Miami Hurricanes HC Mark Richt’s Syracuse Post Game Comments

On the different looks of the offense Saturday, including five-wide receiver sets with no running back…

"“We went ‘empty.’ We call it ‘empty.’ It’s a five-wide look. What we were trying to do was just be able to identify who their blitzers were. They’re a big ‘single fire’ [team] – four down linemen, somebody blitzing, so single fire…then play one guy deep then everyone else man-toman. Five rushers, five man-to -man [defenders] on your eligible [receivers] and a safety deep. Sometimes they’d have a low guy not blitzing and be what we call a ‘robber’ or a ‘one rat.’ When you got everybody in tight, a tight end and a back end tight, then you have three linebackers and you’re not sure which guy is coming. You spread them out and they have to play man-to-man, and it’s hard to disguise anymore. You can see who’s left over and who the linemen should block. Five linemen, five rushers – you should be able to block them. It’s man-to-man, everybody has got somebody covered and there’s a safety deep. So we were trying to just define the coverage so the quarterback would know where to throw it.”"