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 2×2 and 3×1 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
- the simple rules for plays
- 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
