Making Plays Look Alike

I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine about how to run inside and outside zone plays. We were talking about the initial steps of the running back and the aiming points for each. He was concerned about the offensive line steps as well, because he felt that having different steps for inside zone and outside zone might give the defense a quick read on the play.

Personally, I feel that it is more important for the RB’s steps to be the same than it is for the OL. The OL in both cases is still moving towards the play – on the inside  zone they are looking for a little more vertical push, while on the outside zone they are looking for a horizontal stretch, but they still have a lot of bodies going in the same direction. But, you can mask the true intent of the inside zone somewhat by having the RB take his/her initial steps to the same aiming point you have for the outside zone, and then bending back to your inside zone aiming point. However, I digress a little from my main point:

“Make the defense play with doubt.” – Homer Smith

You’ve seen me reference Coach Smith previously in my play call post. His full quote was, “Make the defense play with doubt. A defender plays best when he says, ‘I think I know what is coming and if it does, I’ll nail it and if not, I’ll just play football.’”

I think there are four main areas that you can use to instill doubt into a defense:

11) The same plays out of multiple formations. I referenced this extensively in last week’s post.

22) Running back steps – the initial steps for as many plays as possible should be the same for as long as possible. For my inside zone, outside zone, counter and power, the first two-three running back steps are the same. Every time. Keep the defense guessing and not doing anything except maintaining their gap responsibilities for as long as possible.

33) Receiver routes – I’m a big fan of vertical releases. In general I dislike “Arrow” routes and slants that happen immediately, unless there is a definite coverage reason to do so or the distance to go allows it. An awful lot of defenses and defenders employ a pattern read method – why allow them to get a read on what you’re doing right away? It is akin to a defensive line stunt/twist/loop that happens right away – any halfway decent offensive line sees what is happening and adjusts immediately to what they see. Those work much better if the defensive line gets two or three steps upfield and then runs their twists. It gets the individual OL more committed to their blocks and less able to switch off. Well, the same thing applies to receivers running against DB’s – don’t let them know what your intentions are until you absolutely have to do it!

44)Blocking schemes – If you run a play action pass of off any play that you have an OL pull, you’d better have him/them pull for the play action as well. Keep the RB mesh points the same and ideally the QB would end up in the same place as s/he would on the partnered run play.

If this is something that you want to happen, as an OC it really needs to be hammered home during practice and film work.

Self scouting also comes into play here in a big way. You may have tendencies as a playcaller that you are completely unaware of. The only way to unmask that is to self-scout. Hudl is the easiest way to self-scout I’ve seen yet. I have a standalone program that I bought several years ago – I don’t even know if the company is still in business – but it is rather cumbersome to use, although it does give good data. With Hudl (if you use it) you’re already tagging your plays to get your stats if nothing else, and it also gives you an extensive list of reports including a “What’s Next?” report – where it gives you different situations and then tells you what came right after any of those occurrences.

The big thing to remember about tendencies is that it doesn’t take very much to break them. Doing it early in a game will cause the opposing DC to have some doubt in his game plan. He’s expecting one thing and is fairly sure of it, because after all, he’s done his homework too and then you do something different such as a playaction pass off your favorite run in that situation. It casts doubt in his mind big-time.

Making the defense play with doubt has been a focal point for me for over 10 years now.