Play Action Pass Protections

After a Facebook Shout Out from Julien , I have decided to break down play action pass protections.

I have used each of these 3 pass protections in the past, all with success.  They are probably the 3 simplest/most common play action protections I have seen used.

BOB

The first is... our regular standard pass pro.  Many Air Raid offenses call this play as an 80 series play.  So if say 4 verts is 97 in our offense, this would be 87.  The OL bands just say 90, RB just does a little fake dive, QB sticks it out then drops.  This is the simplest form of play action pass protection we can do because there is nothing new for the OL at all.

We Stay in our regular BOB Pas Pro Rules

The next 2 pass protections can be used for straight drop back off of play action but I have mostly used them with roll out/boot type play action plays. 

SLIDE

The first I will show is a full slide play action pass protection.  This was my main play action protection I used last year because we ran a lot of sprint out, so since we were already good at that, I used the same word on my OL's wristband to tell them which way to slide and block.  RB just fakes across and picks up on the back side.

I use an "L" or "R" word to designate to my OL which way we are sliding on their wristband. 

RB we use Flame - Fake Left

                  Fire - Fake Right

BOOT

The final play action protection I will use is a pretty standard "boot" protection.  I have seen countless teams run this from under center, and the rules remain the same in the spread.  I did not use this last year, but this was our only play action protection in the 4 years I coached in an under center Fly/Pro offense.

It works well because it is very similar schematically to a trap play we already ran, they just couldn't go down field of course.  To the defense keying OL, it must have looked very similar to our base run play.





Boot Right:

• RT steps in to B Gap
• RG steps in to A Gap
• C steps in to back side A Gap
• LG pulls to block DE - Kick out or Log depending on DE's action
• LT steps in to B Gap
• RB fakes across and blocks first thing off the edge of LT's Butt

I would teach this protection as a concept and label it "Boot Rt" or "Boot Lt"

My Play Calling Thought Process

Duece gave a great break down of Paul Johnson's If/Then thought process when calling offense the triple option...HERE .

It got me thinking about If/Then games within our spread offense and what I use when calling offense.  Now I do not have it broken down into an actual sheet, this is all stuff that has been floating around in my brain, this is actually the first time I will have put these thoughts down in writing so please excuse me if it becomes an incoherent mess.

I believe in having answers for anything a defense may throw at you.  What I like about being in spread, and using no huddle forces the defense into a lot of vanilla looks, or they are at the very least predictable... most teams sit in 1 or 2 different things against us and just stay.  We see very little interplay variability. 

We primarily operate from 2x2 and 3x1 formations.  I will refer to our 2x2 formation as Ace for the remainder of this post.

The Box

If we are in Ace, the defense will surely have corners aligned in the area of our outside WRs.  Every team we play will have at least 1 Safety high.  Defenses must put defenders at least somewhat removed from the box in .  That is 5 players that we have removed from the box.

Basic math: 11-5 = 6 Defenders in the box... 5 if they play a 2 high coverage.

As an OL coach I can draw up a multitude of schemes to run against 5 and 6 man boxes.

Keep them out of the box
Next I look at the defenses overhang players... the guy between the team's CB and their DE.  If they are sound defensively they will likely have this player at least splitting the difference between our OT and slot WR when we are in ACE.  I WANT to run the ball... if this player begins cheating his alignment toward the box in order to play the run, then I will use bubbles or screens outside to out leverage him immediately.  Play action bubble was a staple of my offense last season, it is a great answer for OLB/SS's who wish to play the run.

TRIPS
 I am a huge believer in using trips.  Being in trips puts a great deal of stress on the defense, some defenses have major adjustments, some have no adjustments... either way you must be ready with the appropriate answer for the defensive reaction.

Using TRIPS is especially important when on the hashes.  HS Hash marks are so wide I feel you almost HAVE to be in trips to the wide side.  Being in Ace on a Hash does not spread the defense out because your slot and SE are so close, the overhang does not have to remove himself from the box. 

Remember removing defenders is not just critical for running success, it makes pass protection much easier and more clearly defined. 

Numbers
I look at numbers to the trips side.  How many defenders do they have aligned to the trips side?
If they only have 2 defenders to cover my 3 WR's then I want to attack that area of the field.  I can do this through a flood concept, any of our screens, and outside runs to that side... I have them outnumbered and that is where I must attack. 

If they put 3 defenders over my 3 WR's, any of the above plays can still work, but I begin looking at the rest of the defense as well.  To put 3 defenders over my 3 WR's the defense has to do one of 3 things:

Walk a defender out of the box
If they walk an inside backer out of the box to the trips side then I want to run inside.  Think about it... we already have reduced numbers in the box via formation, and they have just removed one of the defenders.


Shift backers to the Trips side
Seeing as removing a backer from the box weakens the inside run ability of the defense, many DC will either flop their overhang player from the weakside, or bump the backers over...  Overhang bumps inside, bumping all backers over until the ILB on the trips side now walks out over the #3 WR.  If a team does this they have covered your 3 WR's on the trips side, maintained their numbers in the box they began with, but they have opened up possibilities on the backside.  Without an overhang player on the single WR side, that WR has a lot of room to work with, this is where you play your stud WR.  Without an overhang player (and often a soft corner) I can attack the weak flat area with slants, curls, and screens. 

A great play when on a Hash is going trips to the wide side, and throwing a play action screen back to the single WR. Play fake gets the defense flowing to the wide side, and being on the hash gives the OT a shorter distance to run to block the corner.  Without an overhang player to the weakside this can really hurt the defense.

Hitting the RB in the weak flat is another great way of exposing no overhang player.  Outside runs (Jet or my favorite, QB sweep) also do the trick. 

Bring down the Free Safety
If a team walks their FS down to our trips side... then I want to attack deep.  I can run my backside WR on posts and he has the whole field to work with , since there is no FS.  Most teams will not do this, he may cheat to the trips but few teams I have seen will walk him up to play over one of our 3 WR's.  The other 2 scenarios are more likely.

For this scenario to take place a defense would have a CB, LB, and FS over your 3 WR's.  Keep their box numbers and keep their overhang, they can stay sound against many of the plays I have described but they are completely vulnerable deep down the MOF. 

That is the thought process I use when calling plays.  I enjoy the chess match component of coaching football more than anything else, and a playcaller must always have the next answer ready. 

Last year I went even crazier into this, I would use 4x1, some unbalanced stuff with WRs... all trying to gain numbers advantage somewhere.  I followed the same logic as above. 

Of course there are other factors that go in to play calling but these are some general things I examine from the defense when calling plays.

Creating a Team Camp

Last Summer we attended a team camp for Varsity and JV at a High School about 30 minutes away... it cost $75 per kid.  With about 50 or so kids total between our two teams we ended up giving that school over $3,000.

There were only 3 varsity teams competing total and 2 JV teams.  The drills prior to scrimmaging were unorganized and pointless.  The scrimmage sessions themselves were fairly unorganized and there was never a solid schedule set for the day.  They gave us a t shirt, and provided meals each day, but nothing special.

After this past season I moved from JV HC, to Varsity Assistant HC.  We originally planned on going to a college camp in the Summer, but the one we planned on going to conflicted with Summer School here so it wasn't an option. 

One day I had an idea... why pay someone else for a crappy camp, when I can run one myself.

• A better quality camp
• Charge our kids much less
• Actually turn a profit from the other teams

I brought this idea up to the head coach and he was slightly hesitant at first, I promised that I could handle it all and that we could pull it off and eventually he gave me the green light.

On Monday July 25-Thursday July 28 we are hosting the 1st Annual Battle of the Bay Football Camp at Antioch High School.  We have 5 varsity teams in attendance, and 2 JV teams.  It is a 4 day camp, 4.5 hours per day, everyone gets a shirt, and everyone gets fed 1 meal per day.

I am more excited for this camp than I have ever been for a camp in my coaching career.

Here are the steps to planning a team camp I used, and that others can use in the future to run their own team camps:

1.  Administrative Support
The first thing I did was to speak to the AD about this.  He is a former coach and has been very supportive.  He presented the idea to the principal and they said as long as we handled all of the legal aspects of putting on the camp we had their blessing.  Having an AD and principal who supported this Camp from Day 1 has been beneficial because they helped us in step 2...

2. Secure your facilities
One might think that using your own football stadium for a camp would be pretty easy but our district makes it all difficult.  We have to fill out all kinds of forms, get district approval, and then pay for a custodian.  Our principal went to bat for us and made sure we got the facility use permit approved, and agreed to pay the bill for custodial over time and getting the field lined. 

3. Find Teams!
I knew I had to find teams to attend our camp.  I have built up a lot of contacts in my phone from coaching in this area for so long but I got help from an equipment vendor.  I received a mass email sent to me by an equipment vendor and I looked through all of the emails he had sent it to as well.  They were all coaches in Northern CA.  So I copied all of the email addresses, and sent out a mass email to them asking to come to our first annual camp.  I received a lot of "No Thanks" and "we are already going somewhere else"... But I was able to get 3 teams committed from this email, it was definitely worth the 10 minutes it took.  I called the Head Coach at my Alma mater, and the school I coached at for 4 years... he needed a cheap camp, and I was able to provide that for him.  So I now had 4 schools, plus my own making 5 ... which is where my HC and myself decided to cut our camp off for this first year.

We were able to hook these schools by offering them tremendous value for the price.  4 day camp, with t shirts, and food everyday for just $40 per kid (compare that to 40 we paid the year before for the same things).


Next came

4. INSURANCE
Cover Your @SS... Plain and simple.  That was the biggest caveat the principal/AD/District gave us, is that we had to have insurance for the camp since we were bringing in so many outside participants.  This step took a while, simply because I shopped around.  I must have checked out 100 insurance companies... I finally settled on a company based here in Northern CA, Gagliardi Insurance.  They have a football camp package for just under $4 per kid for a week long camp.  The great thing about this company is once we have a policy set up through them, and now that they have my credit card on file, I can add participants on to the policy with just an email and it is active.  We purchased camp insurance for 150 participants, we low balled it at first, but this was just to have proof of insurance to secure our facility and get district approval.  Now that I know the exact number of kids more precisely I just send en email to the insurance agent I dealt with authorizing them to charge another $400 to my card to cover 100 more participants.

5. T Shirts
We told our equipment rep about our camp... told him it would be a great networking opportunity for him, with 4 other programs here, he could talk to head coaches, pass out brochures and attract more business for himself.  He agreed to provide the t shirts for our camp at a discounted rate in exchange for us letting him come and set up a booth at our camp.  We actually have a very cool t shirt design... Battle of the Bay Football Camp... with a Big Pic of the state of CA on it, with a STAR located over the bay area...  I will be sure to post a picture once we have the shirts this week.

6. FOOD
I knew I had to find food for roughly 300 people for 4 days... That is a lot of food.
Our team moms have been great at helping out this.  My suggestion is to look for as many donations as possible and buy in bulk.  I found someone to donate 600 hot dogs and buns, one day of camp food was done.  A team mom's husband works for a restaurant supply company and got us more hot dogs and hamburgers at a severely discounted price.  One of our players mom's works for a bread company and got us more buns and dinner rolls for free.  And Finally we are going to purchase a ton of pasta and pre made sauce from Costco and 2 coaches wives have agreed to cook it all for the pasta night.

We will end up with 2 days of 2 Hot dogs each for everyone
1 day of hamburgers for everyone
1 day of pasta for everyone

7. Get Volunteers!
We have a crew of team moms and coaches wives helping with all of the food cooking and prep work.  A dad has volunteered to handle barbecuing, and the entire cheerleading team will be there all 4 days of camp to help out with whatever we need.  We have gotten a great deal of support and my goal is for this camp to run without any hitches.

8.  Make the Schedule
The last step, and maybe most important from the football aspect of camp is planning the daily schedule.  This step took a while because with 5 teams , we will always have 4 teams playing at a time, and 1 team out with a bye.  I had to organize the 7 on 7 and scrimmage time so that we all had equal rest periods, played each other equally, and no one got short changed in any one area.  It took me a few hours of messing around with the schedule on excel but eventually I found something I liked.

One thing I really like that I am doing is with the OL/DL.  When everyone else is doing 7 on 7, the OL/DL will be with me on a practice field doing 1 on 1s.  We will have a different challenge type drill each day in which 5 members of each team will compete in events for points representing their school. One event a day, tire flips, obstacle course, farmers walk, tug o war.  At the end of the week I will award a Thick Golden Chain for the winning team.

After the competition, OL and DL will do drive block and pass pro 1 on 1s against each other until the 7 on 7s are done.

The rest of the time will be spent scrimmaging and each day will finish with a goal line challenge period.

I am incredibly excited to get this camp underway and see how it goes.  I will post some pics/videos and my post camp reflection when camp is over.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

I apologize for my lack of posts recently, I have been busy working around the clock. 
I graduated in the beginning of June and began the summer portion of my teacher credential program immediately.

I am almost done with this program and have come to develop a love/hate relationship with it.

I hate it because the course schedule  is 4:30-9:30 everyday.  We get one day off per week to work on online homework instead of in class work so I have only been able to go to 1 practice per week the entire summer.  It has been extremely difficult for me to stay away.  in the 6 years I have been coaching this is the first time I have ever had to miss practice and it has been difficult.  Luckily the guys I coach have been extremely understanding and have organized our practice schedule so that we always work Offense on the 1 day a week I can make it to practice (OL is my primary position).

I love it because I have learned so much about teaching, classroom management, and setting effective routines in place to increase efficiency in the classroom.  Many say that the best coaches are the best teachers and vice versa.  I truly believe that everything I am learning about classroom management will help me in coaching.  Simple things having to do with objectives for each practice, and establishing pre, during, and post practice routines will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of each practice.

Missing a good portion of our summer practices has helped me realize how much I love football, coaching, and the kids.  This time of year is often referred to as the "dog days of Summer".  No one really wants to be there, coaches included, and it is a grind.  I on the other hand now cherish that one practice per week I get; I look forward to it every week and know it will be the best day of the week for me.

Luckily I just have one week left, and then I am back to full time football mode. 

*Side Note*

I am very excited for the end of this month... I made my own football camp and this is our first year hosting it.  I have 4 other teams coming here for a week of full contact action and it should be a lot of fun.  This will also be our first time in full gear against anyone else so it will be our first real test.

Feeling extremely fortunate/honored

I just wanted to share with everyone how fortunate I feel to be able to share my thoughts on football with the world.  I have spent the last couple years learning from and looking up to guys like Hoover and Deuce and I feel extremely honored to be mentioned by them on their blogs.

Seriously... I have been reading stuff from these guys for years and to be mentioned by them is seriously one of the coolest feelings I have ever had.

In the last couple weeks I have been receiving phone calls, texts, PMs on HUEY, and emails asking about football and it has been a great experience.  I am happy people out there value my opinion and I want to extend the offer to everyone to use me as a resource if I can help you in any way.

I will be pretty busy in the coming weeks, I graduate next week, I begin my credential program next week, and of course summer practice will be heating up soon, but I will do my best to get back to anyone with any questions they might have.  I truly love talking about football and I am happy to share with whoever is willing to listen.

KISS OL Install

NO! Not that kiss

A blog post by this week by Coach Hoover got me thinking about KISS, the link can be found here.

Install is something that is often brought up and I have seen install done horribly.  The school I used to coach at was about plays... not execution.  My final year there, the OC ran every play you can think but we weren't very good at any of them.

I truly love our offense now... not because Spread is sexy and new but because it is very simple to install with my guys upfront.  I do not care how good your team is it all starts up front.  I differ from many TFS clients in the fact that I believe in running the ball first, I love the reduced numbers in the box that 2x2 and 3x1 give us, it makes my job as an OL coach easier.

We just wrapped up spring ball and I have 95% of the offense in with the OL.
We have 4 different run plays that can be run out of any formation with either F or Q as the ball carrier.  Within those 4 plays I only had to teach 3 schemes because our power G scheme is used for both Power G and our inverted veer play (what TOG calls Dash).  I discussed the flexibility of this blocking scheme here.

So in the 6 days we have had to practice offense I installed 3 run schemes, 90 pass pro, 60 pass pro, sprintout pass pro, and 3 of our screens.  That is a good majority of our total offense for my OL and we did nothing but review the final 2 offensive days to make sure we had these things down.

They key to what I feel has been the most successful installation spring ball of my 6 year coaching career has been

1. the simple rules for plays
2. the carryover between plays

Our run game is gap based and the players are given rules that will work against any front... we have been mixing going against odd and even fronts all spring ball without any problems.  Our screens are incredibly simple for the OL because they have a universal set of rules they use for their release on all screens.  Our screens are based so that no set player has any set defender, which gives us the flexibility to pick up any Defense on any screen without any changes.  Only thing that I have to install once they understand our fast screen is what their first steps are before they release.

60 and 90 pass pro is easy because in terms of scheme they are identical.  I teach 90 first because the steps are slightly more difficult, once I have taught 90, 60 is just 1/2 the steps and 60 is installed.

Sprint out is simple enough and that is my install for OL.

The carryover between run plays is what has made this extremely easy for me.  We devised our run game with simple block down rules playside, we are leaving the PSDE and PSLB unblocked every play by the frontside... after 2 weeks of beating those rules into their heads the frontside has it down now.

We mess with the defense by altering who picks up the DE and LB, sometimes a kickout by either a FB or G, sometimes we read the DE, sometimes we Log him.  for the LB sometimes we have G take him, sometimes WR cracks on him, sometimes RB blocks him.  Essentially for my OL we are only changing the backside pullers responsibility... playside stays the same and the backside tackle always executes a hinge block ...which I am teaching the same as our backside on sprint out pass pro, so there is even more carry over!

Everything I have installed builds upon what they already know and is so simple, that even my kids who have never played and was really worried about (mentally) have picked it all up.

For example our next play to be installed when we start our summer practice is "Counter"... this will take all of about 30 seconds to install because it is the exact same as our current "Power" (the first play we put in day1) but we add the tackle pulling instead of hinging.  Exact same frontside rules!  By having these few schemes, that can be run with different variations we get a complex, no huddle offense that is still simple for my guys up front. 

I fully expect the decreased thinking to result in increased aggression.

Coaches remember, keep your schemes simple and try to increase inter-schematic carryover as much as possible! It leads to enhanced learning and performance.

This is by far the most confident I have felt about my OL as a unit in 6 years of coaching.  By August I will have 2 full offensive lines that can flat out play

Drill Videos are Here!!!

Sorry for the delay, it rained on offensive day 1 but the sun came out a bit today so I was able to film some of our drills.  Here is a short video I just made showing off some of our daily drills.

Ladder Drill, Stance, Mirror, Vertical Setting, Cage, 60/90 sets

Best $20 you can spend on your program

What if a simple $20 purchase can make your practices more efficient and time effective than ever before?

Well that is all it takes to have a practice segment timer.  These are incredibly beneficial and will keep your practices moving fast and you will get more done in less time than ever before.  We have gone to 5 minute segments at all practices and with out a $1,000 + dollar segment timer at our disposal we thought we could just have a student with a stopwatch and a whistle keep us on track, but something always got messed up.  If a student manager didn't show up, or messed up one time all of practice was messed up.  Plus there was no way of knowing when you were close to ending a segment.

Enter Coach Hoover
He makes CD's with mp3 of a segment timer on them.  He has ones ready with 5 minute segment and a horn buzz with the segment number.  All you need is some sort of audio device or better yet, play it over the PA system at your stadium.  Best thing is it has a beep beep with 2 minutes remaining as a way of knowing when you are getting closer to the end of a segment. 

This is a great value because we just hit play once and our entire practice is taken care of, we segment everything out to 5 minute drills.  Need more time at a drill? double up and do 2 or 3 segment in a row, but you are still going off the 5 minute segment timer.  It has improved our pace, efficiency and getting our backups in.  Now with a 20 minute team session divided into 4 - 5 minute segments we can give our backups the exact amount of time we want in because the horn tells us when to switch.

Enough of my rambling about how awesome and simple this is.  Here is the link to buy it from coach Hoover.

You are crazy to not buy this if you want better faster practices and for just $20... how can you pass this offer up?

DIY OL Ladders

Hi guys, I have to pay respect to Brophy and his blog, he gave me the insight for this.  His post on it can be found here . His blueprint was for a 15 space ladder, I decided to make two, 7 space ladders.  I felt 15 was pretty long and I wanted 2 ladders (1Var, 1JV).

Really simple process as he lays it out for ya.  I went to Lowe's last night and purchased then - 10' PVC pipes, 3/4 inch, and 32 T's to fit them together.  I already had a pair of PVC cutters laying around the house.

My bill came to $28.63 for all the PVC.

When I got home from Lowe's last night I measured all the cuts and started cutting, took about 25 minutes or so for all the measuring and cutting (i had a crappy pair of cutters which slowed me down a bit)

For this project (2 ladders, 7 spaces each)
I needed

• 16 - 36" poles
• 32 - 14" poles
• 32 - T fittings

Last night after the cutting

I brought the pieces with me to the school to assemble ( I have a car so I wouldn't be able to transport the ladders pre-assembled).

I subbed today and the classes were watching a movie all day, so I was able to put the pieces together in the back of class while they watched the movie, took less than 10 minutes. 

Here is the finished product

Also,
Great news, I received my KODAK HD pocket video cam (mentioned here)in the mail today, I got it sooner than I expected... which means that I will be filming everything on Monday (our first day of spring ball).

I will be sure to have some slips of ladder drill up early next week!!!

Drill Videos to come soon!!!

Since I started this blog I have received a TON of reader requests for film, especially of drills.  I have had some issues figuring out getting HUDL stuff off and on to the blog and I have just been lazy but this will soon change.

With Spring ball officially starting here on Monday I decided to purchase one of these

Kodak ZxD

Compares quality to the FLIP but I purchased it because it was cheaper and you can add an SD card up to 32 gig, instead of being stuck with a 4gb flip.

This will be in my pocket pretty much 24/7 but most importantly out there on the field so I can film drills, for teaching as well as blogging.

Now my next project becomes finding at least 1 student assistant to help out at practice and film for me. 

I am hoping to receive the camera sometime within the next week and I will be posting video with it as soon as I get my hands on it.