X/O questions - now with more OCs!

[Arehel]

Arehel (and other coaches) - as an OC, what are some things you look for week-to-week in preparing your gameplan? If you have some time, I'd love to hear some thoughts on how film is broken down, what an OC looks for when preparing for specific Ds, and how in-game adjustments are made. Welcome to the board, btw!

Generally, in a gameplan you script your first ten plays and stick with.
Those ten plays are based on how aggressive the defense is, what type of coverage you see and attempting to set up for some big plays later on.

An aggressive defensive team, I use lots of 3 step drops with slants, hooks and wr screens to start in the pass game, in the run game, point of attack quick hitters, so basic fb leads.

Vs. A defense like ours, they play when in the right position very fundamentally sound, making sure everything is in front of them. Forces the opposing players to making coverage reads on their routes and so forth.

Takes up copious amounts of time to explain smaller things.

If there are frame by frame shots of a plays you don't get put it up, i'll break it down.

 

[hharvey09]

I'm a former high school dc and a current d3 college coach and I helped our head coach put in a fake off of the tunnel screen with the widest receiver and going with deep routes by the #2 and 3. Aggressive dbs have a hard time seeing that screen and wanna fly up and lose the discipline to see the play develop.

 

[ghost2]

Arehel (and other coaches) - as an OC, what are some things you look for week-to-week in preparing your gameplan? If you have some time, I'd love to hear some thoughts on how film is broken down, what an OC looks for when preparing for specific Ds, and how in-game adjustments are made. Welcome to the board, btw!

Generally, in a gameplan you script your first ten plays and stick with.
Those ten plays are based on how aggressive the defense is, what type of coverage you see and attempting to set up for some big plays later on.

An aggressive defensive team, I use lots of 3 step drops with slants, hooks and wr screens to start in the pass game, in the run game, point of attack quick hitters, so basic fb leads.

Vs. A defense like ours, they play when in the right position very fundamentally sound, making sure everything is in front of them. Forces the opposing players to making coverage reads on their routes and so forth.

Takes up copious amounts of time to explain smaller things.

If there are frame by frame shots of a plays you don't get put it up, i'll break it down.

So then you use your scripted plays to gauge the defense's ability to react and adjust to what you have planned and use the script to set up your game plan down the road.

Not to put y'all on the spot (this is a great thread btw - thank you all!) but if you were the OC at Miami, how would you craft your playbook? Feel free to be as general or as specific as you'd like. Great stuff!

 

[WestEndZone]

Since this discussion is leading that way anyway, let's talk about that a bit - is there a legit rationale for toss/stretch plays to the short side? Is it a matchup decision? I can't believe it's just haphazard (even I'm not that jaded yet.)

The hash marks in college football are much wider than the NFL. When the ball is on a hash, you have larger surpluses and deficits in terms of field width yardage (in the NFL, the ball is pretty much always in the middle of the field). That allows defenses to specialize their positions. You often see players consistently lined up on the boundary side or field side, especially corners (we align based on field in our 50 front). Your boundary end can be a linebacker/end hybrid. Your sam (or field linebacker) can be a linebacker/safety hybrid.

In terms of running to the boundary, you may get better blocking match-ups, but more importantly, you might get better alignment match-ups. Double flanker (balanced 2 te, 2 wr set) is one of the hardest formations to defend with a college defense. You can balance up the defense and take advantage of their automatic alignment rules (for example, when facing a 43/44 over (Vtech), forcing a $ to come down into the box and be a force player to the boundary--or even better force the $ to play his force assignment from a deep quarters alignment).

 

[WestEndZone]

Good clarification on the "bubble" vs. "jailbreak"/"middle screen". So basically, a bubble screen works kinda inside-out, and Coley's screen is more outside-in?

Do you see us moving away from those plays with Olsen under center? Maybe more toward a more traditional RB screen/playaction game?

Yup, that's correct. I see us running whatever we would have run if RW was still the QB. If Rozier ends up being the QB, then our game plan can change significantly.

 

[ghost2]

Yeah I see RW and KO cut from the same mold in terms of building an offense around them. Do you prefer any one set of screens over another, or are they all useful in different situations?

 

[cane305]

Thank you ghost 2 for moderating this discussion.

 

[WestEndZone]

Yeah I see RW and KO cut from the same mold in terms of building an offense around them. Do you prefer any one set of screens over another, or are they all useful in different situations?

I can tell you that schematically, bubble shouldn't work for us on a consistent basis. It has to be set up, a lot. Everything else should be fair game.

I've never coached an offense, so I can't tell you anything else specific. I like whatever works. Sometimes a team is just good at somethings and not so good at others -- and it's not always for logical reasons. I think we should have a diverse playbook, but not too much. I like being creative, but not cute.

Wow, I feel like a politician after that response.

 

[Arehel]

Arehel (and other coaches) - as an OC, what are some things you look for week-to-week in preparing your gameplan? If you have some time, I'd love to hear some thoughts on how film is broken down, what an OC looks for when preparing for specific Ds, and how in-game adjustments are made. Welcome to the board, btw!

Generally, in a gameplan you script your first ten plays and stick with.
Those ten plays are based on how aggressive the defense is, what type of coverage you see and attempting to set up for some big plays later on.

An aggressive defensive team, I use lots of 3 step drops with slants, hooks and wr screens to start in the pass game, in the run game, point of attack quick hitters, so basic fb leads.

Vs. A defense like ours, they play when in the right position very fundamentally sound, making sure everything is in front of them. Forces the opposing players to making coverage reads on their routes and so forth.

Takes up copious amounts of time to explain smaller things.

If there are frame by frame shots of a plays you don't get put it up, i'll break it down.

So then you use your scripted plays to gauge the defense's ability to react and adjust to what you have planned and use the script to set up your game plan down the road.

Not to put y'all on the spot (this is a great thread btw - thank you all!) but if you were the OC at Miami, how would you craft your playbook? Feel free to be as general or as specific as you'd like. Great stuff!

Right now at Miami, I think the closest thing I'd run is probably very similar to what Steve Sarkisian ran with Keith Price at Washington.
A somewhat mobile qb, who can sling it, but run with 3 to 5 receiver sets and inside zone-read being the staple of your run game. But also going under center.
Being from Canada and the way the 3 down game is played, we design offenses for big plays and a lot of them. Generally it's a top down (deep ball to dump off) read for a qb as opposed to bottom up (short throw to looking to deep.)

Olsen is mobile enough to run the zone read. Still don't understand why we didn't see Morris use that 4.6 speed on them. Hurt my soul, he'd hand it off when the contain man wasn't even worried 'bout him!

 

[ghost2]

Thank you ghost 2 for moderating this discussion.

My pleasure man - I eat this kinda stuff up. Hope to see more of it in the future!

 

[ghost2]

Arehel (and other coaches) - as an OC, what are some things you look for week-to-week in preparing your gameplan? If you have some time, I'd love to hear some thoughts on how film is broken down, what an OC looks for when preparing for specific Ds, and how in-game adjustments are made. Welcome to the board, btw!

Generally, in a gameplan you script your first ten plays and stick with.
Those ten plays are based on how aggressive the defense is, what type of coverage you see and attempting to set up for some big plays later on.

An aggressive defensive team, I use lots of 3 step drops with slants, hooks and wr screens to start in the pass game, in the run game, point of attack quick hitters, so basic fb leads.

Vs. A defense like ours, they play when in the right position very fundamentally sound, making sure everything is in front of them. Forces the opposing players to making coverage reads on their routes and so forth.

Takes up copious amounts of time to explain smaller things.

If there are frame by frame shots of a plays you don't get put it up, i'll break it down.

So then you use your scripted plays to gauge the defense's ability to react and adjust to what you have planned and use the script to set up your game plan down the road.

Not to put y'all on the spot (this is a great thread btw - thank you all!) but if you were the OC at Miami, how would you craft your playbook? Feel free to be as general or as specific as you'd like. Great stuff!

Right now at Miami, I think the closest thing I'd run is probably very similar to what Steve Sarkisian ran with Keith Price at Washington.
A somewhat mobile qb, who can sling it, but run with 3 to 5 receiver sets and inside zone-read being the staple of your run game. But also going under center.
Being from Canada and the way the 3 down game is played, we design offenses for big plays and a lot of them. Generally it's a top down (deep ball to dump off) read for a qb as opposed to bottom up (short throw to looking to deep.)

Olsen is mobile enough to run the zone read. Still don't understand why we didn't see Morris use that 4.6 speed on them. Hurt my soul, he'd hand it off when the contain man wasn't even worried 'bout him!

I think Sark's O would be killer down here. That said, what do we do with our TEs? (There's a TE thread too!)

Oh, and double-yes on the Morris zone read comment. Even once or twice a game - easy 15 yards.

 

[Arehel]

Brian Kelly used a similar style as Sark just adjusted it to players. Really put his best players on islands for match up nightmares.
Our TEs are more run-blocking types, that'll get ya when you forget they can run for a pass too. (Al Golden was a TE so my guess is that, that was him)
As a previous poster said run that zone read out of gun double te single back double wr. That put big pressure on the defense.
But currently our receivers are more talented then our TE so I'm choosing to go with them.

 

[LuCane]

Some of the most interesting stuff in this thread, conceptually, is readily seen in what Mike Leach pulls off consistently. At the foundation of his stuff is balancing the field and stretching it all the way across horizontally. I hoped we would use this to open some one on one matchups for us down the field or, more specifically, at least some easier reads for Morris on the outside (digs, etc.). The MESH concept that Leach runs is probably the best example of that and something that could help us attack both zone and man coverages. It's also a concept that works well with the 4 verticals we run at times, which happens to fit out personnel.

I think it was Wildcat or WestEndZone who mentioned we seem to be headed toward 2TE looks. I agree. We need better timing to make it work.

 

[Cincycane]

Guys who I think should be catching bubble screens:

Coley
Duke
Gray (if he gets here)
Berrios
Waters?

When running a bubble screen you still have to go with someone that every team knows runs great routes because they can sell that it could be a different route, so watching film you would with coley and maybe berrios off of his high school film he seems to sell routes very well.

 

[ghost2]

Lu, how do you feel that Leach's offensive concepts match with the multiple-TE idea?

 

[jerzeycane]

Good clarification on the "bubble" vs. "jailbreak"/"middle screen". So basically, a bubble screen works kinda inside-out, and Coley's screen is more outside-in?

Do you see us moving away from those plays with Olsen under center? Maybe more toward a more traditional RB screen/playaction game?

We don't disguise enough. The patriots probably run the same screen out of a million different alignments and personnel packages, which is what has made it so difficult to stop them. We run the same screen play out of the same alignment, with the same personnel. It makes it very easy to game plan for and we saw that against Louisville

 

[LuCane]

Lu, how do you feel that Leach's offensive concepts match with the multiple-TE idea?

The concept I mentioned above requires inside shallow crosses. It's doable. For us, it'd mean Walford and Sandland/Dobard running shallow crosses inside. Coley and, say, Dorsett or Waters on the outside. Duke on a wheel. It'd depend on timing and a QB who can make the read. You don't need to run it from 2TE/2WR, but it'd give us versatility in the run game.

My concern is a lack of identity. What kind of offense are we going to be? Someone mentioned inside zone above. Feliciano is a monster with inside zone. He was when Mike James was here, anyway. We're running inside zone, stretch, power running plays, 4 verts, smash concepts and Tony Martin WR screens. I'd be happy if we picked a foundation and then everything else was simply a wrinkle on that.

 

[INCaneFan]

Any screen that uses our OL shouldn't ever be run. Under Keyhole, I don't know that there's a team worse at getting outside and finding someone to put their body on.

 

[hollyhood27]

Some of the most interesting stuff in this thread, conceptually, is readily seen in what Mike Leach pulls off consistently. At the foundation of his stuff is balancing the field and stretching it all the way across horizontally. I hoped we would use this to open some one on one matchups for us down the field or, more specifically, at least some easier reads for Morris on the outside (digs, etc.). The MESH concept that Leach runs is probably the best example of that and something that could help us attack both zone and man coverages. It's also a concept that works well with the 4 verticals we run at times, which happens to fit out personnel.

I think it was Wildcat or WestEndZone who mentioned we seem to be headed toward 2TE looks. I agree. We need better timing to make it work.

Funny you mention mesh, most air raiders are actually removing it from the playbook. An expensive install.

 

[ghost2]

How do you mean, hood? Not worth the time to teach?