Commanders Film Review: Matt Gulbin vs Dolphins

Washington Commanders rookie center Matt Gulbin stood out with a solid performance in the team’s preseason opener against the Dolphins last Friday night. Gulbin, a sixth round pick, was elevated to second team center following the injury that has seen starting center Nick Allegretti sidelined throughout training camp so far. Julian Good-Jones, the back up center, started in place of Allegretti which in turn elevated Gulbin to the second unit.

Gulbin certainly didn’t look out of place with the second team offense. Granted, the Dolphins are a rebuilding team and lack depth across the roster, meaning he wasn’t facing the strongest opposition. So keep that in mind here as we work through the performance. But Gulbin can’t control who lines up across from him so it’s still worth seeing how he did. Let’s start with the run game.

This was Gulbin’s first snap after entering the game as the Commanders subbed out their starting offense. It was probably his best snap of the game too. The Commanders call a wide zone run to their left. The Dolphins align their nose tackle in a tricky spot. He’s on the inside shoulder of left guard Tanoa Togiai, so he’s not an easy reach for Gulbin at center and Togiai can’t just release freely up to the second level. Instead, Gulbin has to work in combination with Togiai to block the defender before one of them peels off to work to the linebacker at the second level.

At the snap, Togiai does a great job getting to the defender’s outside shoulder and making strong contact. This prevents the defender from penetrating in that gap and also forces the defender to rotate his body to deal with that contact to his outside shoulder. That buys Gulbin time to work across from his center position. With Togiai’s block doing such a great job Gulbin has the perfect target to attack. Gulbin gets his hands into the defenders chest and as Togiai shoves the defender backwards, Gulbin backs him up with another shove. This gains Gulbin full control of the block and allows Togiai to peel off and climb up to the second level.

From there, Gulbin has great leverage. He keeps his hands inside and ensures he continues to drive his legs as he walks the defender backwards, getting a ton of movement and displacement from the nose tackle. That displacement is critical to the success of the run. The Commanders get more solid blocks from the right guard and right tackle, who do the same thing to the other defensive tackle that Togiai and Gulbin did to the nose tackle. That creates a huge cutback lane for running back Robert Henry Jr., who makes a smooth cut and bursts through the hole on his way to a 10 yard gain and a first down.

Undrafted free agent running back Robert Henry Jr. had an impressive outing against the Dolphins too, but it was no coincidence that many of his explosive runs came on plays where Gulbin had some important blocks.

This was another nice block from Gulbin on a wide zone run scheme. This time, the Commander are running a wide zone scheme to their right. The nose tackle lines up in a similar spot to the last play but just flipped sides. However, at the snap, the nose tackle stunts inside a gap, looking to disrupt the potential combination block that we saw was so effective on the previous play.

This is an impressive play from a mental standpoint as much as it is physical. Many lineman would see that nose tackle in their playside gap and assume he’s their block the whole way. When he stunts inside, they’d naturally try to pivot and stay with him. But in the zone scheme, if one lineman works away from the direction of the run, that can completely blow up the whole system. So Gulbin does well mentally to read the stunt and adapt quickly. He doesn’t take the bait of working back inside, he simply trusts the blockers on the back side of the run to pick it up correctly.

Gulbin then immediately recognizes that with the nose tackle stunting inside, his job suddenly changes. He has to climb up to the second level and block the linebacker. So Gulbin instantly gets to work on climbing up to the second level. He’s not the most athletic lineman in the world, but he does a nice job identifying his target and finding his landmark to reach and try to cut him off. That linebacker spots Gulbin coming and attempts to use his athleticism to work around the block, going over the top to get back outside. Gulbin adjusts again and instead of focusing on trying to seal the linebacker inside, he lets the linebacker go where he wants to go and then shoves him further outside, washing him out of the play.

Henry at running back does a nice job bouncing his run outside initially, but then reading Gulbin’s block at the second level. He cuts his run back behind Gulbin’s block and gets up into the secondary, picking up 15 yards on the carry. It was a very nice run by Henry, but it doesn’t happen if Gulbin isn’t alert mentally to the stunt and then physically able to climb to the second level and make a good block on the linebacker.

The Henry and Gulbin pair combined again on Henry’s 22-yard touchdown run.