Notes on Running With the Football

From a press Conference with Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis:

[In response to a question on running back Darius Walker's running style]

But I can tell you what I used to tell [Patriot's receiver] Deion Branch after I had a big research study on (Marvin) Harrison a few years ago when Deion was a second year [in New England]. I noticed that Marvin, with all of his production, any time the hits were coming, he was going down. So after I thought about it for a while. I thought, this isn't the stupidest thing in the whole world to have your best guy, when he's about ready to get crunched, go ahead and make sure that doesn't happen.... there are times to take the hit and there are times not to take the hit.

The first important point is explicitly made: If you're talking about your best guy, there is logic to letting him go down or go out and bounds and avoid the big crunching hits. While we don't want to coach pansies, you also want to have the kid for the whole season. Injuries are a bigger threat to receivers than say offensive linemen because it is more difficult for them to play through injuries due to the nature of the position.

Second, which can be gleaned since his example was Marvin Harrison, most all production, at least a receiver's, is done before contact is made. This does not limit yards after the catch, but instead tells you that the focus is on running away from defenders rather than at them, either to run them over like Earl Campbell or try to individually juke every guy out, which is idiotic.

Instead, great receivers catch the ball, get upfield immediately, and try to score by splitting defenders. What do I mean by splitting defenders? Quite simply: run inbetween them. There are circumstances when you need to take the hit to the defender (sometimes on a slant all you can do is deliver the "forearm of doom" to the safety after the catch) but, usually, you score by running directly upfield right inbetween the corner and the safety for the long TD.

It's an often missed point. If you watch Sportscenter you will see that almost every short pass that goes for a TD involves a receiver bursting through a seam rather than trying to juke guy X, run through guy Y, spin off guy Z, and then finish by jumping over guy A. Notice I ran out of letters because doing this, even if successful, takes so long that the whole defense has time to show up. It happens occaisionally, but don't make it a habit.

More considerations on developing your systems

In response to a coach asking about an "Ideal Passing Offense."

I totally agree [with Coach Huey's response that the primary goal of an offense is to get the ball repeatedly to your best player's].

Your "system" is just a framework from which you can run your individual "offense" in a given year, based on your personnel. This is one reason that most teams like to be "multiple spread teams" or "multiple one-back," because the theory is that in a given year the focus of the O should change based on who you have. For example, if you have a powerful RB, you will probably want to line him up in single back, 6-7 yards deep--maybe even I or offset I--and run the power schemes etc and use that to set up your offense.

A great example if you are a spread offense team is when you have a running QB vs. a dropback guy. I tend to think counter-intuitively: I like to put dropback QBs under center and running QBs in the gun. Your "offense" still involves the same plays whether the QB is in the gun making fakes and running laterally on bootlegs, sprintouts, QB reads, etc, or more traditional rhythm dop passing, play action passing, etc. A fan (or hopefully an opponent!) will look at your offense though and think you are completely different.

It is easy to see that your offense is the same, the only difference is if you call your formations with "gun" in them or not. Then, in practice you emphasize one thing over another.

In the end, you have to install something you can effectively coach. Whatever you end up doing, make sure that you and your coaches believe in it and have a firm grasp of both the schemes and concepts, why and how they are used, and, most importantly, how to teach them to your kids. The biggest challenge in moving from say the wing-t or traditional I-back offense to a pass oriented or even balanced O is identifying what your players need to learn and how best to teach it in a limited amount of time, at the expense of not teaching or spending much time on other things--even things that formerly you spent a lot of time on.

Look at a Texas Tech, who is almost entirely committed to the pass. If you study them or talk to their coaches, the reason they focus so hard on the passing game at the expense of the running game is not because the players can't learn a lot of different running schemes (though this is a factor), but moreso the amount of practice time they would have to spend learning how to execute them, what kind of skills they would need, and having enough practice time to master those skills.

As a final note, the counter-argument to this is that adding a few more concepts, or a more aggressive run game or balanced attack would make the job of pass blocking for the linemen easier, or even passing itself easier. This is further argued that at some point your players don't "get any better," at a given skill, say pass blocking, than their ability would allow, so you are better off teaching something new. All coaches and systems seek to balance these two opposing forces. Further, most agree that the lower the level you coach at the fewer "things" you are going to try to do, since you must spend more time on the fundamentals and specific skills the players must learn.