Identity Crisis

One of my very first posts was sort of a background piece on what my favorite offense is. You can read that here. What I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks is that some teams have lost their way, strayed away from what got them good. In particular, my favorite college team, Texas A&M, has really strayed….they’re almost unrecognizable from when Johnny Manziel was lighting up the scoreboards.

Certainly, differences in personnel have something to do with that. The Aggie’s QB’s are inexperienced (although so was Manziel) and both sometimes seem a bit lost. Also, it doesn’t appear that A&M’s list of NFL-ready OL is going to continue this year. Both the run blocking and absolutely the pass pro have taken steps backwards this year. But to go from a team who rivaled Baylor and Oregon in how fast they got plays off to one who almost seems like they want to milk the clock, and who went from a pure version of the Air Raid offense to some sort of “almost Auburn, but sort of something else” offense created nothing more than some mush. Offensive Coordinator Jake Spavital is taking a lot of the heat (and rightly so – it’s his name on the offense), but I’m wondering if the off-season hire of Dave Christensen doesn’t have more to do with it. Coach Christensen was hired as the OL coach and run game coordinator, and it appears that the move away from Air Raid style play calling may be related to his influence. That’s not necessarily a knock on Coach Christensen either – he was hired to bring his experience in.

That extra influence gets to my point about an Identity Crisis…..you can’t have too many cooks in your offense. When I was at Fountain Valley High, there were some things we just weren’t going to do – it wasn’t in our DNA (or that of our OC). Right now, there are some things I would only do in an extreme situation – like line up under center in an I formation. That’s just not what I want to do.

My base offense these days is shotgun spread. We feature a zone and gap-based run game, some fly sweep, various screens and a complete drop back package, mostly out of one back sets. Now, within that base offense, I can tweak the playcalls to fit my personnel.  In 2012 with my men’s team, we had two absolute studs at RB, so I ran more two back sets than normal. But it was still out of the ‘gun, and we still had 3 WR (didn’t have much in the way of a TE). If my QB is a runner, then I add in more options for him to do so. But it doesn’t change the base offense!

If my OL is huge, then the zone game becomes more prevalent, while if they’re more mobile (read: smaller), then I use more of the gap schemes and perimeter game. Again, it doesn’t change who we are. If a player comes to me and says, “Hey Coach – why don’t we run this XYZ play?”, I’ll consider it, if there is a good way to work it into what we do already. I don’t want to stray too much from our identity, at least during the season.

The time to look outside for ideas is now. There’s stuff that I see from time to time that I really like. The first thing I do when I see something is write it down, in play diagram form. Then, I look at it to see if what is being done fits into existing terminology. If it does, then great – it goes into the playbook. If not, then I see if I can either a) tweak a piece of the play to fit into existing terms without losing what I liked about the play in the first place, or b) see if I can add a piece of terminology that can be used in future situations as well. If I can’t do either, then chances are I won’t keep the play. I really don’t want to add terminology if it is just going to be used in one play. (The exception is for trick plays – those can be one-offs.)

The coaching point to all this, is stay true to yourself. If you’re the coordinator, it’s your name out there. In Coach Spavital’s case, he’s probably going to get himself fired after this season. It’s OK to consider outside ideas, but you’ve ultimately got to do what you think is best for the team. Getting too far away from that slows down your thinking during a game, and probably (my guess only, as an entirely unqualified psychiatrist) means you don’t exude as much confidence in your game plan to your players as you normally would. That can start a death spiral that overcomes your offense.

Know yourself and be true to yourself.  

Mental Musings

I mentioned last week what a great sport football is, in part because it demands so much physically AND mentally. Sometimes, even the most talented player cannot thrive or even compete if their mental make-up isn’t up to par. We’ve all seen instances where a more talented team will fall to a team that is more technique-driven, more disciplined and better focused.

I remember coaching against Los Angeles Loyola High School back in 1995 when I was with Fountain Valley. We had the misfortune of playing them in the preseason, and then ended up meeting them again in the playoffs. They were ridiculously easy to game plan against; they sat in the most vanilla 3-4 alignment I’ve ever seen and their blitzes were also very basic. They did not have more than one or two players that had NCAA D-I talent, although I’m sure some of them went to the Ivy League or one of the Academies. They had flawless technique, relentless effort and pretty close to zero penalties. We went 0-2 that year against them.

You can also look no further than the team from the recent movie (and even better book), “When the Game Stands Tall” – Concord De La Salle. Although now they have an abundance of talent, back in the days during the movie and before, they had relatively few players making the jump to D-I ball. But when I watched them, I couldn’t help but say, “Wow!” As an OL coach I’m not a big fan of the Wing-T, but man…..the way they fired off the ball and their precision in doing so, and their effort – it just had me wondering why I sucked so badly. They beat Long Beach Poly, probably the most talent-driven high school in the country, twice. At the time, Poly had almost 5000 kids in the school. In their history, they’ve put over 60 (six-zero!) players into the NFL, and 16 in the last 20 years. We played them in 1997, and they beat us handily. The talent gap was just way too much for us to overcome. So why did they ever lose?

You see that in the women’s game as well. There are a couple of teams over the years that you look at their talent and think “wow….how do they lose?” I’m sure that a couple of coaches have thought the same thing about us, so it’s all good. But what I think happens in many cases is that coaches don’t push their talented players to be truly elite. Maybe they’re afraid of losing their star players by being too tough on them. Or maybe their players are “playing slow” because either they don’t put enough effort in to learning the playbook (which goes back to not being demanding enough) or because the system they’re playing in isn’t clear about what is supposed to happen.

Please note that I’m not putting all of this on coaches – certainly there are plenty of players who believe that their talent is enough to get by. And for 80% of the season that may be true. But champions are made in the other 20%, and the coach can do whatever s/he wants to as far as discipline but until the player herself buys into the fact that if she wants to get a ring she has to do more – expect more – from herself and her teammates, it isn’t going to happen.

What can be put on coaches are the following: 1) Demand excellence from your entire team, including your star players. They should be pushed harder than anyone, not only because they are expected to *be* more, but also because the rest of the team needs to see that no one is above correction and coaching. Needless to say, that also applies to team rules.

2) The system/terminology/communication on both sides of the ball has to allow your players to play “fast”. The trend by many teams is to try and eliminate as many words as possible in the play call, especially on offense. But what I’m finding is that the teams who are truly successful with that are also those who practice more than the twice a week that is typical of teams at our level. We as coaches need to be careful of not trying to mimic too much teams and systems that are successful at the high school or collegiate level, simply because of the advantage in practice time that they have over us.

I do believe that you can play fast at our level, and I believe that you can communicate effectively the play and responsibilities to your offense even when going in a no-huddle mode. I just don’t think you can have a full playbook using a single word system. I used to think that, but in looking around and seeing how much the game has evolved, I now believe that to counter what is being done to you, the calls need to be expanded. This means not only more words for words sake, but a system that also includes the formation, motion and snap count. Now, many teams have decided to go only on “one” and that is fine. It certainly keeps the verbiage down! But if your OL is struggling against a physically superior DL, you’re going to wish that you had some counter that you can use.

So, for me, I would have a “split” call…..first series of calls include snap count, formation and motion. Everyone would go and get into position. The next series of calls would be the snap count and the play itself and then the play is run. That keeps the memorization down – they don’t have to remember the formation, as they’re already in it, and then the snap count is being repeated again to them. So all they have to remember is the motion, and then listen for the play.

Sorry this got a little wordy…sort of ironic, given the topic, huh? But this is the sort of thing I think about each off-season, and I hope each coach out there re-examines what they do each year as well. The women’s game is growing in ability by leaps and bounds. Never has the old adage, “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse” been truer. Even though some teams have already started practices, this is the time to make changes. Doing the same things will probably only get you the same results. Do you want to be good for 80% of the season, or the final 20%?

Tempo - A Total Commitment

Much of the talk these days around different teams by the network analysts centers around “tempo”, or in some cases (Arkansas), the lack of it. In college ball teams like Oregon, Texas A&M, Baylor and Auburn all go at a pretty frenetic speed, looking to snap the ball within 10 seconds or so after it is marked ready for play. In the NFL, the Eagles are the example, with the Patriots, Broncos and Chargers all close behind. The benefits to this style of play are apparent: more plays per game equal more chances to score points. Because pass rushing is perhaps the most physically taxing thing a defender does during a game, keeping tired defensive linemen out on the field because your pace doesn’t allow for substitution is a definite advantage. Your practices become much more efficient by necessity – you run more plays during practice and you don’t have to set aside special 2:00 drills. But it is the practice element that will be the focus of this article.

First of all, I’d like to recommend three resources for anyone wanting to implement an uptempo scheme: a book by Mark McElroy of Saddleback College (Amazon link here), a book by Auburn coach Gus Malzahn (Amazon link here) and a book by Chicago Force coach John Konecki (Amazon link here). Looking at all three of their approaches and melding it into your own is probably the best way to go. For me personally, Coach McElroy had the most influence.

So, if you are thinking about implementing a no-huddle or up-tempo offense this year, here are some things you might want to think about:

Terminology – I wrote about play terminology here and that is something that definitely needs to be considered. If your current terminology isn’t no-huddle compatible, that is the first thing you may want to change. Changing both terminology and tempo in one season may be tough, depending on how often you practice.

Signaling – You have to have some way of getting the plays in to your team. If your terminology is no-huddle compatible already, then you could just yell out the play to your QB who can then relay it to the rest of the team. But if that isn’t the case, and you don’t already have a signaling system in place, it is time to devise one. Whether it is hand signals, wrist coaches, play boards or what have you, there has to be a system in place to communicate what the play is.

Practice Mechanics – Moving to an up-tempo offense involves every coach on the staff. There should probably be two types of team periods, teaching and tempo. During the teaching period, which is meant for the practicing of new plays or concepts, or those plays in which you’ve identified that need to be fixed. During this phase of team, the pace isn’t as important as the teaching, but there should still be a sense of urgency among the staff, otherwise what was planned as a 10-play period taking (maybe) 15 minutes ends up being a 7-play period lasting 20.

During a tempo session is where the work is! You want to go as quickly as possible through your script, and you need the defense to keep up. So before practice even starts, there are things that need to happen:

Your script has to be well-thought out, to cover the plays you need work on for that practice. The script needs to include the scout team’s front and coverage so that you as the OC can ensure you’re getting the looks you need from the defense.

You need to include practice cards for the scout team defense. These cards should be numbered and the numbers included on your script. Each card should also have the offensive formation drawn on it, so that the scout team can see where they are supposed to be quickly. A copy of the script is given to the defensive coaches. Whoever is in charge of the scout team (and there should be a coach designated in that role) holds up the card for the front seven, and the DB coach calls out the coverage for the secondary, along with alerting a corner or safety of any blitz on that play. The secondary doesn’t need to huddle – just go get lined up. The defensive coaches definitely need to hurry the scout teams along – the offense cannot wait for them!

During the period, an offensive coach needs to be designated as the “Umpire”, to whom the player with the ball runs to and hands them the ball at the end of the play. They do NOT throw it or toss it to the official! If they miss, it wastes valuable time retrieving the ball and setting it ready for play. So they hand it to the official. Every time. Get in the habit.

If there is any coaching going on during this period, it had better be “on the run” or after the player in question is out, or after the period. Coaches can add notes to the script for this (and the OC can include a notes column in the script). What can NOT happen is the rest of the offense is lined up ready to go, and there is one player who a coach is talking to who is supposed to be in. This tempo period isn’t the time for that. Even worse would be a defensive player being talked to, but that should go without saying.

Finally, after the period is over, you may want to schedule a five minute Indy period so that the coaches can go over the mistakes they noted during the tempo period. This is a better option than meeting after the final talk at the end of practice because the players will still be in practice mode and have their pads on. It’s only five minutes, and that should be strictly enforced. 

Basically, when you are coaching in a no-huddle environment, everyone needs to learn to operate at that pace, with a definite sense of urgency in everything they do.

Again, I really recommend getting at least one of the resources I talked about before. The depth involved with moving to a no-huddle system is not done justice by this brief article.

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Once again, here are the basic details for our camp in November. We’re getting a ton of interest and lots of excitement. The cost is only $20 – 1/10^th of what USA Football is charging for their weekend in January, and I promise that there will be more teaching and skill development going on in ours (no game to get ready for in two days)! So here’s the basic info link, and then here is the link to the Facebook event.

Available Resources and Clinic Thoughts

Note: If some of this sounds like a rant, I don’t really intend it to be. Just thinking out loud…sort of like real bloggers do. :-)

This past weekend I attended the Glazier Clinic in Las Vegas. As always, I really enjoy the chance to sit down and absorb new ideas, or to reinforce the things that I already do. Some of my players have been with me so long (up to 10 years) that they’ve GOT to be bored with some of the drills that I do! So I’m always looking for new ways to teach the same fundamentals, which really haven’t changed.

The thing that struck me this year was how insular we as semi-pro and women's coaches are. You just don't see non-high school or youth coaches there. Why is that? We can't possibly think we know everything, can we? Is it he cost? You can get a staff pass for $300, to go to as many clinics as you want. So a staff of 6 could go to both the Las Vegas and Los Angeles clinics for only $50 a coach. Plus you get access to online clinics as well. We as a group have got to invest in bettering our own skills. I think the difference is that high school guys realize they have to get better in order to survive and I don't think that realization has come to the other levels yet. But if you go up against teams like the Chicago Force or Boston Militia and get beat, don't think it was only due to them having better players than you!

There is more technology out there than you can imagine. Coaches can look up almost anything they need. I would like to definitely recommend X’s and O’s Labs (www.xandolabs.com). Those guys do a great job of getting information and research out to coaches. For only $35 a year (a steal, believe me!) you get the Insider’s access. Although it isn’t a complete system like some sites offer, you get much more variety (although there is an in-depth five part study of Nevada’s Pistol offense) and in all phases of the game. Plus, they seem to be really nice guys.

Almost every coach at the clinic I listened to had a CD or DVD for sale, ranging between $10 and $20. I normally pick up some books from Coaches’ Choice, and this trip was no exception. I also picked up Bill Cubit’s (OC at Illinois) DVD of his Triangle Passing Game because he went over so much information there was no way I could take all the notes necessary. 

Coach Dewayne Alexander from Tennessee Tech also had some great stuff. His Rocket Sweep based offense really piqued my interest. I can get you his contact info if you want it.

I also heard Coach Robbie Owens speak, from Grand Junction, CO. He’s got an entire system, called the No Huddle Power Pistol. He’s an outstanding speaker and has things well organized. I really enjoyed listening to him and have followed him on Twitter. He’s got his own website now, www.nohuddlepowerpistol.com.

Here’s the thing, speaking strictly from a women’s team coach perspective: Membership to the website (which does include a lot of info) costs $499.00 for a single coach. If I was still coaching at Fountain Valley High in Orange County, I’d probably be hitting up the head coach and booster club right about now for a membership and not think twice about the cost. Heck, back in the 90’s, their booster club had a $70,000 a year budget, over and above what the school district provided. Women’s and men's teams now are extremely lucky if they have a TOTAL team budget of $70,000.

Coach Owens markets to high school and small college teams. There is a demand for what he does, and he does it well. I wish him much success in his endeavors. But as women’s coaches, that’s not for us. It’s almost completely out of the budget unless it is out of our own pocket.

Now, I’m not against coaches making money – heck, I try and do it too (please see my “What I Do” post from September). But because I realize the finances involved with men's and women’s teams, I try to keep the costs down however possible. 

I dunno, maybe I’m just jealous. Enough of the capitalistic rant though – these coaches are outstanding, and their material is good.

Another realization I had this weekend, and maybe some of you have had it too over the years, is that my playbook is getting out of hand. I use Fast Draw (www.fastmodelsports.com) to do my playbooks. It costs $75 per year and I think it is well worth it. It allows multiple teams and seasons, so you can see what you’ve run over the years and how you’ve changed things up. I think you get a two week free trial, so check it out.

Right now, my playbooks span three different teams (two men’s, one women’s) and six different seasons. I started out with a set of terminology that I picked up from Dan Tovar in 2007. That got mixed in with a lot of Surge terminology, and then further modified by the men’s teams, so going back and forth from men’s teams to women’s teams kept me on my mental toes. It is time to do an off-season cleanse!

I think that my use of one word play names (with possible tags) is too limiting, and it may be too telling to the defense when using tempo. I’m going to go back almost full circle and re-incorporate Fountain Valley High’s terminology that came from Homer Smith when he was at UCLA. Still utterly brilliant. So it’ll be a mix of numbers and words and the next time I’m in charge of an offense, especially with multiple teams, it’ll be one unified set of terms. I imagine that this will be the biggest, most complete playbook I’ve ever done. I’m looking forward to the project, which will start August 10^th!

Coach Owens also talked about cadence and tempo and how to meld the terms into each other, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it’ll sound like, I just have to write it all down. Maybe at some point I can customize it for other teams and get my own little capitalistic enterprise going!

This weekend, the Surge will be in El Centro for our annual weekend mini-camp. I’ll have some thoughts on that for next week. Gotta remember not to tell too many secrets though – the season is drawing near!

Coordinating an Offense - Part 2

Note: Please remember that this is a blog to start a discussion, not a book on how to completely do something. This topic was getting lengthy!

Last week I talked about formation terminology and a couple of ideas to make it more efficient for you. This week I want to talk about your play call terminology.

The first thing that I believe in is that under no circumstances should you have one set of terminology for your “regular” tempo plays and then another set for your 2-minute drill. With the popularity of no-huddle offenses now, this point may be moot for many of you, but not everyone has jumped on that bandwagon for any number of reasons. Coordinating and practicing a no-huddle offense would take an entirely separate set of posts, so for now I’ll address teams that utilize a more traditional tempo.

“Back in the day” the normal play call terminology was something along the lines of “32 Lead” or “23 Power” for a run play and “612 Z Go” for a pass play. Even numbers to the right, odd numbers to the left.[1] That was the norm, and the way almost everyone did it. That style of terminology still has merit – it is easy to remember and can help inexperienced players. However, it does make things more difficult for you if you either need to audible or run a no-huddle offense in the last two minutes of a half or game. You can’t very well call out “32 Lead” on the line of scrimmage and not expect the defense to know exactly what you’re talking about. So instead you come up with a coded system that is only for your “hurry up” package. This results in two inefficiencies: you limit what you can run in your hurry up package, and you have to set aside practice time to practice under that set of terminology.

The challenge then, is to come up with a system that your players can remember and your opponents cannot decipher. These fall under two groups: A numeric system, or a code word system.

In a numeric system, you use numbers (obviously) almost exclusively. The best one that I’ve run across in my 23 years of coaching was used by Homer Smith, one of the most brilliant coaches in my opinion, who ever lived. It was used at Fountain Valley High when I was there and became second nature to the players after awhile. In a nutshell, a typical play call would be, “Doubles, 11-2” – in this case, it is [Formation], [Play] [Direction]. The number is pronounced as “Eleven two”, not “one twelve”. At FVHS (and UCLA, where Smith coached), the first number, if odd, was a run and if even was a pass. The second number was the direction of the play if a run, or the route combination if a pass. If it was a pass, the first number denoted the pass protection used. A typical pass play may have been “Spread, 4-22” ([Formation], [Protection] [Route combination]).

This system is very flexible, but does take some getting used to. Of course, I can always explain it in detail if asked.

The “in vogue” terminology today uses code words to denote plays. In this system, seemingly random words are used to denote plays and direction. A sample would be, “Doubles North Bob”. In this example, Doubles is the formation, North denotes the direction and Bob is the play. With this particular team, the use of any direction (north, east, south or west) meant the play was to the left. If it were just “Doubles Bob”, then the play was to the right. Other teams use hot (left) and cold (right) and then others may use a single code word to denote left, with nothing meaning by default to the right.

There are almost limitless ways to use this type of system. One team I know uses cities and states for run or pass. Other teams use team/city combinations (i.e., “Oakland” or “Raiders”) either for plays themselves or play AND direction – Oakland would be a specific play to the left, Raiders would be the same play to the right. Still others may use cars (“Chevy” and “Camaro”, or “Honda” and “Civic”).

As with organizing your formations so that your players can remember them, the same type of care must be put into the plays themselves – even more so, because you will have more plays and variations than you do formations.

Next week, we’ll look at how to actually install an offense.

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[1] I once had a head coach I worked for use even numbers to the left and odd numbers to the right, solely because everyone else did it the opposite way. I’ve worked under a lot of systems, but I never got those plays right!

Coordinating an Offense - Part 1

When most people talk about an Offensive Coordinator, they think of the guy who calls the plays. While in many cases that is true, in other cases it is not. Several Head Coaches have assumed the playcalling role, but still have an OC. This post will look at the more unglamorous, yet vitally important roles played by the OC.

Terminology – you could be the best playcaller in the universe, but if your players can’t remember the plays, they aren’t going to work. This is often a function of the terminology employed by the team. The best terminology evokes a visual stimulus by the player that tells him what to do or where to line up. For example, a three wide receiver formation may best be remembered by a term such as “Trips”, “Trey” or “Trio”, rather than a term such as “Purple” or “Jacks”.

In my previous post, I talked about a pre-snap checklist for offensive linemen. When talking about everyone else (and in some cases the OL as well), the thought process could be “Alignment-Assignment-Technique”. Those first two items shouldn’t be thought about too much – the player needs to know immediately where s/he lines up and what their assignment is. All they should really have to think about is which technique they’re going to use to defeat the defensive picture they’re given.

In addition, there should be some sort of logical sequence to where specific players align in formations. No matter if the players are labeled by number or letter (R, X, Y, Z, H, etc.) the movement between formations should be kept to a minimum. For example, let’s say you’ve got a 2x2 formation, we’ll call it Doubles. Your receivers (forget about the RB for the moment) are aligned left to right as X, Z, (ball) Y, B. When you move to a 3x1 set, that alignment should look something like: X, Z, B, (ball) Y. What you would NOT want to do is do something like B, Y, X, (ball) Z. Some of you might be laughing right now because of the “duh” factor, but I wouldn’t be writing about this if I hadn’t seen it in action.

Something else to keep in mind is the shortening of your playcall verbiage however possible. One example would be the elimination of the word “right”. When you call your formations, tell your players early on that unless you specifically say “left” in your call, the formation is assumed to be to the right. Same thing with your plays themselves.

Designing terminology in an efficient manner takes some thought on the coordinator’s part – both in the terms themselves and in the teaching aspect. When I install my offense, I have a specific sequence of formations I go in so that the players can see how they segue from one to another and it makes sense for them. The thought that you put in pre-installation will be paid back times ten in increased response time from your players.

Next week we’ll look at terminology for the plays themselves.