Chevon Walker’s 70-yard TD run illustrates the importance of deception and speed

Football success is often about excelling in mental aspects of the game as well as physical ones, and that combination was displayed perfectly on Hamilton RB Chevon Walker's 70-yard touchdown gallop Saturday against Winnipeg. Walker's run, part of a 37-7 beatdown the Tiger-Cats laid on the Bombers, helped him earn our second star of the week, but it also illustrated his understanding of the game and his pure athletic talent. It involved both excellent deception that initially fooled the defence and breakaway speed that prevented them from recovering. Here's video of the run:

First, let's discuss the formation involved here. On the clip, TSN announcer Rod Black describes Hamilton's look as "a Wildcat or pseudo-Wildcat" formation, but that's not really true. The Wildcat formation proper involves a back running a sweep across the field prior to the snap as well as an unbalanced line, and neither element is involved here. Even the more popular understanding of "Wildcat" tends to involves a player other than a quarterback taking the snap, and that also isn't the case here; the ball is being snapped to Dan LeFevour, who is listed as a quarterback. The reason "Wildcat" has popped up in discussions of Hamilton's offence this year is that LeFevour is an excellent runner. Indeed, during his time at Central Michigan, LeFevour became the only NCAA player to accumulate 12,000 passing yards and 2,500 rushing yards and also became the second player (after Vince Young) to pile up 3,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in a single season. He also has 317 rushing yards this CFL season and has mostly worked his way onto the field in more run-focused packages, so it's not surprising that teams and announcers are expecting the Ticats' snap receiver to carry the ball more when he's in. (It's notable that normal starter Henry Burris is also a run threat who has 298 rushing yards of his own this season, though.) That doesn't make it a Wildcat formation, though.

In fact, it's LeFevour's not-insignificant passing ability (he has 394 passing yards, a touchdown, two interceptions and a 64.5 per cent completion mark) that's crucial to the deception here. While the Tiger-Cats have a running-focused quarterback in the game, they line up in a passing-oriented singleback formation, with a trips set of receivers bunched right, a fourth receiver split wide left to start but in motion towards the centre of the field, a fifth receiver starting in the backfield left and moving towards the line of scrimmage as the ball's snapped and Walker as the lone back. That's angling a lot of the Winnipeg defenders out to both sides of the field. If you look at the Blue Bombers' alignment at the start of the play, they're in a relatively standard 4-3 (four down linemen, three linebackers) up the middle, but they have three defensive backs wide left to cover the trips receivers and a fourth wide right, so that leaves no traditional safety. When the ball's snapped at 0:04, two of the three linebackers come crashing in, but the third drops into coverage on the fifth receiver. Thus, on a run up the middle, if Walker's able to beat the six players at the line of scrimmage, there's no one in his way.

Getting by those line-of-scrimmage defenders is still a challenge, of course, but it's further deception that allows that. Walker starts this run by taking the handoff from LeFevour and heading right, and the offensive linemen all block right. The Bombers actually get three men into the backfield at 0:05, but they're too eager and too wide on both sides to bring Walker down. Walker then makes a superb cutback back to the left, and he now has a wall of offensive linemen between him and the rest of the line-of-scrimmage defenders. Most of the defensive backs appear to have bit on the idea of a pass (at 0:06, two defensive backs on the left and one on the right are backing downfield to cover their receivers, while a fourth on the right is moving up to cover a short pass route and the fifth on the left is walled off by a good block from a receiver), and that gives Walker tons of room to run in the middle. We don't know if the cutback was part of the called play or an improvisation by Walker, but it's either excellent play design by head coach Kent Austin or great thinking on his feet by Walker. Regardless of who's responsible here, though, they've put Walker in a position to find success, isolating him in the middle with no one directly in his path.

This is where the physical side comes into play and is just as important, though. You can only fool a defence for so long, and the Bombers are already clued in to the play by 0:07. Walker has tremendous speed, though, and that's why he's able to blast through the middle and get by the defensive backs before they're able to recover and cut him off. There's good downfield blocking from his receivers, particularly on the left, but speed's what turns this into a touchdown. It took play design (or smart on-his-feet improvisation) to give Walker so much space in the middle, but it took his raw athletic talent to fully exploit that hole. That makes this play a great combination of intellect and athleticism, and that's why it worked out so well for Hamilton.