Thinking Out of the Box

The  discussion a couple of weeks ago here about parity in women’s football garnered quite a bit of attention – I had more than twice as many page views in one day as I had on any other, and that particular blog post has already become the most viewed post on my site. So thanks, I think!

One of the discussions that week was about strategy related to special teams. I see many coaches new to women’s football (and some that aren’t so new) look at special teams solely in the traditional manner, i.e., they punt when they think they’re supposed to punt, they kick off deep when they think they’re supposed to kick off deep and they kick an extra point when they think they’re supposed to.

Now, there are valid reasons for doing all of those actions, but I think that each team should probably reevaluate the rote nature of those playcalls. For example: We played one team twice last year, and were pretty familiar with them. They had a coach new to the women’s game, having come from the collegiate ranks. He did some good things, but his punting decisions weren’t one of them. Why? Because his long snapper had more hang time on her snaps than their punter did! Every one of their punts was either done under extreme pressure or resulted in a snap over the punter’s head. In many of their situations they would have been much better served just trying to go for it on 4^th down. I mean, he had to know his long snapper was erratic at best, right?

Even if a long snapper is good, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should punt. Why? Because in the women’s game you’re very lucky if you can get a gross yardage of 20-25 with any consistency. Subtract out the return and very many times the other team ends up with the ball near where your yard to make was. You could’ve gone for it, and even if you came up short been in the same position you find yourself after the return.

Let me point out that going for it on 4^th down is not limited to the women’s game at all, nor is it a new concept. Coach Don Markham (http://www.coachmarkham.com/)  and Coach Myron Miller (http://www.ocvarsity.com/ocvarsity/miller-66059-tustin-coach.html) both high school coaches of note in the Inland Empire and Orange County for many years, decided to forego punting and kicking extra points. Coincidentally, both of them ran the Double Wing offense.

Coach Markham once described his practice plans this way: “We do offense for 90 minutes, defense for 30 minutes, and special teams during pregame.”

Coach Miller told me about his philosophy while we were both scouting a common opponent: “I go for two every time, and only punt if I’m backed up inside my 30.”

One coach who has gotten a lot of attention recently is Kevin Kelley of the Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas. He runs a no-huddle spread offense, rarely kicks deep, never punts and doesn’t field punts. There is an excellent link here that talks about the math and a video about his philosophy: http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2013/11/15/5105958/fourth-down-pulaski-academy-kevin-kelley

For us, we’re in sort of a unique situation – we have relatively talented offenses and defenses, and we have a decent long snapper. For some reason we’ve always been blessed with a good long snapper – for many years I think we had the best in the country in Cilena Mosley. However, we’ve never had a punter quite at that level. We’ve always had decent kickers, but our punting has never been more than the 25 yard gross I mentioned earlier. So choosing not to punt became sort of our thing starting in 2011. For the most part, it worked out well, but the two times it didn’t it was in front of the whole country (relatively speaking): In the 2011 WFA Championship game against Boston, we chose not to punt twice while backed up in our own territory and both times we ended up giving up touchdowns. While those points weren’t the deciding ones, they did contribute to what would have been a very close game appearing to be much more one-sided.

We tend to take the same approach on kickoffs, kicking squibs or onsides in some form much more often than most teams do. When your “deep” kicks generally only reach the 25, and you add in a modest 10 yard return, we feel that you might as well trade one less first down that needs to be made for a chance at getting the ball back.

The going for two part is more of an evolving thought process for us. As I mentioned, we have always had good kickers, and currently have an All American in Melissa Strother. So unlike many teams, we can make extra points fairly consistently. The question then becomes, “do we want to”? There is something to be said for being able to get two points on a consistent basis and really putting pressure on another team. My men’s team lost a game last year 24-21 when our opponent went for and got two points each of their three TD’s. We went up 7-0, but then was down 8-7, then 16-7. We came back to 16-15, then missed our final two point try and lost by three. Their success on going for two was instrumental in that victory.

These strategies spill over to our practice time as well. We prioritize according to what we tend to do the most. So we practice kickoff quite a bit. We work the heck out of punt return. We work on onside kick return quite a bit. As the playoffs come, we traditionally then start focusing on the possibility that we’ll need to punt and return more kicks. In the WFA championship game of 2012, we punted a few times, and returned a kick for a TD, so that extra practice leading up to that game came in handy. The point is that special teams should be just like your offense in deciding practice time allocation. Would you practice an offensive play over and over again if you were only going to run it once or twice a game, on average?

Sometimes, your strategies are dictated by your personnel. You may not have a kicker, so will always go for two by default. Maybe you run a Double Wing offense and are never in 4^th and long situations, so maybe you’ll feel more comfortable in going for it on 4^th down. All I’m saying is to consider these seemingly unorthodox strategies, and have a reason for either doing them or not.