The easiest way to eliminate the idea of negative plays in the passing game and building confidence for a young quarterback is a quick, one-route/option throw. This is exactly what Rod Smith decided to do with Robinson behind center and it worked for 25 consecutive points, 64 percent completions (16 of 25) and 12 yards per completion. For a quarterback looking for confidence, Rod Smith’s crossing routes, post routes to the slot receiver and giving Robinson options in the middle of the field by spreading out the receiver routes and clearly pressing the ball get out quick, was the perfect formula.

In this first video shown above, this is an example of how Rod Smith’s offense created situations for Robinson to make easy throws and allow his athletes on the outside to make significant yards after the catch. With Michigan playing consistent physical press-man coverage, it was exceedingly difficult for Robinson, who would admit to not having the strongest arm on the Illini roster, to hit the outside targets on go routes vertically down the field. How does Rod Smith compensate for this? He takes Josh Imatorbhebhe and moves him into the middle of the field as a course of the receiver route giving Robinson a quicker and easy throw to build confidence. On this play above, Imatorbhebhe is the product of a crossing route that acts as a pseudo pick play without the slot receiver obviously doing a blocking motion. Once the Michigan defender in charge of covering the slot receiver turns his left shoulder away from Robinson, the Illini quarterback knows his first read (Imatorbhebhe) has to get the football and it is delivered on time and in front of the streaking receiver to give him the chance to gain maximum yards after the catch as the middle of the field is wide open. This play went for 18 yards and it was out of the redshirt freshman’s hands in about 2.5 seconds.

“I thought Matt was poised, composed and made plays when he needed to,” Illini head coach Lovie Smith said Saturday. “Of course Josh Imatorbhebhe, seemed like whenever we go to him, we probably need to go to him more, it’s a tough matchup for a defensive back and he made plays, I think he had over 100 yards receiving but Matt I think did some good things today for his first start.”

On this second video clip, Robinson executes a perfect screen pass to the slot receiver to Dominic Stampley. Due to Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown being so aggressive with his blitzes against the inexperienced quarterback, this video clip shows another throw where Robinson knew where his first read was (and that it would likely be open) and knew the ball had to get out of his hands quickly in order to give the 5-foot-10 receiver from Champaign a chance to get up the field through the middle of Michigan’s scrambling defense.

Illini got Robinson out of the pocket for several throws

With Robinson only standing 6-foot-1, Rod Smith knew it was imperative that his quarterback got RPO opportunities where he could roll out of the pocket and make throws with a clean window. This 20-yard completion to freshman Casey Washington is a clear example of how getting Robinson on the move allowed him to confidently make more difficult throws. While not many analysts will enjoy what Robinson does with his footwork on this throw, he’s able to drop this pass perfectly into the window for the freshman receiver to make a play on it because the RPO action sucked the Michigan defensive linemen into the middle of the pocket. With the linebackers being held in check because Robinson had already shown a tendency to take off and scramble, all Washington had to do was barely beat physical press-man coverage with no safety over the top for the first-down catch.

Robinson was intelligent with his pre-snap reads

Sometimes, after you’ve completed some of the easy throws, you have to take some chances and trust your receivers are going to come down with some 50/50 balls. This is exactly what Robinson does in this final video clip of his sideline throw in between two defenders to Imatorbhebhe. Even ESPN analyst and former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy uses the telestrator pre-snap on this 35-yard pass to symbolize that Imatorbhebhe has single coverage as the only receiver on his near side of the sideline. This is Robinson’s first read and after completing several passes and leading a touchdown drive into halftime, Rod Smith allows his quarterback to take a chance on his initial read to trust Robinson will eliminate the possibility of the safety rolling over making a play on the ball and Imatorbhebhe winning a one-on-one matchup with his cornerback. While not the most perfect spiral into the wind, Robinson’s throw is executed with calm precision as to not overthrow the receiver and allow for an interception over the top of Michigan’s coverage. The keyword in calling and executing this play is trust as Imatorbhebhe talked after this game about how he was able to build trust with his redshirt freshman quarterback throughout the week in practice to allow this play to be called and executed perfectly at the right time as Michigan’s defense was scrambling with the Illini’s tempo pace and a redshirt freshman quarterback slowly building enough confidence to make such a throw.

“If you look at this game, Matt was able to make plays throughout this game and eventually say to himself ‘heck yeah, I can do this and I can make these throws and we can win this game’ and that’s all that this is all about,” Imatorbhebhe said.