Finding Ways in the Run Game to Get Over Your "Hump"

One of the first things you probably want to do as an offensive coordinator is figure out what run play will be your “go to” for the year. Of course that can change as time goes by and you see what you have and what is truly working, but you generally want to go in with a plan.

Here’s mine:
What can my OL do?
What can’t they do well (at least right now)?
How does my OL match up against the DL we face?
What is the philosophical attitude of the OC (or HC if I’m the OC)?
How does what I come up with fit into the offense as a whole?
Will what I have in mind get us further than we did last year?

For several seasons when I was at Fountain Valley High, our go-to play was the inside zone. We wanted to establish the physical toughness that came from getting that vertical push off the LOS. Generally speaking, we had a pretty good-sized OL for the high school level and that style of play suited us.

One year though, we had a smaller OL (about 20-30 pounds lighter all the way across). Our base philosophy was one of a pro-style, West Coast type of offense. We weren’t going to be a Wing-T or Double Wing team under any circumstances. The Fly Sweep was only run in two places in SoCal at that time (late 90’s), so that wasn’t really an option yet. So for that year, we installed the outside zone first. Our thinking was to use our smaller, quicker OL to generate lateral defensive movement and then come back with the inside zone after the linebackers really started flowing over the top. It worked well for us that year, and we didn’t have to make any changes to our offense – only the order in which plays were installed and the frequency between inside zone and outside calls were reversed.

When I started coaching in the women’s game, the prevailing idea there was a base man-blocked scheme that relied heavily on iso/lead principles. This was fine, as long as our offensive line stacked up physically against opposing defensive lines. Generally speaking, they did – until we got into the playoffs, or until we played in Texas, whichever came first.

After being beat in Dallas in 2005 with an Iso/Lead type of offense, and then again in 2006 with an inside zone based offense, I became the OC in 2007. I’d heard coach Mack Brown say that “if all else is equal, build your team to beat your Week 10 opponent.” Many times at the high school level (and in college too) your main rivalry game is scheduled later in the season. Sometimes, if you go 1-9, but that “1” is against your Week 10 opponent, you’ll still have a job the following year.

So it was my job to figure out who our main rival was and how to beat them. At that time, it was definitely Dallas. We’d won our division twice in a row and lost in the conference championship twice in a row. We had to beat Dallas to get over our “hump”. As a HC or coordinator, one of your jobs is to figure out which team is your personal hump, and how to get past it.

Dallas was built to beat their main rival at the time, Houston. Both teams were big, tough and nasty. They would bludgeon you to death. Without a doubt they had skill as well, but their trademark was Texas toughness.

Dallas had a pair of ILB’s that hit like Mack trucks and were faster than they looked – as long as they were coming downhill. Their DL wasn’t particularly mobile, but were very strong two-gap types of players. My OL was (and still is) relatively undersized but pretty mobile.

My epiphany came while watching LaDanian Tomlinson run wild for the Chargers in 2006. San Diego ran the snot out of the power/counter gap schemes that year. I’d always liked the counter play, but had always looked at it as a third option behind the inside and outside zones. So I thought, “If the counter is good enough for the Chargers to be a #1 play, then it’s good enough for us.”

And that’s what we went into the 2007 season thinking: the one-back counter was going to be our #1 run play and we were going to see what those big Dallas ILB’s could do in space. Our head coach was Dan Tovar (back with us again this year – I’m beyond excited) who was a huge proponent of the passing game. We mixed in his passing game with my run game ideas and ended up beating Dallas in Dallas 34-14, and then again at our place 21-19, knocking them out of the playoffs – we’d cleared our hump!

We went on to beat LA 7-6 on the road, then New York 47-7 in New York, setting up a final showdown against Houston in San Diego, which we managed to win on a double reverse pass (Tovar’s idea) 14-8. Our RB ended up being the league MVP, due to the counter play and swing passes! So for us in 2007, it was all about figuring out how to beat your Week 10 opponent.

Interestingly enough, Dallas is now one of the fastest teams in the league – they’ve completely retooled themselves. Their coaches are sharp – maybe they saw us as their hump, since we’ve returned the favor of beating them in 2011 and 2012 in the conference championships.

Fast forward to last year, 2013. We came in with the idea that the outside zone was going to be our #1 play, along with a heavy play-action pass component based on the personnel we had. Now, this is going to refer back to my very first paragraph, about things changing as time goes by.

Due to relative inexperience at QB and WR, we were completing about 40% of our passes in preseason….on air. We could see that the vertical attack wasn’t going to work well for us. We did have some speed from multiple sources. We had to figure out a way to make the defense “play with doubt” (regular readers will remember hearing that phrase multiple times).

So for us last year, it was the Fly offense, out of the ‘gun. An awful lot of it was trial and error – although I’d attended coaching clinics on that offense, I’d never attempted to install or coach it. But something had to be done – we’d scrimmaged a local team, one that we’d handled easily the previous year, and they beat us 21-7. So we went “all in” on the Fly and the attendant counter plays, and made our play action game all off of the fly motion package.

In Week 2 we faced that local team again, and won 51-0. We rode that horse until the wheels fell off against a talented Fresno team in round 2 of the playoffs, ending our season at 9-2. So now, maybe we have a new “Week 10” opponent – as it happens, we do play Fresno, in Fresno the last week of the season.

My point throughout this article, is that if you want to get better, it may not be by doing what you’ve always done. I can look at more than a few women’s teams across the country and see where they come up short year after year. You’ve got to be willing to adapt to get yourself over whatever your own teams’ hump is. It’s time to figure out what will work in 2014.