Cut up the day Finale: Cross/Boot

The last "base play" in our arsenal, and the final in post in my "cut up of the day" series is the cross concept.  It has got to be the most popular bootleg concept in football.  It is essentially the same as our Flood play but from a 2x2 alignment.  This concept is run at every level of football and from any sort of personnel group.

You end up with a Go/Clear out
a quick route in the flat (from spread it is a slow played out to sell the run look)
teams often use a TE, H back, or FB to chip block and then get to the flat

The backside slot or TE runs the deep cross over the inside LBs (who should be biting on play action)

We hit the out very often as the OLB covering him was often out leveraged due to his alignment and initial run read.  We were also able to hit the cross a few times when the OLB jumped the out, and ILBs sucked up on the play action, leaving a void.  Even against man the cross is a great concept because it is difficult to cover a speedy slot WR across the width of the field.

We sprinted to this concept, play actioned with sprint out pass pro
but my favorite way to run this concept was using a "boot" protection featuring a guard pull

I thought this concept worked exceptionally well for us because the guard pull added to the run action and in one game particular (where they had a DE who we simply could not block) this played slowed him up a whole lot.  He could no longer crash down when he read down block and blow up our guard.

Some of the clips feature a QB who began the year as our 3rd stringer! Starter got suspended a game, and he beat out the kid who was our backup all year during that week of practice.  The clips with #12 at QB were his first start at QB of his life.

I didn't include it in the film but he even picked up a huge 4th and 4 conversion on this play with his feet when the defense didn't bite on the run fake and flew out for pass.

I see this concept being a bigger part of our offense in the future as we begin to explore the use of some TE/H back stuff.

Cut up of the day: Sprint Draw

The Sprint Draw has been a hot topic in the coaching community.  It was a great play for us and was set up nicely by the amount of sprint out we ran, and the fear our QB as a run threat put into the defense.  This was a beautiful constraint play for us.

We got a lot of movement in most cases from the playside DE trying to fight reach blocks, and more importantly we made LBs move, in some clips they SPRINT out of the box to try to get under routes and by the time they realize the RB has the ball it is too late.

OL wise we work to our sprint side and pick up "our man" based upon our pass pro rules and how we ID the front (we use a typical air raid pass pro based on the Center IDing the front each play).

I LOVE this play... there are a lot of times we do not even block it great up front, you will see 1 or 2 guys getting killed, but as long as they remain engaged, the flow gives the RBs enough room to do their thing and be the great athletes they are.

Cut up of the day: Sprintout

The sprint out game was a huge part of our offense this year. Our QB was a great athlete and was at his best when he could threaten the defense with both his arm and his legs.

By definition we can sprint to any concept in the play book with a one word tag for sprint, but our main sprint out game was

Curl/flat from a 2x2 set

And Flood from 3x1

I was AMAZED at how often we were able to hit the quick out. It was an easy completion for us especially near the goal line... At times I felt the entire stadium knew we were throwing it but we still completed it. It was a great answer for us when defenses wanted to load the box and bring everyone on the goal line.

Enjoy!

Curl/Flat

Flood

The best constraint to all of the sprint out passing IMO is the sprint draw...

I have written multiple posts about it in the past.  Tomorrow I will load some sprint draw clips.

Awesome iPad App!!!

I Just got an ipad3 (you can get great deals on them through apple's site on refurbished models. Their refurbished ones are just as good as new. Mine came in looking perfect in a brand new box and packaging.)

Of course I have the "usual" HS football coach apps... HUDL, Dropbox, Evernote, a video camera app, coach me play book app, blah blah blah

But yesterday I decided to download the ESPN College Football App

IT IS AWESOME


There are top stories, score and highlight features but my favorite is the video tab...

You can select which week of the season you want and pick from a number of games... Pretty much every ranked team...

They have every TD and big play (sack,int,long run, long pass)

I was having a blast watching clips and being able to dissect some offensive concepts from a bunch of different games. I was checking out a ton of Oregon and Arizona offensive plays last night.

The only negative I noticed was you manually try to rewind each play to review it the video gets a little herky jerky. I found it is better to watch the play til the end and then just play it over from the beginning.

Overall really cool and something I think any coach with an iPad will enjoy.

Cut up of the day: 4 Verts

4 Verts wasn't necessarily a huge part of our offense but it was our way of backing off corners some and hurting a team when they played single high against or no safety against us.
We hit one of the slots a number of times against cover 0 or 1.  Even on the completions I still think we sailed the ball too much, it needs to come out faster than some of the clips here.


There is also a long TD pass clip from a stop n go we ran.

Cut up of the Day: Outside Zone

Our OZ wasn't as big of a part of our offense as I wanted it to be.  Part of this was because of the backs we had and some mistakes we made.  We actually had much more success running QB OZ with the RB leading.  This was a great play for us because our QB was fast, ran hard, and it gave us an instant numbers advantage.  One thing that helped us was all of the sprint out we ran... it looks very similar to the defense and puts those force /flat players in conflict.  

When we had number advantage to trips we could overload them by running it strong, when defenses brought their OLB over to the trips side and left no #2 defender to the single side we could run it weak.

A lot of the clips you will see my tackle after determining he couldn't get a reach block turn his defender out giving a CUT UP read (as opposed to a cutback read on IZ) The best clips in my opinion are the ones where QB reads that block turns it up, and then gets back outside.

The final 2 clips are us running speed option.  I included it because we ran it with an OZ blocking scheme.  This wasn't a big part of our offense, only ran it a couple times on the year.

Since I have now shown cut ups of our whole base run game I can now show this...As a bonus here are some clips of our QB keeps on the backside of our run game.  These are not called runs, but every RB carry involves the QB reading the BSDE, we are still not as good as I want us to be at this but we were better this year than we have ever been with it (mostly because of personnel).  Our backup QB actually did a better job reading it than our starter who was our stud runner.

Cut up of the day: Counter

To continue with the cut ups of the day theme... today I will be showing cutups of my favorite play in football... Counter GT

This has been "my play" in every offense I have coached and I think it works beautifully out of the spread.
Playside Down blocks (or doubles)
G and T pull for kick and wrap

To our RB we will read the BSDE

you will see a lot of clips running QB GT (I think the best play in a spread formation, great counter to teams keying back) using RB to fill on BSDE

Cut up of the Day: Inside Zone

Our best, most consistent run play this year was Inside Zone (IZ)

RB was a stud, he got really good at the Bang or Bend read he was taught on his path.
We were also able to run it as a frontside run play to the Rb (straight downhill dive action) and even as a QB follow type of play.  We got the most mileage out of this play.

I taught it differently than most... focusing on a more track based approach than the usual 4 eyes on LB 4 hands on DL push the vertical double team approach

Here are some cut ups of our IZ scheme in action

Cut up of the day: Screens

I have been going through every offensive clip of the season, and picking out clips to include in my presentations at a clinic in the Spring.

Since I now have some playlists saved by play type, they are easy to load on here.

I will start this off with screens, since that has been the most popular of my posts on this blog.

Now I am going to warn you, you are not going to see linemen all over the place lead blocking in the past.  We went away from this some this year because my OL was just bigger than in the past (weight wise) so they didn't move as well, and they struggled when releasing so we OZ'd called screens.  Also we got in to running more screen/run combos as we went along.

My goal with screens was no to exploit the defense any time they gave us the number/leverage advantage.

There is one RB screen where we release the OL in these clips.

Enjoy... new set of cut ups will follow tomorrow.

2012: The Year in Review

Well our season has been over for a whole week now (got destroyed in the 1st round of the playoffs).  After stepping away for a week, relaxing, and catching up on some school work I have finally begun to prepare for 2013.  Before I can really prepare for 2013 with all of the clinics, off season workouts, college visits, online research... whatever... I have to first review this past season.  I am big on self reflection so I have reviewed every offensive snap of the season, looked at what we did well and why, and also what went wrong and why.  We had some explosive games, for example scoring 70 points in one game to break a school record.  We had some games where we moved the ball well but just could not score how we should have (had 3 games with over 400 yards of offense but did not put up nearly as many points as we should have) and then we had 2 games where we simply could not move the ball consistently if our lives depended on it.

This was my first year taking over as the OC.  I had been the JV HC/OC with this group of seniors their sophomore year, and coached the OL and assisted the OC last season.  I was excited and had some fun weapons to work with.  We had a returning utility kid at QB, EXCELLENT runner, but had not thrown the ball at the varsity level.  A stud caliber RB.  A couple Speedy WRs.  And I had the beefiest OL I have had since I came to this school.

Forgive me if I ramble on and drift... I am just going to write about the things that stuck out to me over the course of the season.

We ran the bell well for the majority of the season.  I installed a track style IZ blocking scheme that focused much less on doubles (4 hands 4 eyes blah blah blah) and much more on blocking gaps and attacking.  What I found is it removed some of the hesitation and completely missed blocks we had in the past.  Now this was not a cure all, we still missed plenty of blocks do not get me wrong.  However I felt overall it was vastly improved to how the OL played this year compared to the previous 2.
Our backfield was what I had to showcase, yes we had talent at WR, but our QB was really a much better runner than thrower, and struggled to throw the ball when he wasn't sprinting out with a clean edge. We ran the ball more often than in the past but also for a lot more yardage.That stud RB ran for 1300 yards even with missing 2 games.  Our QB rushed for over 900 yards even with missing a game and a half due to ejection.  We rushed for almost 2.500 yards as a team.  Our QB through for 1600 yards.  Overall we had a 700 yard improvement in total offense over the previous season.

However we just did not score as much as we should have.  This team had an odd chemistry and personality.  It was next to impossible to get quality reps at practice and to get great effort in any sort of drill.  However they generally responded well and played hard at game time.  While they were gamers, the lack of quality reps greatly affected us in games, we could not throw the ball well enough when teams forced us to.  We had a slight divide in the team, the WRs wanted to catch the ball and felt left out, the OL, RB, and QB wanted to run the ball because we were having success... It was kind of a mess and I wish I had addressed it sooner, or simply gotten rid of some of the WRs and just played in 21 personnel.  I love the fact that we can spread teams out to run in reduced number boxes, however as we began playing better teams, they started blitzing more, and playing more ZERO coverage.  We just could not always beat it when we needed to.

We would have a lot of drives where we moved the ball right down the field, then a key drop, missed read, missed block, or turnover would just kill us and take points off the board.  We had touchdowns called back, dropped balls in the end zone, red zone turnovers, even a pick 6 in the red zone.  It was not the typical case of a spread team who struggles in the red zone because the field is compressed and they have no vertical threat.  We were never a vertical threat team.  Our case was more a lack of execution when we needed to execute most.  Our WRs showed zero interest in blocking at any point on the year and sold whoever was getting the ball out most of the time.  Sometimes the OL would just not man up and be able to let us punch it in.  We had drives running the ball down a teams throat, the defense still made no adjustment, and then its like we run in to a brick wall at the 20... I have never seen anything like it and this was probably the most frustrated I have ever been as a coach in 7 years because of it.

We will miss our QB and his running big time.  His skill and effort made me look a lot smarter than I am at times.  Him and our RB were just tough kids and were able to make a lot of guys miss or just run through tackles.  Our QB was good when we could get an edge for him, but struggled if we couldn't sprint out or had to drop back.  We were able to hit 4 verts occasionally and he felt most comfortable with Snag he just never got as adept at throwing from the pocket as I would have hoped.

The good news for next year is we have 2 QBs returning who got some playing time and both show signs of being capable pocket passers for us next year.  They are nowhere near the athlete or runner that we had this season but the playbook will just evolve slightly to fit their skills better.

The thing I struggled with most was the near death of our screen game.  Anyone who has read this blog knows how much I love and value the screen game.  I went away from our solid screen and having the OL release to block for 2 simple reasons.
1. My OL was much bigger and not as athletic as in the past so they were really struggling on releasing and actually getting out there (trade off was that we at least ran the ball better)... we would simply zone it instead
2. We began running more screen/run combos so that we always had the "right" play call

I was ok with my OL OZing the quick screens because we usually had the number or leverage advantage.  If I called screen we had numbers, or if it was thrown on backside of a run it was thrown due to numbers.  But this was the biggest area our WR group let us down.  Getting the ball to an athlete in space was the whole point of us selecting to run the spread 3 years ago, and now it was pointless because if we were in trips, the 2 blocking WRs simply would not hold their block to allow the 3rd WR to really hurt the defense.  Yes we had some successful screens on the season, but we were never anywhere near as good as I wanted to be in the screen game.

We had some injury issues that hurt us offensively.  Lost our best 2 WRs in league play.  Stud RB got hurt in league... so by the end of the season I could not help but feel like I had a really nice shiny GUN but not enough bullets to make it matter.

Moving on to next year I am excited about the following

More personnel groupings... use of TE/FB types
I return the left side of my OL, 2 sophomores who played varsity all season, a junior who would have started all year on the OL but was ineligible, and 3 very good, very big sophomore OL from the JV team

Our JV team wasn't loaded with studs but they had some good quality kids on it who I look forward to building in to varsity players.  I think this upcoming team will "work" more than this past team.  We have to replace the backfield which will be tough.  We return our stat leading WR (although he might have to convert to RB because he needs touches).

Our biggest challenge will be the weight room.  I know I mostly talk schematics and OL play on here but the biggest reason we lost games this year was due to the weight room.  We have got to improve our attendance program wide and it starts in a couple of weeks for us.

Right now we are a middle of the pack team... back to back 6-4 records... squeaking in and then losing in the 1st round of the playoffs

Whether we can turn the corner or not depends solely on the off season weight program.