CFL.ca
Bert Faibish
Ticats.ca
The Anatomy Of A Play
Arland Bruce III comes out of his normal slot position and runs a curl route just in front of the half back. You can see that the respect the defence has for Bruce forces the half back to give him a large ‘cushion’, which means he gives him a great deal of space in front of him to avoid being beat deep. In this instance Bruce runs a short route and has more space to work with after the catch because of the cushion.
The defenders tackling angle is affected by the space he has given Arland, and Bruce has the chance to use his quick burst to escape the diving half back.
Because of the width of the field in the CFL, missed tackles become huge opportunities for receivers and Bruce is one of the best at making the first man miss. Once he avoided the tackle, he heads straight up the sideline, racking up some important YAC yardage.
Our second example has Bruce running a simple slant route over the middle, really only designed to pick up the first down. However once again Bruce is put into a one-on-one coverage situation and has only one man to beat if he wants to break free up the middle.
Bruce showcases his acceleration once again as he makes the first tackler miss and bursts into the open field. A play designed to pick up seven or eight yards quickly begins a big gainer because of Arland’s shiftiness when in the open field.
Bruce accelerates up the field and is just barely brought down by two defenders at about the 14-yard line, setting up Dave Stala’s touchdown reception. On what would be a big day for the Ticats receiver, Bruce showed time and again how dangerous he is with the ball in his hands.
My selection this week is a little different from the things we’ve done in the past in that, it’s an example of an outstanding individual effort rather than a properly executed designed-play. The curl and the slant are two of football’s most simplistic routes, but factor in the ability to make people miss and you can get a dangerous receiver into the open field.
What Arland was able able to accomplish on Saturday was impressive and shouldn’t be overshadowed by the result of the game. His 272 yards receiving ranks as the sixth higest single-game total in CFL history and made even more impressive when his longest reception is facotred in. It was only for 36 yards, giving him a 17-yard average. It is one thing for a player to have a huge game and catch two bombs of 75 and 89 yards or so. For a player to almost hit 300 yards receiving and do it chunk-by-chunk like Bruce? Incredible.
