During the “dive” phase (B-back) of the the Pistol-Flex Veer play, the QB is expected to make the “right” call, not necessarily a “perfect” call. What I mean by this is as follows: when a QB makes the “right” call, what that means is that according to what he “saw” as he read the dive key defender, the QB made his decision and either a give or a pull was executed. QBs are not “perfect”, so for any coach to expect them to make the perfect call 100% of the time is lunacy. What is expected of the QB is for him to make the right decision the “majority” of the time!
Having said that, we want to make the QB’s decision as easy as possible. The QB makes his decision on whether to give the ball to the B-back, or to pull it depending on what the dive key defender does as the play progresses. One can imagine that the defender can (and will) do many things in order to try and fool the QB into making the wrong decision. It is therefore imperative that we make that decision as seamless as possible.
One-Way Thought Process: In order to make the QB’s decision an easy one, we only give him a one-way thought process. In other words, we only give him ONE-WAY to think about how he is making his decision. We tell him the following: On the dive option to the B-back, he must be thinking, “I will give the ball every time to that diving B-back unless the dive key defender comes down both hard and flat on the B-back”. There you have it! A very simple way of making his decision. The QB’s pre-snap mind set will be to ALWAYS give that ball to the B-back (every time)…unless, the dive key defender makes a specific move to take the B-back! That is it! There is only one way for the QB to think about this option phase. What we do not want to do is to play too much with our QB’s mind by giving him all of the possibilities of what that defender “might” do…no way! What we want is a confident QB. By giving him a one-way thought process, that confidence will shine through.