The Veer and Shoot: Part II, how to stop it
Tennessee and Georgia's premier matchup this weekend will seek to answer this question.
Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time explaining Tennessee’s “Veer and Shoot” offense, which I coined back when Art Briles was running the system at Baylor.
It’s a very well engineered offense which is designed to apply overwhelming stress to the extreme ends of the field.
They spread you out extra wide, move with lightning tempo, and then the quarterback just hits you where you ain’t.
Try to load up to stop the run and cheat defenders inside? You’ll get quick perimeter screens and throws attached to the runs (RPOs) out into space.
Load up the box but play man coverage outside? They’ll throw deep choice routes at your weakest matchup off play-action OR involve the quarterback in the run game and regain a numbers advantage in the box to run the ball.
It’s a simple game of geometry. A great comparison for any NBA fans is the Cleveland Cavaliers with LeBron James, Houston Rockets with James Harden, or Dallas Mavericks today with Luka Doncic. Those teams would spread out opponents with perhaps limited but effective shooters and then force defenses to try and deal with one of those superstars 1-on-1 in space. If you cheat to protect the rim, they toss it to an open three-point shooter. If you play them 1-on-1 they’ll pick your weakest matchup and iso them for points.
The Veer and Shoot works exactly like that.
So…what do you do?