Quick Thoughts on Speed Option

Speed Option itself is a relatively simple play that I've never been a huge fan of until this past season when I began to see it for what it is: a cheap, easy, quick way to punish the defense for poorly adjusting to a formation.

My uncle is a pretty successful shotgun coach and was really one of the pioneers of the shotgun in this part of CA.  For years he was a 21 personnel I formation kind of guy, but he just couldn't get over the hump.  Part of the problem was this: he was lining up 185 lb tight ends against 225 lb OLBs (specifically Andre Carter, who went on to play in the NFL).  One game against Mr. Carter, they ran a sweep to his side.  Outraged at their audacity, Mr. Carter reached over the 185 lb tight end and grabbed the running back and threw him to the ground.  At that very moment, my uncle had what alcoholics/drug addicts refer to as a moment of clarity.

His school just wasn't going to compete with the tops of their league by running the same stuff as the tops of their league.  With a population that is ~50% Asian, he perennially lacks numbers and size.  He realized that if he split his TE out, he was also removing their OLB from the box, effectively trading a pawn for a knight.  So, he began opening up his formations and throwing the ball more, while using his reduced box to run the ball more effectively with his undersized but well-coached offensive line.

But he began having problems with teams that started manning up on them and play Man Free, getting a numbers advantage in the box while limiting the quick game that they were fairly reliant on.  He did what good football coaches do and went to an expert, Matt Logan of Corona Centennial HS in SoCal.  Logan was one of the first shotgun coaches in CA and more than a bit of an expert.  When he met with Logan, he came back with a lot of really great ideas and one really big piece of the puzzle: speed option.

This was before zone read was all the rage, their run game was mostly just direct handoffs with fakes by the QB.  Enter speed option.  What speed option allowed them to do was punish teams for manning up on their receivers and for overshifting their underneath zones toward 3x1 sets.  Because of the nature of how force responsibilities tie into coverage, when teams were manned up that left their DEs responsible for playing force.  When that happened, at best speed option became a real threat to create an opportunity to get a RB out in space quickly with lots of space in front of him and at worst it became a really cheap 4-5 yards for the QB to basically just fall forward to pick up.  At the same time, zone teams were taking their curl/flat player and flipping him to the other side in 3x1 formations, leaving no one to play force on the backside.  Same situation: the DE can't really win.

The primary reason why I'm now a fan of Speed Option and I think it merits inclusion on top of Zone Read is this: Zone Read represents two players going in opposite directions while Speed Option is two players going in the same direction.  That full flow, instantly threatening the perimeter RIGHT NOW nature of the play isn't seen in shotgun offenses very often.  Zone Read has a sort of rhythm to it with the snap, mesh, read, while Speed Option is just snap and gogogo, forcing a decision sooner and threatening the defense faster.

So, at the end of the day, I think it boils down to this: Speed Option is cheap to install, easy to be good at, and offers great return on the time investment.  I'm honestly considering whether it's worth it to have Speed Option be an automatic check for the QB any time he gets a certain look to the weakside of the formation because I really think it's just that good for dictating how a team can adjust to you.

Shallow Cross: WHY IS HE ALWAYS OPEN???

I have a few pass concepts that I'm REALLY into and want to use as a base for an offense, namely Stick, Snag, and Shallow.  There's others that are necessary like 4 Verts, but those 3 are the cats pajamas for me.  The one I'm going to cover in here is Shallow, aka Shallow Cross, aka NCAA concept (because everyone in the NCAA runs it) shown here (image from Bruce Eien's page):

The basic gist of Shallow is as follows: there will always be a post route, a dig/hunt route, and a shallow crosser than runs right behind the heels of the defensive linemen at about 2-3 yds depth.  From there, you can tag it up in about a thousand different ways in order to accomplish what you want.  While doodling/performing thought experiments, I eventually realized that the most important thing is actually limiting how many tags I would want because SO MANY things can work off of this.

The first thing that I wanted to do was establish basic rules for the concept before branching out into tags and these are what I settled on:
1-Tagged receiver runs the Shallow.  Typically this is either a slot or a TE, but can be an outside receiver, too.
2-Inside receiver opposite the Shallow runs the Dig/Hunt.
3-Outside receiver on the Shallow side runs a Fade.
4-Outside receiver opposite the Shallow side runs a Post.
5-RB runs a Shoot to the same side as the Shallow.  Can be a check-release if you want it.

From there, there's certain tags that I prefer, the foremost being "Drive", where you get the Dig and Shallow coming from the same side, preferably with the Dig being run by the inside receiver like the Levels concept that Peyton Manning rode to his HOF status.

"Drive"

What I like about the Drive concept is that it creates a nice high/low read on the H/C defender while also attacking vertically on the opposite side of the formation.

   Next up is "Curl", which simply changes the Fade to a Curl route and adds a nice Curl/Flat concept on the backside.  I'm actually contemplating the potential of never installing Curl/Flat as it's own concept and instead just using this tag creatively when I want to run Curl/Flat.

"Curl"

This one is lifted directly from Chris Brown and Bobby Petrino by extension, I'm just calling it Wheel.  Wheel changes the RB's shoot route towards the Shallow into a Wheel in the same direction as the Shallow.  The purpose of the Wheel is to clear out a Flat defender who's lurking for the Shallow or punish a Corner who's jumping onto the Post route.

"Wheel"

   Scissors is a secondary tag off of Drive where your Post and Fade routes perform a quick Switch ala the Run N Shoot concept, but with a hard-set Post and Fade instead of the RNS read-as-you-go.  I'd love this for Quarters coverage in particular because I'm doubting the defense's ability to handle the route exchange.

"Switch"

   As you can see, Shallow is a terrifically variable and flexible concept and I'm just barely scratching the surface of the play.  Hope I presented a good case for it's inclusion in any offense, it's a stone cold lock to be in mine.


Further Reading/Viewing:
Chris Brown's excellent article on Bobby Petrino's Shallow Cross
Brophy's Video Library comes through yet again: Noel Mazzone explains Shallow

You've been doing... WHAT???

Get Ready To Freak Out...

I've been pretty busy figuring out the last 8 weeks or so of my teaching year, enjoying Spring Break (sort of), and learning some great stuff. What great stuff, you might ask? OFFENSE! Weird as it may seem, I've been really, really enthusiastically boning up on my offensive knowledge recently, for a couple reasons:

1. I need a break from defense. There needs to be balance, or the attempt at balance.
2. It's been really interesting.
3. As a future HC (someday... ?) I think it's pretty important to know exactly what you want on both sides of the ball and how you want it to happen.

Future HC?

Yeah, it's one of my goals to be a header some day. I'm not desperate to do it, I'd rather be a DC for a while and accumulate varsity experience underneath a man who's a legend around California, waiting for the right job, right position, right situation to present itself. I've a buddy who's desperate to be a HC, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my mind, but I'm fairly confident that what will happen is that he will end up putting himself into a bad situation for his first gig. I want to be in control of what situation I put myself in and I want to make sure that when I do take that leap, I'm as ready as I can be (Not to be mistaken with ready, I don't think anyone's ready for their first header position).

Being ready implies having a complete vision for your program and what you want to do with the offense and defense. I think that it's totally cool for a HC to run the defense and have an OC that calls the plays, in fact, that'd be my preference in a perfect world. However, coming into a new program I think that it would be easier and more feasible to have a DC who runs your defense while calling your own plays on offense. Eventually, I would want to find an OC who can call, organize, and teach the offense the way I want and transition to the defensive side of the ball.

So, What's The Offense?

Well, taking a page from some particularly successful playbooks, I'm pretty sold on running the split back veer as my offense. I like triple option football because of what it does to the defense and it's big-play capacity, I like that the traditional split back formation forces the defense to adjust to a tight end, I like that your passing game is still relatively intact. If you watch De La Salle of Concord, they run a very simple, very execution-based split veer offense and do it very, very well. When Coach Lad took over at DLS, he went around to his friends who were football coaches and asked them what was the best offense he could run with slow, nonathletic smart kids. They all told him split back veer, so he learned it, and learned it, and learned it, created an atmosphere where his kids work their butts off year round, and mastered the teaching of technique to his players. Now, he has fast, athletic smart kids and wins state titles every two years or so.

My ideal situation for becoming a head coach would be one of these two options: 1-Taking over a private school with a losing program, or 2-Starting a program of my own. I'm going to do one of the two at some point, maybe even both. Heck, I could start my own program at a private and kill two birds with one stone. Regardless, either situation would be a great one for me to install the split veer as my offense.

Also, it would be run as an up-tempo, no-huddle offense to force the defense into very vanilla schemes, prevent adjustments, tire the defense, and have fun.

My Homework

What I've been reading to prep/educate me on my offense:

• Complete Book Of Triple Option Football by Jack Olcott
• Complete Guide To Football's Option Attack by Drew Tallman
• Coaching The Veer Offense by George Thole, Jerry Foley
• Homer Rice On Triple Option Football by Homer Rice
• The Hurry-Up, No-Huddle by Gus Malzahn
• Veersite.blogspot.com and it's ensuing message board.

And what's still to come/in the mail:

• Attacking Modern Defenses With The Multiple-Formation Veer Offense by Steve Axman
• Attacking Modern Defenses With Belly Option by Al Black
• Coaching The No-Huddle Offense by G. Mark McElroy

I've also been reading a lot of threads, new and old, on CoachHuey.com about the split veer, triple option, and double dive/inside & outside belly series. It's amazing how much knowledge there is in one place, I particularly want to thank Lochness, BLB, UCBears, and GroundChuck for their contributions, none of which have been small.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Holy Cow!

Getting this teaching job has been awesome for me in a lot of ways, but my goodness have I been slaving to catch up to where we're at in terms of grading and lesson plan prep, etc. I'll try to start re-posting regularly in another week or so, but I've got to get settled and into a flow first. I just submitted progress reports last night and approximately 45% of my kids have "F" grades because they're just not turning in work, which means emails home to parents all weekend, among other things.

On the coaching front, it's been a very exciting time as we've hired a new HC who is a top-notch coach. He's been a winner pretty much everywhere he's been, with several section championship rings and a state coach of the year award to his credit. With him he brings the Wing-T, complete with the winged helmet design and all, and a very interesting quiet intensity and confidence that are obviously indicators of why he's been so successful in the past. I'm hoping I can convince him to allow me to retain our 3-4 scheme, but if he insists on a 4-4 look, well, I've got some ideas on that, too.