An Old School Answer to a New School Problem

This past season we ran the Zone Read and Counter Read with the Triple option.  Which was effective to a point when people started to gap exchange it did create some problems for us. especially with the Zone.  We would have the Defensive End who chased down back and the Linebacker would just stand there our Zone and he would end up stacked up with the defensive end because of the horizontal movement of our offensive line. Also the Pitch key would blitz making it a really short pull and pitch.  Texas Tech Defensive Coordinator Matt Wallerstedt breaks down the film of what opponents started to do with us.

Our counter out of the pistol looks like this:

Our Jacks Formation everybody does the same exact job just from different positions. Our H and B Backs are aligned in B Gap two yards from the heals of the offensive linemen.  

As you can see we keep it simple but complex to Defensive Coordinators I am stealing this idea from Gus Malzahn of Auburn who is an ex wing-t guy and was taken from one of the greatest coaches of all time Vince Lombardi.  

 

Nothing changes for our 8 of our players the Offensive Line and A Back is still running Counter. The X and Y are still running their Routes.  

The H is Buck  "Buck is he kicks out the defense's force player."

The B is Packer "Packer runs flat across the center then sickles around getting shoulder pads vertical blocks linebacker to safety."  

QB Opens Up to the Left reads the DE is he chases the QB is pulling and replace and runs the ball in the alley.  

So basically the H and the B are running buck sweep if they were the guards if the Quarterback gets a pull read.  

Putting it all together it should look like this:

In conclusion be a great answer to Defensive Coordinators who Gap Exchange and bring their Force Defender off the Edge. Also linebackers are going to have Offensive linemen pulling in front of them going one way and backs pulling across the other way that action will slow down their reads. I

  

Transitioning from Position Coach to Offensive Coordinator

This past spring I changed jobs for various reasons the most import was family time I was driving an two hours plus a day in my commute.  I also was coaching two additional sports to go along with being the offensive coordinator.  It really cut into my family time a position coaching position opened up closer to my house fifteen minute commute and no second sport and I had the Athletic Director/ Head Football coach in a couple of my Graduate School classes. So I start attending spring ball, summer seven on seven, and summer strength and conditioning.  After the 4th of July holiday the Offensive Coordinator leaves for another job and I get named the Offensive Coordinator.   Here are the steps that was taken to align our offense and make sure everybody was on the same page.

The Head Coach and I met to go over the offense during this meeting several changes were made.

• A playbook was developed I used PPT and playmaker pro so if anything happens to me car wreck, I get a head coaching job, brain injury ect. there is something out there for the next guy to build off of.
• We went to the Tony Franklin wristband system we did convert the positions and one of the colors purple to blue.  We based this off of the number of reasons: the major one being that we had a large number of busts during Spring Practice and Seven on Seven during the summer.
• Changed the pass protection scheme from Big on Big to a Man Fan protection
• Had our Offensive Linemen Vertical Set  
• We installed a screen game which included Jail Break, Slow Screen and and the Fast Screens.  
• I made sure that we did the following drills every day Noose, Pat-n-Go, Routes on Air and we had at lease 2 screen periods a day.
• Changed how we went to Trips using our Slot receivers they were better athletes than our Outside receivers and kept them only having to learn one set of routes than a different set of routes on one side
• I met with James Vint during coaching school and got a great one on one clinic about the Pistol Offense  

Things that we did keep: 

• We worked Mesh Drill every day had very few dropped balls in the option game.
• We utilized the Pistol Formation using 30 personnel 
• We kept the option element to all of our run game there are 4 options on every play (Blog explaining this coming later!) 
• We had two basic run blocking schemes a zone and a gap scheme.
• We Two Platooned everybody

Things that needed to be changed for next year

• I have to do a better job of keeping up with our players lives.
• We are going to utilize the R4 and C4  from Darren Slack
• Going to use some silencer concepts from Anthony Pratley 
• Want to install the Midline 
• Need to use Wristbands at all levels 7th grade through Varsity we only used them for Varsity and JV this year.  
• Going to use Gus Malzahn's Fire Alarm Ten Play Menu 
• Kill our Mesh Route Concept and replace with the Shallow Concept.  
• Going to install Solid and Counter Screens.