How Rockets will glare at Falcons is question

When Air Force prepared for its regular-season finale against Colorado State, it figured the Rams would use a four-man defensive line, as they had all season. The Falcons’ entire offensive plan was built around that assumption.

When the Falcons went to the line for their first play, the Rams lined up with a five-man front, something they hadn’t shown much all season.

“Pretty much the entire playbook we practiced went out the window,” receiver Jonathan Warzeka said.

The Falcons get the reputation for being tough to prepare for, and that’s true. Their offense is a maze of formations, and Air Force runs a mix of zone-blocking run plays and option plays, both of which aren’t standard in college football. But while Air Force is tough to prepare for, the converse is also true because Air Force has a tough time predicting what a defense will do against its unusual offense.

The Military Bowl is a good example. Air Force can’t trust tendencies from the film of Toledo’s first 12 games, because the Rockets didn’t face an offense quite like what the Falcons run (although Northern Illinois sometimes uses three running backs with some read option plays). Air Force scoured through video of Toledo’s defense, going back as far as 10 years because that’s the last time the Rockets faced a similar offense.

“That’s some of the research that has to get done,” Calhoun said.

The Falcons have to take an educated guess on how Toledo will play them, but as the Colorado State game showed, teams add brand new wrinkles when they play Air Force.

“You took two series to get a feel how coverages were going to work and the way the front was tied in with the linebackers,” Calhoun said about the Colorado State game. “I credit our coaches enormously, and our guys. We had to go down another path with our game plan.”

The Falcons were fine in that game once they got comfortable. After a scoreless first quarter, Air Force scored 31 unanswered points against Colorado State in the second quarter and won 45-21.

When an opponent surprises the Falcons, usually it’s not too much of a shock. Over the course of the week Air Force tries to prepare a little for every possible defensive look, and at very least the Falcons have practiced against every type of alignment imaginable.

“We usually prepare for all the defensive schemes,” quarterback Tim Jefferson said. “We’ve seen just about every defensive scheme you can think of.”

The players have to adjust to unexpected defensive tactics. Warzeka talked about Jefferson making an audible at the line on the first play against Colorado State to get Air Force in the right play against the five-man front. The coaches make their adjustments, too. And the Falcons hope they come up with a quick solution.

“We recognize teams are going to come up with something new to try to slow us down,” Jefferson said. “We know we’re usually not going to get what we prepare for. That happened a bunch this season.”