Offensive linemen
Dive/Trap
I've been referring to this as the "Dive/Trap" for a reason. Let's be honest, without some killer offensive linemen, most youth offenses gain precisely squat on the dive play. It typically relies on man-on-man blocking, and without the mechanical advantages to drive physically superior defensive linemen off the ball, your offensive line is at a disadvantage.
However, there are some reasons to run a pure dive with base blocking. This took me a long time to understand, but here's the basic gist of it: when you angle block all the time, defenders learn to expect the assault to hit them from an angle, and set themselves to repel your charge back along that same axis of inertia. Well, if he's going to be kind enough to try to angle himself away from the play, we can help him with a simple explosive base block that stays low and gets into his hips, driving him out even more.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
A Dissection of a Series (Part Two)
Last week I discussed the basic Buck Sweep action from the Wing-T and how it can be easily incorporated into virtually any offensive system, allowing for a four-play series that simultaneously threatens both perimeters, the center of the offensive formation, and the downfield area. This series has been one of the most successful in the history of football, and today I want to discuss the basic backfield actions.
Dive/Trap
As mentioned previously, the series relies on three backs acting in concert to threaten both edges of the defense as well as the middle. Although the typical youth offensive system revolves around the sweep, I'd like you to focus your attention on the middle of the field for a moment.
Whether you choose to run a dive or to trap block the defense or-- as I'll discuss in a couple of weeks-- to run both schemes, attacking the middle of the defense is critical. Because most youth offenses gain yards predominately outside the tackles, most typical youth defenses are set up in a sort of "V" shape designed to contain the edge. Because of this, you can punch large holes in their middle if you set the play up properly-- particularly if they are flying outside to pursue a sweep they are absolutely, positively sure is coming.
To begin the dive/trap play, I recommend running dives on first sound, and traps on your normal cadence. This is not the key it sounds like to the defense if you have one or two other first sound plays in the similar series (Out of the Wing-T, I like a quick toss to the weak side with the split end cracking the outside linebacker. It's a great 3rd&1 play when the defense is committed to the middle and positive you're about to dive.)
I run both the dive and the trap to the weak side of the formation, as you can see in the diagram. I should note that I use two types of terminology:
1) "Cut" -- A Cut is a trap-action play that attacks in the same direction as the sweep. The fullback takes the hand off and 'cuts' behind the pulling guard, into the hole and underneath the pursuit.
2) "Trap" -- A Trap is a trap-action play that attacks in the opposite direction of the pursuit. The full back takes the ball and hits directly into the hole, preferably without slowing down at all.
Both plays have their uses. Against fast-flowing defenses with highly aggressive pursuit, the Cut is a more effective play because it offers cutback opportunities. With less-aggressive pursuit, the Trap is effective and hits a little quicker, generally while the defenders are still trying to spot the ball.
In either case, we will assume a Wing-Right look, so the fullback will be taking the handoff on the left side of the quarterback.
QB:
Begin the cadence in a slightly pigeon-toed stance with your knees held closely together. At the snap, pivot sharply to the left, drawing your left foot back to the 3o'clock position and opening your hips directly towards your own goal line. Put your eyes on the bottom of the fullback's numbers and extend the ball into his pocket with both hands. After he receives the handoff, take a giant step with your left foot directly back towards your goal line, locking your eyes on the crossing halfback's belt buckle. Extend both hands together as if you had the ball and let the halfback wrap his pocket around them, closing as if receiving a handoff.
Your right foot should not have moved yet. Now take a giant step towards your 2o'clock position with your right foot, pulling both hands down to your left hip and pivoting your head sharply around to the right. Lock your eyes on the corner on that side of the field. Take one more giant step with your left foot at the same angle to gain depth, and now head for the sideline as if running a sweep. Make eye contact with any tacklers that approach you, and attempt to dodge them as if you were carrying the ball. Keep your hands locked to your upfield hip and your upper body turned. If you make it to the edge without the defensive end or corner approaching you, signal to your coach that the keep is open. (The signal I use is for the QB to wiggle his facemask.)
The quarterback should practice these steps and actions 20-40 times without any other players present in the drill, until he is perfectly comfortable with the steps necessary.
FB:
Begin the cadence with your elbows on your knees in a comfortable rest position. If the play is on first sound, take your first step without going to a three-point stance. Otherwise, drop to a forward-weighted three-point stance on the quarterback's first sound.
Take your first step directly forward with your right foot, keeping your body low. If the play is the Cut, lock your eyes on the nearest hip of the pulling guard. With your second step (left foot), angle to follow that hip, cutting off the block and up into the hole on your third step (right foot). Look for cutback against the defensive flow after crossing the line of scrimmage.
If the play is a dive or a trap, take your second step (left foot) at 11o'clock into the hole. Stay low and keep your legs driving. Expect to break tackles and protect the ball at all times.
The fullback should get 20-30 reps of these steps before joining the rest of the team.
HB:
Begin the cadence in a comfortable rest position with your weight on the balls of your feet and your elbows resting lightly on your knees. Face directly forward. At the snap, crossover step with your left foot directly across your body to as close to 3o'clock as you can get. The crossover step will pull you slightly forward, which is fine; it brings you closer to the quarterback's second handoff point. Lock your eyes on the defensive end in front of you and receive the quarterback's extended hands on your second step (right foot). Wrap your pocket around the quarterback's hands and grip both sides of your jersey under your armpits until you reach the cut point.
Keep your eyes on that end, and belly slightly back towards your goal line with your third step (left foot). Sprint at full speed directly towards the sideline, cutting up as soon as you make it past the defensive end. Try to make your cut as sharp and close to 90-degrees as possible, getting your shoulders square to the line of scrimmage and gaining as much vertical ground as quickly as you can. Make eye contact with potential tacklers and dodge them as if you were carrying the ball. Make them chase you.
The halfback should get 15-25 reps of these steps by himself before joining the rest of the team.
WB:
Begin the cadence with your left foot splitting the tight end and approximately the same depth in the offensive backfield as the quarterback. Be in a comfortable rest position with your weight on the balls of your feet and your elbows resting lightly on your knees. Face directly forward. If the play is on quarterback's first sound, move from this stance, but if the play is on regular cadence, on the first sound swing your left foot back until your belt buckle is pointing directly at the ball. (Coaching point: Wings tend to rotate too far and end up facing towards the sideline. Stay on them to keep that belt pointing to the ball or they'll be unable to reach block or execute outward breaking steps.)
At the snap, step with your outside (right) foot as close to 3o'clock as possible. Take a second step immediately with the left foot slightly towards the line of scrimmage. Immediately attack the nearest defensive player ON or WITHIN ONE YARD OF the line of scrimmage from your nose outward. Get your head across his body and aim to place your face mask into his outside armpit. Either place your crossed wrists into his near ribs (shoulder block) or your hands together on his near hip (hand block), and run directly through him to the sideline. Do not stop or break contact with the defender until you reach the sideline or hear the whistle.
The wingback should receive 10-15 reps without a defender before a player is placed in the defensive end position. A further 10-25 reps should be gained with this defender moving to various locations: on the line, off the line, head up, inside shade, and outside shade. The wingback must ignore any inside shade defender and execute the reach block aggressively on each rep.
Now here's the best part of series based football: for the remaining plays in the series, if you have properly repped and installed the dive with attention paid to the the correct footwork and the angles, almost everything is already done to install the remaining plays.
Sweep:
QB:
At the snap, pull the ball sharply in to your hips and execute your footwork exactly as in the dive. Do NOT fake a handoff; let the fullback execute an arm-over wrap and enter the line exactly as if he had been handed the ball. On your second step, extend the ball to the halfback and place it securely in his pocket. Execute the remainder of your steps and fakes exactly as you did on the dive!
FB:
At the snap, execute your steps exactly as you do for the dive. As you pass the quarterback, wrap up like you're taking a handoff. Hit the line hard and try to break tackles just as if you were carrying the ball. Fight for ten tough yards and work hard enough to make the defense come to you.
HB:
Align and perform your first step exactly as you do for the dive. Take the handoff from the quarterback on your second step and accelerate to full speed as fast as possible, bellying slightly back from the line of scrimmage. As soon as you get past the defensive end, break downfield, getting as square and as vertical as possible as soon as you can.
WB:
The wingback's assignment does not change for the rest of the running plays in this series, Although it should be noted that a Wingback counter is possible in this series, I generally don't consider it a part of the Buck series, but put it with the Power sequence.
Keep and Waggle
I generally teach the Keep and Pass as one play. My quarterbacks are given the primary instruction to seek a first down on foot first, and only consider throwing the ball when it's wide open. The rule is simple:
"If you can get five yards on first down, a first down, or score without being touched, then tuck the ball and run."
If he is likely to be tackled, he needs to throw the ball, even if he throws it away. I don't like my quarterbacks getting hit, although it doesn't bother me a bit to see them lead blocking, where they control the speed of impact and can protect themselves with their own kinetic energy.
QB:
The quarterback's assignment is identical to the assignment on the dive/trap and sweep plays. He executes both fakes and attacks the perimeter hard. Hopefully, by the time you've called this play in the game, the near defensive end has been set up enough to be abandoning his assignments and crashing down hard rather than keeping a good contain position.
His passing reads are low to high with the backside tight end executing a one step drag across the field, and the backside wing running a short post to cross the nearest safety's face. This should pin that safety in place and prevent him from helping out over the top. The split end is the primary receiver, and should leave the line hard with a three step fade route that brings him between the numbers and the sideline. The ball needs to be thrown over his outside shoulder to prevent the interception.
This is not an easy throw to make. For one thing, the roll out is to the left, and for a right handed quarterback it's difficult. Second, it takes a bit of an arm to make an over the outside shoulder throw. There is one real trick for this:
Practice. The quarterback needs to throw each route at least 75 times before it's called in a game. He needs ample reps at throwing on the run. I have a simple roll out drill that I run each day that I'll detail in a later blog, but for now, understand that he can make the throw, you just have to work it.
FB:
The fullback's assignment does not change for the Keep or Waggle. He needs to hit the line hard, faking as if he has the ball, and run hard enough to draw the defense to him.
HB:
The halfback's assignment does not change for the Keep or Waggle. He needs to attack the perimeter as if he were carrying the football and draw the defense to him by running all out and juking, jiving, and avoiding the tacklers just like he has the ball in his hands.
WB:
The wingback shows reach block with a hard step to the outside with his right foot, and then releases to the inside across the face of any defender aligned outside his nose or over the top of any defender aligned inside him. He runs three steps directly upfield and then angles to run a short post directly in front of the nearest safety. If possible, he should make eye contact and give the safety a friendly nod. This will make any safety plant and immediately attack him. (It's like hypnosis!)
For more information, see:
1. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: The Base Plan. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
2. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: Installing the System. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
3. Coverdale, Andrew, and Dan Robinson. The Bunch Attack: Using Compressed, Clustered Formations in the Passing Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
4. Raymond, Harold R., and Ted Kempski. The Delaware Wing-T: the Running Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1998. Print.
5. Gentry, Dan. Football's Mis-direction Wing-T with Multi-points of Attack. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
6. Cox, Gene. The Multiple Offense. Lake City, FL: Hunter Printing, 1996. Print.
Dive/Trap
As mentioned previously, the series relies on three backs acting in concert to threaten both edges of the defense as well as the middle. Although the typical youth offensive system revolves around the sweep, I'd like you to focus your attention on the middle of the field for a moment.
Whether you choose to run a dive or to trap block the defense or-- as I'll discuss in a couple of weeks-- to run both schemes, attacking the middle of the defense is critical. Because most youth offenses gain yards predominately outside the tackles, most typical youth defenses are set up in a sort of "V" shape designed to contain the edge. Because of this, you can punch large holes in their middle if you set the play up properly-- particularly if they are flying outside to pursue a sweep they are absolutely, positively sure is coming.
To begin the dive/trap play, I recommend running dives on first sound, and traps on your normal cadence. This is not the key it sounds like to the defense if you have one or two other first sound plays in the similar series (Out of the Wing-T, I like a quick toss to the weak side with the split end cracking the outside linebacker. It's a great 3rd&1 play when the defense is committed to the middle and positive you're about to dive.)
I run both the dive and the trap to the weak side of the formation, as you can see in the diagram. I should note that I use two types of terminology:
1) "Cut" -- A Cut is a trap-action play that attacks in the same direction as the sweep. The fullback takes the hand off and 'cuts' behind the pulling guard, into the hole and underneath the pursuit.
2) "Trap" -- A Trap is a trap-action play that attacks in the opposite direction of the pursuit. The full back takes the ball and hits directly into the hole, preferably without slowing down at all.
Both plays have their uses. Against fast-flowing defenses with highly aggressive pursuit, the Cut is a more effective play because it offers cutback opportunities. With less-aggressive pursuit, the Trap is effective and hits a little quicker, generally while the defenders are still trying to spot the ball.
In either case, we will assume a Wing-Right look, so the fullback will be taking the handoff on the left side of the quarterback.
QB:
Begin the cadence in a slightly pigeon-toed stance with your knees held closely together. At the snap, pivot sharply to the left, drawing your left foot back to the 3o'clock position and opening your hips directly towards your own goal line. Put your eyes on the bottom of the fullback's numbers and extend the ball into his pocket with both hands. After he receives the handoff, take a giant step with your left foot directly back towards your goal line, locking your eyes on the crossing halfback's belt buckle. Extend both hands together as if you had the ball and let the halfback wrap his pocket around them, closing as if receiving a handoff.
Your right foot should not have moved yet. Now take a giant step towards your 2o'clock position with your right foot, pulling both hands down to your left hip and pivoting your head sharply around to the right. Lock your eyes on the corner on that side of the field. Take one more giant step with your left foot at the same angle to gain depth, and now head for the sideline as if running a sweep. Make eye contact with any tacklers that approach you, and attempt to dodge them as if you were carrying the ball. Keep your hands locked to your upfield hip and your upper body turned. If you make it to the edge without the defensive end or corner approaching you, signal to your coach that the keep is open. (The signal I use is for the QB to wiggle his facemask.)
The quarterback should practice these steps and actions 20-40 times without any other players present in the drill, until he is perfectly comfortable with the steps necessary.
FB:
Begin the cadence with your elbows on your knees in a comfortable rest position. If the play is on first sound, take your first step without going to a three-point stance. Otherwise, drop to a forward-weighted three-point stance on the quarterback's first sound.
Take your first step directly forward with your right foot, keeping your body low. If the play is the Cut, lock your eyes on the nearest hip of the pulling guard. With your second step (left foot), angle to follow that hip, cutting off the block and up into the hole on your third step (right foot). Look for cutback against the defensive flow after crossing the line of scrimmage.
If the play is a dive or a trap, take your second step (left foot) at 11o'clock into the hole. Stay low and keep your legs driving. Expect to break tackles and protect the ball at all times.
The fullback should get 20-30 reps of these steps before joining the rest of the team.
HB:
Begin the cadence in a comfortable rest position with your weight on the balls of your feet and your elbows resting lightly on your knees. Face directly forward. At the snap, crossover step with your left foot directly across your body to as close to 3o'clock as you can get. The crossover step will pull you slightly forward, which is fine; it brings you closer to the quarterback's second handoff point. Lock your eyes on the defensive end in front of you and receive the quarterback's extended hands on your second step (right foot). Wrap your pocket around the quarterback's hands and grip both sides of your jersey under your armpits until you reach the cut point.
Keep your eyes on that end, and belly slightly back towards your goal line with your third step (left foot). Sprint at full speed directly towards the sideline, cutting up as soon as you make it past the defensive end. Try to make your cut as sharp and close to 90-degrees as possible, getting your shoulders square to the line of scrimmage and gaining as much vertical ground as quickly as you can. Make eye contact with potential tacklers and dodge them as if you were carrying the ball. Make them chase you.
The halfback should get 15-25 reps of these steps by himself before joining the rest of the team.
WB:
Begin the cadence with your left foot splitting the tight end and approximately the same depth in the offensive backfield as the quarterback. Be in a comfortable rest position with your weight on the balls of your feet and your elbows resting lightly on your knees. Face directly forward. If the play is on quarterback's first sound, move from this stance, but if the play is on regular cadence, on the first sound swing your left foot back until your belt buckle is pointing directly at the ball. (Coaching point: Wings tend to rotate too far and end up facing towards the sideline. Stay on them to keep that belt pointing to the ball or they'll be unable to reach block or execute outward breaking steps.)
At the snap, step with your outside (right) foot as close to 3o'clock as possible. Take a second step immediately with the left foot slightly towards the line of scrimmage. Immediately attack the nearest defensive player ON or WITHIN ONE YARD OF the line of scrimmage from your nose outward. Get your head across his body and aim to place your face mask into his outside armpit. Either place your crossed wrists into his near ribs (shoulder block) or your hands together on his near hip (hand block), and run directly through him to the sideline. Do not stop or break contact with the defender until you reach the sideline or hear the whistle.
The wingback should receive 10-15 reps without a defender before a player is placed in the defensive end position. A further 10-25 reps should be gained with this defender moving to various locations: on the line, off the line, head up, inside shade, and outside shade. The wingback must ignore any inside shade defender and execute the reach block aggressively on each rep.
Now here's the best part of series based football: for the remaining plays in the series, if you have properly repped and installed the dive with attention paid to the the correct footwork and the angles, almost everything is already done to install the remaining plays.
Sweep:
QB:
At the snap, pull the ball sharply in to your hips and execute your footwork exactly as in the dive. Do NOT fake a handoff; let the fullback execute an arm-over wrap and enter the line exactly as if he had been handed the ball. On your second step, extend the ball to the halfback and place it securely in his pocket. Execute the remainder of your steps and fakes exactly as you did on the dive!
FB:
At the snap, execute your steps exactly as you do for the dive. As you pass the quarterback, wrap up like you're taking a handoff. Hit the line hard and try to break tackles just as if you were carrying the ball. Fight for ten tough yards and work hard enough to make the defense come to you.
HB:
Align and perform your first step exactly as you do for the dive. Take the handoff from the quarterback on your second step and accelerate to full speed as fast as possible, bellying slightly back from the line of scrimmage. As soon as you get past the defensive end, break downfield, getting as square and as vertical as possible as soon as you can.
WB:
The wingback's assignment does not change for the rest of the running plays in this series, Although it should be noted that a Wingback counter is possible in this series, I generally don't consider it a part of the Buck series, but put it with the Power sequence.
Keep and Waggle
I generally teach the Keep and Pass as one play. My quarterbacks are given the primary instruction to seek a first down on foot first, and only consider throwing the ball when it's wide open. The rule is simple:
"If you can get five yards on first down, a first down, or score without being touched, then tuck the ball and run."
If he is likely to be tackled, he needs to throw the ball, even if he throws it away. I don't like my quarterbacks getting hit, although it doesn't bother me a bit to see them lead blocking, where they control the speed of impact and can protect themselves with their own kinetic energy.
QB:
The quarterback's assignment is identical to the assignment on the dive/trap and sweep plays. He executes both fakes and attacks the perimeter hard. Hopefully, by the time you've called this play in the game, the near defensive end has been set up enough to be abandoning his assignments and crashing down hard rather than keeping a good contain position.
His passing reads are low to high with the backside tight end executing a one step drag across the field, and the backside wing running a short post to cross the nearest safety's face. This should pin that safety in place and prevent him from helping out over the top. The split end is the primary receiver, and should leave the line hard with a three step fade route that brings him between the numbers and the sideline. The ball needs to be thrown over his outside shoulder to prevent the interception.
This is not an easy throw to make. For one thing, the roll out is to the left, and for a right handed quarterback it's difficult. Second, it takes a bit of an arm to make an over the outside shoulder throw. There is one real trick for this:
Practice. The quarterback needs to throw each route at least 75 times before it's called in a game. He needs ample reps at throwing on the run. I have a simple roll out drill that I run each day that I'll detail in a later blog, but for now, understand that he can make the throw, you just have to work it.
FB:
The fullback's assignment does not change for the Keep or Waggle. He needs to hit the line hard, faking as if he has the ball, and run hard enough to draw the defense to him.
HB:
The halfback's assignment does not change for the Keep or Waggle. He needs to attack the perimeter as if he were carrying the football and draw the defense to him by running all out and juking, jiving, and avoiding the tacklers just like he has the ball in his hands.
WB:
The wingback shows reach block with a hard step to the outside with his right foot, and then releases to the inside across the face of any defender aligned outside his nose or over the top of any defender aligned inside him. He runs three steps directly upfield and then angles to run a short post directly in front of the nearest safety. If possible, he should make eye contact and give the safety a friendly nod. This will make any safety plant and immediately attack him. (It's like hypnosis!)
For more information, see:
1. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: The Base Plan. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
2. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: Installing the System. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
3. Coverdale, Andrew, and Dan Robinson. The Bunch Attack: Using Compressed, Clustered Formations in the Passing Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
4. Raymond, Harold R., and Ted Kempski. The Delaware Wing-T: the Running Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1998. Print.
5. Gentry, Dan. Football's Mis-direction Wing-T with Multi-points of Attack. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
6. Cox, Gene. The Multiple Offense. Lake City, FL: Hunter Printing, 1996. Print.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
A Dissection of a Series (Part One)
Today I want to begin a series of articles on sequence-based football. The objective behind sequence football (also called "series" football) is to make every play look as closely similar as possible at the snap and for the first few steps into the play. This forces the defenders to commit based on what they think is happening, and a properly constructed series will place a defender in the wrong position most of the time by default; whatever action he has to take to put himself in position to defend play "A" of the series will take him out of position for play "C" of the series, and so on.
At the youth level, the most dangerous play is usually the sweep. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one that sometimes is forgotten is instinct. If you give a player a ball and tell him to run away from the defense, he runs to where he sees open field, usually to either side. Then he turns downfield and heads for the goal line. The sweep in my playbook doesn't work because I'm a great coach, but because of the natural instinct an athlete has to run away from where there are tacklers.
So, if most youth coaches are going to run some sort of sweep, let's look at a series that starts there, and expands in all directions while still staying true to the idea of series-based football.
Perhaps no system is more focused on series football than the venerable and efficient Wing-T. Developed in the early 1940's as an extension of the under-center T-formation, the Wing-T allowed the offensive coach to force the defense to respect both sides of the formation as a run threat, but in different ways.
Shown in the diagram above, the base formation features a "Wing" on one side, with a tight end and a back in close proximity to one another, allowing for double teams on the defensive end, as well as providing a natural rub angle for bunch passing attacks. On the weak side, the end is split 7-10 yards from the tackle, not necessarily to isolate him for the passing game, but to give him an excellent crack angle for a down block that can spring the quick pitch sweep.
In the backfield, a halfback sits approximately four yards deep and with his outside foot splitting the tail of the tackle on his side. A fullback aligns anywhere from four and a half to five yards depth directly behind the quarterback. His depth should depend on his acceleration and allow him to reach almost full speed before striking a hole opening in the center of the formation.
The series I want to talk about here is the "20" series in standard Wing-T nomenclature, or the "Buck Sweep," as it is also known. You can find it in just about any offense, and from almost any formation, but it always features three distinct parts:
1) A fullback play that strikes directly between the guards. Whether this is a "Cut" (playside trap) like the Vallotton Double Wing, or the 124 Guard Trap out of the traditional Wing-T, or an inside zone out of a Split-Back Pro look, or even simply a dive out of the I-Formation, this play forces the inside linebackers to honor it first and foremost before pursuing the sweep that is the horizontal stretch.
2) A halfback sweep action that attacks the perimeter almost immediately at the snap and is executed as close to simultaneously to the dive action as can be timed on the field. This play usually relies on the speed of the halfback to get around the corner, but great gains can be made if the defense overpursues and the back can cut against the grain. You see this play as the traditional "Packer sweep" and also in the pros "end around". (Which is not a reverse, no matter what Joe Theismann says.)
3) A combination quarterback keep/rollout pass play that occurs almost immediately after the sweep action and forces the defense to react simultaneously across both perimeter points of attack. Since defenses usually structure their pursuit to "roll towards" a sweep, allowing the corners and outside linebackers to force the ball back inside, two perimeter attacks at one time has the effect of drawing the defense apart down the middle, opening the way for the fullback.
3a) With the addition of a couple of slight adjustments to the eligible receivers and their pass routes, a "Waggle" play can be added to the quarterback keep, allowing for a run/pass option that again forces the defense out of position; a corner rolling up to prevent the run has almost no ability to defend a pass thrown over his head. He is entirely dependent on the free safety assistance over the top, and if the free safety is reacting to the perceived dive or sweep on the other side of the field, he will be well out of position to assist on the pass.
What makes this series so effective, especially at the youth level, is the conservation of effort that it allows. By practicing the series without footballs and focusing on the steps each player must take no matter where the ball goes, it is possible to make the entire series look almost identical. This means, for the first few seconds after the snap, the defense has absolutely no clue whatsoever where the ball is or where it is going.
When I have installed this series, whether from out of a Wing-T look, or the I-Formation, or even my beloved Double Wing, I generally rep it with the offensive backfield some 150-200 times without a football. Although this sounds like a lot, it really isn't. I'm using just the backs, and the timing drill we work on every day allows us to get approximately 40 reps every ten minutes during our individual period each day. (Indo usually features a five minute drill of some manner, such as exchanges or ball security or aggressive running, and then 20-25 minutes of timing work where we perfect the backfield actions of each play.)
In most offenses that are not series-focused, each play should receive 150-200 reps of the backfield actions before seeing game day grass. That means the four plays described, if they were broken among a typical grab-bag youth offense, would require 150x4=600 reps to perfect.
With a series-based format, however, the entire series can be repped in the same amount of time. I'm sure you can see the benefits. (Now get tricky: find 4-8 offensive formations that allow you to run the same series without altering any of the responsibilities. Now flip those formations and run the same sets and actions to the other side of the field. To the defense, it looks like you have 400 potential plays, but your offense is only learning one four-play series and eight formations! This is what I mean when I say "simply complex.")
While the backfield is working to perfect their movements, the offensive line divides their time into a) learning the assignments for that day's two plays from the series (generally starting with the trap/dive first and then the sweep second), and b) getting reps of plays previously installed.
During team time (anywhere from 20-45 minutes, depending on the time of year and how much of the offense is installed), we focus on running the specific plays called on to rehearse during that day's practice against a myriad of defensive fronts (Gap-8, 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, 4-4, etc) in the preseason, and against our next opponent's most likely defense in the regular season. During this period, we teach the line to make any necessary calls against a defensive front, how to react to blitzing linebackers, and we can even "front load" the next day's offensive line responsibilities. The backs should focus during this period on faking correctly; series-based systems fail miserably when they don't fool the defense.
It's with no small amount of pleasure that I see the Wing-T sliding downward in popularity against the "sexier" Spread-based offenses that have been the craze since about 2004. This means that the most popular and effective offense in history is becoming less and less well known to defensive coordinators, increasing your chances of success with it.
Don't forget that this one series is just a tiny, tiny fraction of what the Wing-T has to offer you, should you choose to run it, and equally important is the knowledge that you can run the Buck Sweep series as part of virtually any offensive system, from the West Coast to the Run and Shoot, if you keep to the simply principles I've outlined and force the defense to honor a dive/trap, sweep, and keep/pass all at the same time!
It works.
Next week I'll talk more about the responsibilities of the offensive backfield in this series.
For more information, see:
1. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: The Base Plan. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
2. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: Installing the System. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
3. Coverdale, Andrew, and Dan Robinson. The Bunch Attack: Using Compressed, Clustered Formations in the Passing Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
4. Raymond, Harold R., and Ted Kempski. The Delaware Wing-T: the Running Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1998. Print.
5. Gentry, Dan. Football's Mis-direction Wing-T with Multi-points of Attack. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
6. Cox, Gene. The Multiple Offense. Lake City, FL: Hunter Printing, 1996. Print.
At the youth level, the most dangerous play is usually the sweep. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one that sometimes is forgotten is instinct. If you give a player a ball and tell him to run away from the defense, he runs to where he sees open field, usually to either side. Then he turns downfield and heads for the goal line. The sweep in my playbook doesn't work because I'm a great coach, but because of the natural instinct an athlete has to run away from where there are tacklers.
So, if most youth coaches are going to run some sort of sweep, let's look at a series that starts there, and expands in all directions while still staying true to the idea of series-based football.
Perhaps no system is more focused on series football than the venerable and efficient Wing-T. Developed in the early 1940's as an extension of the under-center T-formation, the Wing-T allowed the offensive coach to force the defense to respect both sides of the formation as a run threat, but in different ways.
Shown in the diagram above, the base formation features a "Wing" on one side, with a tight end and a back in close proximity to one another, allowing for double teams on the defensive end, as well as providing a natural rub angle for bunch passing attacks. On the weak side, the end is split 7-10 yards from the tackle, not necessarily to isolate him for the passing game, but to give him an excellent crack angle for a down block that can spring the quick pitch sweep.
In the backfield, a halfback sits approximately four yards deep and with his outside foot splitting the tail of the tackle on his side. A fullback aligns anywhere from four and a half to five yards depth directly behind the quarterback. His depth should depend on his acceleration and allow him to reach almost full speed before striking a hole opening in the center of the formation.
The series I want to talk about here is the "20" series in standard Wing-T nomenclature, or the "Buck Sweep," as it is also known. You can find it in just about any offense, and from almost any formation, but it always features three distinct parts:
1) A fullback play that strikes directly between the guards. Whether this is a "Cut" (playside trap) like the Vallotton Double Wing, or the 124 Guard Trap out of the traditional Wing-T, or an inside zone out of a Split-Back Pro look, or even simply a dive out of the I-Formation, this play forces the inside linebackers to honor it first and foremost before pursuing the sweep that is the horizontal stretch.
2) A halfback sweep action that attacks the perimeter almost immediately at the snap and is executed as close to simultaneously to the dive action as can be timed on the field. This play usually relies on the speed of the halfback to get around the corner, but great gains can be made if the defense overpursues and the back can cut against the grain. You see this play as the traditional "Packer sweep" and also in the pros "end around". (Which is not a reverse, no matter what Joe Theismann says.)
3) A combination quarterback keep/rollout pass play that occurs almost immediately after the sweep action and forces the defense to react simultaneously across both perimeter points of attack. Since defenses usually structure their pursuit to "roll towards" a sweep, allowing the corners and outside linebackers to force the ball back inside, two perimeter attacks at one time has the effect of drawing the defense apart down the middle, opening the way for the fullback.
3a) With the addition of a couple of slight adjustments to the eligible receivers and their pass routes, a "Waggle" play can be added to the quarterback keep, allowing for a run/pass option that again forces the defense out of position; a corner rolling up to prevent the run has almost no ability to defend a pass thrown over his head. He is entirely dependent on the free safety assistance over the top, and if the free safety is reacting to the perceived dive or sweep on the other side of the field, he will be well out of position to assist on the pass.
What makes this series so effective, especially at the youth level, is the conservation of effort that it allows. By practicing the series without footballs and focusing on the steps each player must take no matter where the ball goes, it is possible to make the entire series look almost identical. This means, for the first few seconds after the snap, the defense has absolutely no clue whatsoever where the ball is or where it is going.
When I have installed this series, whether from out of a Wing-T look, or the I-Formation, or even my beloved Double Wing, I generally rep it with the offensive backfield some 150-200 times without a football. Although this sounds like a lot, it really isn't. I'm using just the backs, and the timing drill we work on every day allows us to get approximately 40 reps every ten minutes during our individual period each day. (Indo usually features a five minute drill of some manner, such as exchanges or ball security or aggressive running, and then 20-25 minutes of timing work where we perfect the backfield actions of each play.)
In most offenses that are not series-focused, each play should receive 150-200 reps of the backfield actions before seeing game day grass. That means the four plays described, if they were broken among a typical grab-bag youth offense, would require 150x4=600 reps to perfect.
With a series-based format, however, the entire series can be repped in the same amount of time. I'm sure you can see the benefits. (Now get tricky: find 4-8 offensive formations that allow you to run the same series without altering any of the responsibilities. Now flip those formations and run the same sets and actions to the other side of the field. To the defense, it looks like you have 400 potential plays, but your offense is only learning one four-play series and eight formations! This is what I mean when I say "simply complex.")
While the backfield is working to perfect their movements, the offensive line divides their time into a) learning the assignments for that day's two plays from the series (generally starting with the trap/dive first and then the sweep second), and b) getting reps of plays previously installed.
During team time (anywhere from 20-45 minutes, depending on the time of year and how much of the offense is installed), we focus on running the specific plays called on to rehearse during that day's practice against a myriad of defensive fronts (Gap-8, 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, 4-4, etc) in the preseason, and against our next opponent's most likely defense in the regular season. During this period, we teach the line to make any necessary calls against a defensive front, how to react to blitzing linebackers, and we can even "front load" the next day's offensive line responsibilities. The backs should focus during this period on faking correctly; series-based systems fail miserably when they don't fool the defense.
It's with no small amount of pleasure that I see the Wing-T sliding downward in popularity against the "sexier" Spread-based offenses that have been the craze since about 2004. This means that the most popular and effective offense in history is becoming less and less well known to defensive coordinators, increasing your chances of success with it.
Don't forget that this one series is just a tiny, tiny fraction of what the Wing-T has to offer you, should you choose to run it, and equally important is the knowledge that you can run the Buck Sweep series as part of virtually any offensive system, from the West Coast to the Run and Shoot, if you keep to the simply principles I've outlined and force the defense to honor a dive/trap, sweep, and keep/pass all at the same time!
It works.
Next week I'll talk more about the responsibilities of the offensive backfield in this series.
For more information, see:
1. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: The Base Plan. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
2. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: Installing the System. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
3. Coverdale, Andrew, and Dan Robinson. The Bunch Attack: Using Compressed, Clustered Formations in the Passing Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
4. Raymond, Harold R., and Ted Kempski. The Delaware Wing-T: the Running Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1998. Print.
5. Gentry, Dan. Football's Mis-direction Wing-T with Multi-points of Attack. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
6. Cox, Gene. The Multiple Offense. Lake City, FL: Hunter Printing, 1996. Print.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
The HURRICANE.
One of the problems football coaches encounter is that, all other things being completely equal, the more physical team generally wins the game. Whoever blocks, tackles, and just plain knocks the other down is most likely to have more points on the scoreboard at the end of the game.
That's an elegant restatement of the problem. Now, what do we do about a solution?
There are a lot of ways to build aggression in football players. In high school, the emphasis is on not hitting your teammates, due to the risk of injury. As a result, we tend to focus our impact time on sleds, bags, and other nonhuman equipment that doesn't incur medical expenses when broken.
The youth levels, however, are vastly different. Most youth programs don't have expensive sleds and other equipment, and so need to focus their hitting on one another, even though it is somewhat more dangerous. Before you shriek out that I'm advocating increased risk for your players, I want you to think about this:
Should your players hit and be hit in practice, where you and your staff can tailor the drills, control the matchups, and otherwise damp things down to reduce injury while still building confidence...
...Or should your players discover hitting in a game, where anywhere from two to five officials will be more interested in collecting a paycheck than in enforcing safety rules correctly, and the opposing team will care neither for the equality of matchups or for any conditions that adversely affect their ability to score?
I would rather my players gain confidence in hitting in a controlled environment where they can improve without worrying about the blindside block or decleater from out of nowhere, and where my quick whistle and the eyes of my assistants can stop a drill before someone is injured.
Enter, the Hurricane drill. I've discussed this drill before, most notably in the FORUM, but this is the first time I've placed it online in complete form.
Setup:
Take four cones, shields, or bags and set them up to mark an area approximately five yards on a side (25 square yards). Place three players in the square with one football.
Player A: Tackler. His responsibility is to securely bring down the ball carrier.
Player B: Blocker. His responsibility is to prevent the tackler from making any contact with the ball carrier. He can strike from almost any angle (although you can provide pressure on him to block only from the front-- I usually work the drill from the defensive side and allow the offense to "cheat" slightly.)
Player C: Ball Carrier. He must avoid being tackled as long as possible.
Execution:
All three players begin movement on the whistle. The designated tackler must attack the ball carrier immediately, not seeking to avoid the blocker, but disengaging from him as quickly as possible if contact is made. The blocker can attack, sit, angle, or use any other technique or method to move the tackler away from the ball carrier, who can juke, spin, and dodge as needed to avoid being tackled. As a natural occurrence within the drill, the blocker may hold. If you are working on offense, penalize him with pushups, up/downs, etc. If you are working on defense, your defender can use this as an opportunity to execute holdbreaking techniques (something you should work at least five minutes out of every defensive practice.)
Coaching Points:
The tackler should keep his eyes pinned to the ball carrier and use his peripheral vision to locate the blocker and avoid him as necessary. He should use any and all holdbreaking techniques necessary to separate from the blocker and regain an angle of approach to the ball carrier.
Ball carriers will generally be able to spin out of tackles unless the tackler makes a secure and tight wrap, grabbing cloth with both hands. The drill does not end until the tackler has managed to bring the ball carrier to the ground. All players involved in the drill must remain within the square.
As a conditioning exercise, I require my players to move from tackler, to blocker, to ball carrier. This has two affects on the drill. First, the ball carriers are generally tired, which gives the outnumbered tackler a better chance to bring them down in a timely manner. Second, it extends the period during which the athletes are strenuously active, which pushes them closer to their VO(2max). This is the maximum rate at which the body can absorb oxygen. Training to increase this threshold increases the burst ability of your players-- they will be able to function at peak explosive effort for longer periods. They will also recover more quickly between plays, and be better able to recuperate after games.
Some players will focus too extensively on the blocker and forget the ball carrier. This has a way of weeding itself out of the drill-- the longer you fart around with the blocker, the more tired you are going to get. Your best option to get out of the drill in a hurry is to act like the blocker doesn't exist and simply attack the ball carrier. This translates on game day to defenders that shed tacklers faster and penetrate to the offensive backfield in a hurry.
I try to run this drill for fifteen to twenty minutes (four segments) once a week or so in the preseason, and for five to ten minutes (two segments) in the regular season.
Hope this helps!
~D.
That's an elegant restatement of the problem. Now, what do we do about a solution?
There are a lot of ways to build aggression in football players. In high school, the emphasis is on not hitting your teammates, due to the risk of injury. As a result, we tend to focus our impact time on sleds, bags, and other nonhuman equipment that doesn't incur medical expenses when broken.
The youth levels, however, are vastly different. Most youth programs don't have expensive sleds and other equipment, and so need to focus their hitting on one another, even though it is somewhat more dangerous. Before you shriek out that I'm advocating increased risk for your players, I want you to think about this:
Should your players hit and be hit in practice, where you and your staff can tailor the drills, control the matchups, and otherwise damp things down to reduce injury while still building confidence...
...Or should your players discover hitting in a game, where anywhere from two to five officials will be more interested in collecting a paycheck than in enforcing safety rules correctly, and the opposing team will care neither for the equality of matchups or for any conditions that adversely affect their ability to score?
I would rather my players gain confidence in hitting in a controlled environment where they can improve without worrying about the blindside block or decleater from out of nowhere, and where my quick whistle and the eyes of my assistants can stop a drill before someone is injured.
Enter, the Hurricane drill. I've discussed this drill before, most notably in the FORUM, but this is the first time I've placed it online in complete form.
Setup:
Take four cones, shields, or bags and set them up to mark an area approximately five yards on a side (25 square yards). Place three players in the square with one football.
Player A: Tackler. His responsibility is to securely bring down the ball carrier.
Player B: Blocker. His responsibility is to prevent the tackler from making any contact with the ball carrier. He can strike from almost any angle (although you can provide pressure on him to block only from the front-- I usually work the drill from the defensive side and allow the offense to "cheat" slightly.)
Player C: Ball Carrier. He must avoid being tackled as long as possible.
Execution:
All three players begin movement on the whistle. The designated tackler must attack the ball carrier immediately, not seeking to avoid the blocker, but disengaging from him as quickly as possible if contact is made. The blocker can attack, sit, angle, or use any other technique or method to move the tackler away from the ball carrier, who can juke, spin, and dodge as needed to avoid being tackled. As a natural occurrence within the drill, the blocker may hold. If you are working on offense, penalize him with pushups, up/downs, etc. If you are working on defense, your defender can use this as an opportunity to execute holdbreaking techniques (something you should work at least five minutes out of every defensive practice.)
Coaching Points:
The tackler should keep his eyes pinned to the ball carrier and use his peripheral vision to locate the blocker and avoid him as necessary. He should use any and all holdbreaking techniques necessary to separate from the blocker and regain an angle of approach to the ball carrier.
Ball carriers will generally be able to spin out of tackles unless the tackler makes a secure and tight wrap, grabbing cloth with both hands. The drill does not end until the tackler has managed to bring the ball carrier to the ground. All players involved in the drill must remain within the square.
As a conditioning exercise, I require my players to move from tackler, to blocker, to ball carrier. This has two affects on the drill. First, the ball carriers are generally tired, which gives the outnumbered tackler a better chance to bring them down in a timely manner. Second, it extends the period during which the athletes are strenuously active, which pushes them closer to their VO(2max). This is the maximum rate at which the body can absorb oxygen. Training to increase this threshold increases the burst ability of your players-- they will be able to function at peak explosive effort for longer periods. They will also recover more quickly between plays, and be better able to recuperate after games.
Some players will focus too extensively on the blocker and forget the ball carrier. This has a way of weeding itself out of the drill-- the longer you fart around with the blocker, the more tired you are going to get. Your best option to get out of the drill in a hurry is to act like the blocker doesn't exist and simply attack the ball carrier. This translates on game day to defenders that shed tacklers faster and penetrate to the offensive backfield in a hurry.
I try to run this drill for fifteen to twenty minutes (four segments) once a week or so in the preseason, and for five to ten minutes (two segments) in the regular season.
Hope this helps!
~D.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Please Don't Run the Pistol
In 2007 I was coaching with the Valley Wolfpack organization in Sumner, Washington. For some reason the Cascade Junior Football League reversed the "normal" nomenclature for football levels. Although I was coaching the 12-14 year olds, our level was the "Pee Wee" (because freshmen just love to be referred to as peewees). The youngest level was the "midgets." I don't really get it, either.
That's not really important. What is important is that, in two of our games, we faced the Puyallup Rough Riders football club, which has a twenty year reputation for success at all levels, and the Puyallup team ran the Pistol offense.
I'm not going to describe the system, or even give you any diagrams to look at because I don't want to distract you from the ultimate message here. Suffice it to say that the Pistol is a Spread-based offensive attack that places the quarterback about four yards deep behind the center, and puts the tailback at I-formation depth (seven yards). From this position, with four wide receivers, the offense can execute a number of option, run, pass, or play action plays.
Here's where things got turned upside down. I was entranced by the Pistol. Not enough to run the damn thing; I'm not that insane, but enough to try to reverse engineer a playbook for it and consider that if I ever chose to run it, this is how I would do so.
I put the playbook online after I finished it. It was an amalgam of research into the history of the Pistol (developed at Nevada in 2005 under head coach Chris Ault, with an ultimate grandfather in the Glenn Warner Single Wing), and the modern Double Wing blocking rules I use for my own offense (which can largely be found in Jerry Vallotton's outstanding book, The Toss.)
And... that's where the midden hit the windmill.
You see, I made the mistake of titling the work The Pistol Offense for Youth Football. To me, Youth Football starts at high school junior varsity and goes down. My Pistol is pretty simple, but it's still a Spread offense, and I have never advocated using the Spread below the high school level.
About three to six times per week, depending on the time of year, I get an email that reads something like this:
In the first place, I clearly point out in the playbook (Page 2) that I have never run the Pistol. One of the things that scares the crap out of me is the thought that a coach who couldn't read the playbook well enough to realize that I only reverse engineered the system from game film is now going to use it to coach a team of rookie players.
In the second place, although I obviously didn't make it clear enough, the Pistol is not for eight, nine, or ten year olds. The absolute rock-bottom youngest age group I'd run the system with is a team of ages 11-12 that was heavy in the older/lighter category. As written, the system is better suited for the midget level of youth football (or the peewee, if you're in the Cascade Junior Football League).
In the third place, rookie head coaches are probably best served sticking with ground-based attacks. It's a lot easier to coach a power/misdirection system like the Single or Double Wing, or a Wing-T or even Power-I, than it is to try to coach the intricacies of pass blocking, coverage reading, and proper route running. Can it be done? Absolutely. A rookie head coach with zero experience could step in with any offense, a decent work ethic, a reasonable study period before the season begins, and comparable talent and be successful-- for a given value of the word "successful." He might go .300. He might even go undefeated if the right elements are in place. That depends on him and his players.
However, the odds are highly, highly stacked against him. Most youth coaches who try to run pass-heavy playbooks get their asses handed to them. It's not uncommon to see them go entire seasons without scoring a single touchdown. They turn the ball over on bad-call interceptions. They don't know how to read defenses themselves to determine a Cover-2, Cover-3, or Cover-1, and they run receivers into waiting defenders or overpressure their quarterbacks with insane demands like reading three receivers in widely disparate sections of the field in two seconds.
Their players get frustrated. They get frustrated, and they drive young people out of football. They themselves get out of coaching too early, without realizing that it wasn't the kids; it was them not knowing what the hell they were doing.
Even the ground-based attacks have a ridiculous number of details. I coached a Double Wing at Tomales High School at the varsity and junior varsity level under the outstanding head coach Leon Feliciano for three years before it ever occurred to me that our offense would get better if the pulling guard ran forward-- through the center's hips-- rather than pulling flat and turning up. That one little adjustment added .6 of a yard to our lifetime average on 24 Toss, the cornerstone of our offensive plays. That doesn't sound like much, but when you run that play 75% of the time, .6 of a yard turns into one more touchdown each half, and one to two more wins each season.
We're not even getting into the fact that if you coach a passing system, you have to coach pass blocking and run blocking, but you can conceivably get away with either not passing at all in a running system (Been there. Done it. Got the trophy.), or using only play action and teaching run blocking on all your passing plays.
Pass blocking is passive. You sit in one position and guard a space on the field, blocking only the defenders that enter it. Run blocking is aggressive. You physically attack a defender with the intent to either knock him on his ass or at the very least physically move him from out of the path of the ball carrier.
Pass blocking can be out-schemed by blitzing much more easily than run blocking can. What does a pass blocker do when threatened by two or more defenders? Who knows? But a run blocker doesn't care that much because he should already be engaged with one of them-- the guy he attacked at the snap.
In the fourth place, there are nine running plays that can be reversed in the playbook I wrote. That's eighteen plays that hit all points of attack: interior, off-tackle, outside; and also provide power, misdirection, and draw action. That doesn't even count the ten passing plays that can be mixed and matched on each side of the field for more than one hundred potential pass pattern combinations off of just a single formation. Writing me to ask for even more plays for this offense shows me that you really haven't studied what's already there.
Does my Pistol work? Yes. I had a coach contact me that was running a Multiple-I system in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2008. He switched to the Pistol in 2009 and scored 38+ in every game for two years straight. I had a high school coach from Long Island, NY email me and tell me he was using my system with his junior varsity, and had adapted his own terminology to fit mine because mine was easier for them to grasp and more modular and expandable.
I had another coach, much more recently, contact me asking if the Pistol was a good fit for him. He was coaching younger players, 11-12 year olds, but they were experienced (he had one player that had never played before, and two players with only one year of experience. Every other player was in his third year or more.) and he himself had been coaching for six or seven years. They'll be using it in the 2011 season and I think they'll do very well.
Properly coached, with the right personnel in place, at an age group that can functionally perform the required skills, the Pistol as I've developed it is very effective. However, this does not mean it is right for you:
I get dozens of emails each month about this playbook, and very few of them turn into actual conversations. The first email I receive is above, and my reply usually says, "Coach, I really, really do not recommend what you're about to do. You're not coaching the right age group and your experience level doesn't lend itself to easy success with this offense." That email almost never gets a reply back.
I'm not trying to say that you're a bad coach, or stupid, or anything negative like that. I'm saying that my experienced opinion (which you asked for when you contacted me) leads me to believe that you will have more success with another system. If you've got the experience, and you've got the players, by all means, give the system a shot.
But if it's your first year as a football coach and you're in the junior peewee division... please don't run the Pistol.
~D.
That's not really important. What is important is that, in two of our games, we faced the Puyallup Rough Riders football club, which has a twenty year reputation for success at all levels, and the Puyallup team ran the Pistol offense.
I'm not going to describe the system, or even give you any diagrams to look at because I don't want to distract you from the ultimate message here. Suffice it to say that the Pistol is a Spread-based offensive attack that places the quarterback about four yards deep behind the center, and puts the tailback at I-formation depth (seven yards). From this position, with four wide receivers, the offense can execute a number of option, run, pass, or play action plays.
Here's where things got turned upside down. I was entranced by the Pistol. Not enough to run the damn thing; I'm not that insane, but enough to try to reverse engineer a playbook for it and consider that if I ever chose to run it, this is how I would do so.
I put the playbook online after I finished it. It was an amalgam of research into the history of the Pistol (developed at Nevada in 2005 under head coach Chris Ault, with an ultimate grandfather in the Glenn Warner Single Wing), and the modern Double Wing blocking rules I use for my own offense (which can largely be found in Jerry Vallotton's outstanding book, The Toss.)
And... that's where the midden hit the windmill.
You see, I made the mistake of titling the work The Pistol Offense for Youth Football. To me, Youth Football starts at high school junior varsity and goes down. My Pistol is pretty simple, but it's still a Spread offense, and I have never advocated using the Spread below the high school level.
About three to six times per week, depending on the time of year, I get an email that reads something like this:
Hi Coach Wade. I recently came across your Pistol playbook and it's really swell. I'm a rookie head coach and I was searching the web to find a playbook for my eight and nine year old team. Most of them have never played before, but I think this offense can help us win a championship. Are there any other plays you didn't put in the book that you can send me? How many championships did you win while you were running this?Um.
In the first place, I clearly point out in the playbook (Page 2) that I have never run the Pistol. One of the things that scares the crap out of me is the thought that a coach who couldn't read the playbook well enough to realize that I only reverse engineered the system from game film is now going to use it to coach a team of rookie players.
In the second place, although I obviously didn't make it clear enough, the Pistol is not for eight, nine, or ten year olds. The absolute rock-bottom youngest age group I'd run the system with is a team of ages 11-12 that was heavy in the older/lighter category. As written, the system is better suited for the midget level of youth football (or the peewee, if you're in the Cascade Junior Football League).
In the third place, rookie head coaches are probably best served sticking with ground-based attacks. It's a lot easier to coach a power/misdirection system like the Single or Double Wing, or a Wing-T or even Power-I, than it is to try to coach the intricacies of pass blocking, coverage reading, and proper route running. Can it be done? Absolutely. A rookie head coach with zero experience could step in with any offense, a decent work ethic, a reasonable study period before the season begins, and comparable talent and be successful-- for a given value of the word "successful." He might go .300. He might even go undefeated if the right elements are in place. That depends on him and his players.
However, the odds are highly, highly stacked against him. Most youth coaches who try to run pass-heavy playbooks get their asses handed to them. It's not uncommon to see them go entire seasons without scoring a single touchdown. They turn the ball over on bad-call interceptions. They don't know how to read defenses themselves to determine a Cover-2, Cover-3, or Cover-1, and they run receivers into waiting defenders or overpressure their quarterbacks with insane demands like reading three receivers in widely disparate sections of the field in two seconds.
Their players get frustrated. They get frustrated, and they drive young people out of football. They themselves get out of coaching too early, without realizing that it wasn't the kids; it was them not knowing what the hell they were doing.
Even the ground-based attacks have a ridiculous number of details. I coached a Double Wing at Tomales High School at the varsity and junior varsity level under the outstanding head coach Leon Feliciano for three years before it ever occurred to me that our offense would get better if the pulling guard ran forward-- through the center's hips-- rather than pulling flat and turning up. That one little adjustment added .6 of a yard to our lifetime average on 24 Toss, the cornerstone of our offensive plays. That doesn't sound like much, but when you run that play 75% of the time, .6 of a yard turns into one more touchdown each half, and one to two more wins each season.
We're not even getting into the fact that if you coach a passing system, you have to coach pass blocking and run blocking, but you can conceivably get away with either not passing at all in a running system (Been there. Done it. Got the trophy.), or using only play action and teaching run blocking on all your passing plays.
Pass blocking is passive. You sit in one position and guard a space on the field, blocking only the defenders that enter it. Run blocking is aggressive. You physically attack a defender with the intent to either knock him on his ass or at the very least physically move him from out of the path of the ball carrier.
Pass blocking can be out-schemed by blitzing much more easily than run blocking can. What does a pass blocker do when threatened by two or more defenders? Who knows? But a run blocker doesn't care that much because he should already be engaged with one of them-- the guy he attacked at the snap.
In the fourth place, there are nine running plays that can be reversed in the playbook I wrote. That's eighteen plays that hit all points of attack: interior, off-tackle, outside; and also provide power, misdirection, and draw action. That doesn't even count the ten passing plays that can be mixed and matched on each side of the field for more than one hundred potential pass pattern combinations off of just a single formation. Writing me to ask for even more plays for this offense shows me that you really haven't studied what's already there.
Does my Pistol work? Yes. I had a coach contact me that was running a Multiple-I system in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2008. He switched to the Pistol in 2009 and scored 38+ in every game for two years straight. I had a high school coach from Long Island, NY email me and tell me he was using my system with his junior varsity, and had adapted his own terminology to fit mine because mine was easier for them to grasp and more modular and expandable.
I had another coach, much more recently, contact me asking if the Pistol was a good fit for him. He was coaching younger players, 11-12 year olds, but they were experienced (he had one player that had never played before, and two players with only one year of experience. Every other player was in his third year or more.) and he himself had been coaching for six or seven years. They'll be using it in the 2011 season and I think they'll do very well.
Properly coached, with the right personnel in place, at an age group that can functionally perform the required skills, the Pistol as I've developed it is very effective. However, this does not mean it is right for you:
- If you're in your first three years of coaching-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
- If this is your first year as a head coach or offensive coordinator-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
- If your players are younger than age eleven-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
- If your team is composed mostly of rookies-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
- If you're not comfortable with your ability to read a defensive coverage-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
I get dozens of emails each month about this playbook, and very few of them turn into actual conversations. The first email I receive is above, and my reply usually says, "Coach, I really, really do not recommend what you're about to do. You're not coaching the right age group and your experience level doesn't lend itself to easy success with this offense." That email almost never gets a reply back.
I'm not trying to say that you're a bad coach, or stupid, or anything negative like that. I'm saying that my experienced opinion (which you asked for when you contacted me) leads me to believe that you will have more success with another system. If you've got the experience, and you've got the players, by all means, give the system a shot.
But if it's your first year as a football coach and you're in the junior peewee division... please don't run the Pistol.
~D.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Four Wides of Death (Part Two)
Last week I talked about the basic four vertical passing game and how to integrate it into your existing spread package. This week I want to talk about some basic formation adjustments to keep the defense guessing. I also want to discuss some protection schemes to help keep the heat off your quarterback.
As you recall from last week, we spoke only about the "Basic" formation and the 4 vertical play as taken from the playbook used by Mike Newsome, at Butler High School in North Carolina. Whatever terminology you use, the play is one of the simplest in football:
There are a lot of ways you can change up this play to keep the defense guessing, and they're all pretty simple from the offensive point of view. As you probably know if you've read my stuff regularly (or at least as regularly as any schedule I've been on for the last seven years or so), I am a huge believer in changing formation without changing my offensive assignments. If you can alter your alignment, without altering where a player goes or what he does after the snap, in a lot of cases the defense has to treat that as a whole new play.
So take a look at what happens when we adjust from "Base California" above to "Trips Right California" below:
What changed for our players? Nuffin'! #1s still run streaks (arrows, go routes... whatever you call them in your specific terminology) outside the numbers, and the inside men still run the same thing inside the hash marks. The only change is that the mostest innerest man now has to cross the formation before angling downfield.
With this in mind, we can use any formation: even Quads, Ace, TE Trips, what have you, and we can still get our receivers into the places they're supposed to be. Further, just like the Pistol playbook, the receiver responsibilities change based only on where their alignment places them: if you're the #2 receiver, then you run the #2 route, always, forever, whenever. If motion makes you the #1, then you run the #1 route.
I'll let you come up with motion tags to adjust this further, but if you're looking for help, the Pistol playbook has some for you.
But if you're ever going to get that pass off, you need to spend some time working on pass blocking. This has taken me a long time to understand, and after some research and study this year I finally discovered that I had backed into an excellent pass protection scheme several years ago.
In 2003 I sat down with every video copy of our offense running a flood pass over the preceding six years, as well as some video of the same play being run by other teams. I came to the conclusion that we needed to run away from one defensive end, and get a back on the other. I was so damn smart I even spent 35 minutes talking about it at the 2004 Double Wing Symposium (DWS-I).
Here's why passing coaches in the audience were yawning: what I was doing was simple slide protection, nothing more.
Here's the basics for how it works. At the collegiate-- and sometimes high school-- level, protection is called based on where the defense is most likely to stunt from. Defenses at those levels generally decide to stunt from the field (the wide side) when they want to be in the quarterback's face and disrupt his vision lanes, and from the boundary when they want to blindside him. According to Mike Archer of NC State, NCAA offenses generally throw to the wide side about 65% of the time. He likes to blitz from that side, and gave me an excellent zone blitz package called "Fargo" ("field").
The offense can slide their protection one way or the other in order to intercept the stunting defenders. This works for the same reason angle blocking works on running plays: you're cutting a defender off and shoving him to the side rather than meeting him head up when he may be stronger than you. (Which is traditional "cup" protection.) If the middle linebacker stunts from the picture below, instead of a center standing still and catching his charge, there's an angling guard (or even tackle) crossing his face automatically to earhole him. Odds are, at the youth level, he won't even see this one coming.
Sliding to the field looks like this:
The way it works is actually pretty simple. All offensive linemen take a sharp, angled step towards the wide side of the field. Their goal is to engage, not the defender aligned on them, but the defender one gap or more to the inside. They're seeking to get their head and upfield shoulder across the defender and "lock" him into the 90-degree angle between their earhole and their shoulder pad. Then, if they just keep driving, even if the man penetrates the line, he's shoved far enough off-course that he can't get to the quarterback before the throw.
Pay attention to the running back. In the play above, we have "Field, Away" as a protection call. This mean our offensive line blocks towards the field, and our running back blocks away from them, to the boundary. His job is to pick up the first man outside the offensive tackle's outside foot. To do this, he needs to start out with an aiming point at the tackle's inside hip. (He can be beaten outside if the defensive end takes a wide path-- we can live with that. However, if he's beaten to the inside gap, he should be beaten-- with a stick-- after the game. Don't really do that.) If the defender arcs wide outside, he can come up underneath and run them upfield. If the defender cuts inside sharp, the running back meets him near the line.
Don't forget that, at the youth level, your running back is one of the top three athletes on your team, and that defensive end is one of the middle guys, talent-wise.
Now, if we want to roll or half-roll into the field to force the defense to commit one way or another, we can make a slightly different blocking call: "Field, towards."
In a towards call, we can assume that the defensive end is coming wider-- he has to in order to escape the playside tackle's block. For this reason we want our running back to take a more arced path to the point of the block, and try to meet the defender with his shoulders square to the line. If the running back can cross the defensive end's face, is springs the perimeter open if the quarterback wants to run with the ball. Again, we've got a stellar athlete on an average one (although wide side ends tend to be higher up on the talent chain than short side ends).
As you can see, with some basic adjustments to the formation and the addition of a couple of blocking calls, we can make our offense much more dangerous.
~D.
As you recall from last week, we spoke only about the "Basic" formation and the 4 vertical play as taken from the playbook used by Mike Newsome, at Butler High School in North Carolina. Whatever terminology you use, the play is one of the simplest in football:
There are a lot of ways you can change up this play to keep the defense guessing, and they're all pretty simple from the offensive point of view. As you probably know if you've read my stuff regularly (or at least as regularly as any schedule I've been on for the last seven years or so), I am a huge believer in changing formation without changing my offensive assignments. If you can alter your alignment, without altering where a player goes or what he does after the snap, in a lot of cases the defense has to treat that as a whole new play.
So take a look at what happens when we adjust from "Base California" above to "Trips Right California" below:
What changed for our players? Nuffin'! #1s still run streaks (arrows, go routes... whatever you call them in your specific terminology) outside the numbers, and the inside men still run the same thing inside the hash marks. The only change is that the mostest innerest man now has to cross the formation before angling downfield.
With this in mind, we can use any formation: even Quads, Ace, TE Trips, what have you, and we can still get our receivers into the places they're supposed to be. Further, just like the Pistol playbook, the receiver responsibilities change based only on where their alignment places them: if you're the #2 receiver, then you run the #2 route, always, forever, whenever. If motion makes you the #1, then you run the #1 route.
I'll let you come up with motion tags to adjust this further, but if you're looking for help, the Pistol playbook has some for you.
But if you're ever going to get that pass off, you need to spend some time working on pass blocking. This has taken me a long time to understand, and after some research and study this year I finally discovered that I had backed into an excellent pass protection scheme several years ago.
In 2003 I sat down with every video copy of our offense running a flood pass over the preceding six years, as well as some video of the same play being run by other teams. I came to the conclusion that we needed to run away from one defensive end, and get a back on the other. I was so damn smart I even spent 35 minutes talking about it at the 2004 Double Wing Symposium (DWS-I).
Here's why passing coaches in the audience were yawning: what I was doing was simple slide protection, nothing more.
Here's the basics for how it works. At the collegiate-- and sometimes high school-- level, protection is called based on where the defense is most likely to stunt from. Defenses at those levels generally decide to stunt from the field (the wide side) when they want to be in the quarterback's face and disrupt his vision lanes, and from the boundary when they want to blindside him. According to Mike Archer of NC State, NCAA offenses generally throw to the wide side about 65% of the time. He likes to blitz from that side, and gave me an excellent zone blitz package called "Fargo" ("field").
The offense can slide their protection one way or the other in order to intercept the stunting defenders. This works for the same reason angle blocking works on running plays: you're cutting a defender off and shoving him to the side rather than meeting him head up when he may be stronger than you. (Which is traditional "cup" protection.) If the middle linebacker stunts from the picture below, instead of a center standing still and catching his charge, there's an angling guard (or even tackle) crossing his face automatically to earhole him. Odds are, at the youth level, he won't even see this one coming.
Sliding to the field looks like this:
The way it works is actually pretty simple. All offensive linemen take a sharp, angled step towards the wide side of the field. Their goal is to engage, not the defender aligned on them, but the defender one gap or more to the inside. They're seeking to get their head and upfield shoulder across the defender and "lock" him into the 90-degree angle between their earhole and their shoulder pad. Then, if they just keep driving, even if the man penetrates the line, he's shoved far enough off-course that he can't get to the quarterback before the throw.
Pay attention to the running back. In the play above, we have "Field, Away" as a protection call. This mean our offensive line blocks towards the field, and our running back blocks away from them, to the boundary. His job is to pick up the first man outside the offensive tackle's outside foot. To do this, he needs to start out with an aiming point at the tackle's inside hip. (He can be beaten outside if the defensive end takes a wide path-- we can live with that. However, if he's beaten to the inside gap, he should be beaten-- with a stick-- after the game. Don't really do that.) If the defender arcs wide outside, he can come up underneath and run them upfield. If the defender cuts inside sharp, the running back meets him near the line.
Don't forget that, at the youth level, your running back is one of the top three athletes on your team, and that defensive end is one of the middle guys, talent-wise.
Now, if we want to roll or half-roll into the field to force the defense to commit one way or another, we can make a slightly different blocking call: "Field, towards."
In a towards call, we can assume that the defensive end is coming wider-- he has to in order to escape the playside tackle's block. For this reason we want our running back to take a more arced path to the point of the block, and try to meet the defender with his shoulders square to the line. If the running back can cross the defensive end's face, is springs the perimeter open if the quarterback wants to run with the ball. Again, we've got a stellar athlete on an average one (although wide side ends tend to be higher up on the talent chain than short side ends).
As you can see, with some basic adjustments to the formation and the addition of a couple of blocking calls, we can make our offense much more dangerous.
~D.
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