Introduction
This time of year is always challenging as a coordinator. Your mind runs wild with the seemingly limitless possibilities of great schemes people are running across the nation. The purpose of this article is to present ideas and concepts to consider when building your offensive package while providing strategies to structure any offense.
Offensive Design
The most important question to ask is: What do you need to do to win? This can be dictated by several variables but I believe the most critical variable to consider is your own personnel. Who are your best eleven players and what do they do well?
Does the staff have the knowledge and time to teach it? This is extremely important because the staff should be masters of their schemes. To truly understand schematic strengths and weakness is critical to the problem-solving that goes into running a successful offense. Staff can vary in size, knowledge base, and experience. Adapting to the strengths of your staff is no different than doing so with your own on-field personnel.
Make sure everyone in the program understands your identity. Alignment is paramount to sustained success. Coaches and players must all understand who you are as an offense, what you are going to do, and what must be done in order to win. Every person associated with the football program must embrace this and be pulling the rope in the same direction. This is the responsibility of the head coach and coordinators working to ensure the correct culture is built and maintained.
The last component to consider is to be flexible and adaptable. I research a great deal of military books related to strategic warfare. An overlying theme is the concept that both sides enter a war with a winning battle plan. The side that most effectively adapts to the situation once the fighting has commenced is the side that is victorious. The U.S. Marine Corps addresses the concept of “uncertainty” in their Warfighting Handbook. “Because we can never eliminate uncertainty, we must learn to fight effectively despite it. We can do this by developing simple, flexible plans; planning for likely contingencies; developing standing operating procedures; and fostering initiative among subordinates.” That passage is indicative of the challenges that must be considered when designing and implementing a sound and sustainable offensive plan of attack.
Structuring an Offense
This section is some personal thoughts and ideas in regards to building an offense. I do not claim to have the answers nor am I trying to influence anyone reading this into running something specific. The goal is this section is to foster thought and spark new ways of thinking in regards to how you analyze your own offense.
Have the ability to be balanced. You DO NOT need to be balanced, simply have the ability to be. I believe this is one of the most misunderstood areas of offensive football. You do not need to be balanced simply for the sake of saying you are balanced. Each one of us will continue to run the plays that are successful based on the situation. You can achieve having the ability to be balanced by asking yourself a few simple questions: Are you able to run and pass from each personnel group and formation? Do you have runs and passes for each game situation? Do you carry complimentary plays? Do you make the defense defend as much of the field as possible?
Another component I believe helps any offense be successful is simplicity. I constantly fight an internal battle of appearing complex to defenses while remaining simple to our players. I believe it is advantageous to show many looks, but run limited play concepts. Carrying variance within play concepts can stretch the mileage you are able to get out of certain play families. I make sure simplicity flows through every vein of our offense. Simplicity should apply to your teaching concepts, offensive terminology, defensive recognition, coaching points, rules, and assignments.
Finding the Right Tempo
Tempo, and how to most effectively use it, is an evolving element of football right now. Tempo is an extension of your offense and should be utilized the same way you would use personnel, formations, and plays.
The communication process of getting the play to your players weighs heavily on the types of tempo you will be able to install. I have tried to quantify common communication processes used in football right now and have grouped them in to seven different styles of communication.
· Huddle (Standard)
· Huddle (Sugar)
· Huddle (Quick)
· No Huddle (Signal)
· No Huddle (Wristband)
· No Huddle (Verbal)
· Look/Glance
Selecting your style(s) of communication will essentially dictate the types of tempo you will be able to utilize. In regards to tempo, I believe varying tempo is extremely difficult to prepare for. In my opinion, when someone uses one tempo, all the time, this provides an opportunity for an opponent to plan and adapt at a much more efficient rate. I use six criteria to determine how tempo can aid in our offensive production.
· Complex defenses
· Pressure packages
· Best personnel are out of the game
· After big plays
· Sudden change
· Multiple two-way players (generally applicable to the high school level)
Play Concept Selection
I have found concept selection to be the most challenging aspect of running an offense. How do I know what to carry? How much is too much? Do I have something for each situation? There are so many interesting, effective and innovative things happening in football right now that it is extremely enticing to want to do too much. However, we all operate with a finite amount of snaps. It is important to be realistic as to how many concepts you will be able to run in games and more so, how many concepts you can practice leading up to that game. Review the previous season and obtain as much quantifiable data as possible. This will aid in justifying the decision-making process. Use means, medians, and modes to assist in finding the right amount of concepts to carry. The packages you carry should be heavily influenced by common play series and adjusted for game situations and occurrences. Starting on a macro level, it is easy to categorize an offense, followed by breaking down each concept on a micro scale. The three categories I use are as follows:
Pre-Snap
· Tempo
· Personnel
· Formations
· Movements
· Motions
Miscellaneous
Run Game
· Zone
· Gap
· Option
· QB Runs
· Alternates
Pass Game
· Quick
· Drop Back
· Play Action
· Sprint Out
· Screen
· Protections
Calculate the amount of snaps you average per game and take each of your concepts and fit them to the corresponding category. This will give you a fairly specific idea of what you are carrying and if you can justify the volume of what you carry based on the frequency it is called in a game. For example, if you only Sprint Out pass 2.6 times per game, it would be hard to rationalize carrying seven or eight Sprint Out concepts. Once you have categorized your offense, take the play frequency and apply it to down and distance, as well as field zones. This will provide you an all-encompassing way to justify what concepts you need to carry.
Conclusion
I hope this article was able to give you at least one new idea or thought to consider when it comes to structuring your offense. Review and analysis of offensive systems aid in your preparation for a great 2017 season. Confucius said, “Study the past if you would define the future.” I find that sentiment holds true in our profession to this day.