Installing an Offense & Creating a Call Sheet | PCC - 024

there's a lot of coaches that were asking about how many plays they should carry into a game and for me 30 just kind of became the magic number 30 different ways that we can attack this defense Bird right 18 premium diesel Joe Montana Buster Douglas John thatway join thatway Daisy right soy Blitz right Travolta right pumpkin left alert Charlotte left I want punch right Zack we go 15 Tiff scissors Cannon to 300 jet F stick Victory is a great play [Music] call all right welcome to another episode of the play callers Club we're doing something different today we are going to do a question and answer on offensive football strictly offensive football um you'll get your recap of college in the NFL a little bit later this week I'm sorry for the delay it's hard to keep up with all these games when uh you're trying to coach a high school team as well so um maybe a little more challenging than I than I thought but definitely want to keep bringing you those weekly breakdowns um just as an aside before we jump into the Q&A if you haven't signed up for the oneplay a day daily email every single day at 5:29 a.m. in your inbox you get one play a day from me in particular um and you know hopefully it's good stuff right now getting through a bunch of film from the season um hopefully it just gives you some ideas some little wrinkles that you can maybe maybe throw in there if not um this season you can Bank them for next season and and and hopefully it can help you out but if you haven't signed up you can head over to the website coach danan casey.com sign up for the one Play A Day daily email you'll get the kind of uh I guess it's what a a gif of the film and then you get the diagram typically as well I don't always get to the diagram I try to um as coaches know diagramming uh can can take some time so um don't always make it to the diagram but do always make it to the film so 5:29 a.m. Central Standard Time God's time your email should light up with a play from me every day so if you want if you want to get in on that please head over to the website and sign up want to jump right into the Q&A uh there were some great questions submitted and I'm unfortunately not going to be able to get to all of them but there's some fantastic stuff in there and I definitely wanted just take some time and answer questions I feel like I don't always have a good forum to answer all the questions that come in um and obviously like trying to type out responses on Twitter or get back to DMS I'm horrible at that um it just takes way too much time and I'm I'm pretty pretty crammed on time right now so especially during the season but I did want to take some time to answer these questions the first question that came in um and it's coming in from Instagram it's coming in from DMS on Twitter I'm not I'm not really going to have names here I just kind of banked all these questions and try to get to as many as I can so the first question that came in is a very simple question with I think a pretty complex answer and it's just how do you install your offense um and so obviously the perspective that I have is as a high school football coach so you know this may or may not apply to some of the guys at higher levels but there may be some principles in there that that make sense and and can uh you can relate to uh but particularly high school and youth coaches so my context is I coached at a really small school in North Carolina so what install looked like there looked different than it does at you know a fairly larger School in Texas so keep that in mind as I'm talking so let's start with small school ball North Carolina so when I was coaching High School football in North Carolina I was 24 years old so I had no idea what I was doing I was trying to figure things out as I went and and one of the interesting things in coaching small school football is your roster is comprised primarily of multisport athletes obviously you can be at bigger schools and and that is the same case as well but you're getting lacrosse kids to play baseball kids basketball kids so you're really what we got in terms of time with our players for install was very minimal in North Carolina we did not have Spring football so pretty much I could work with them in the summer we'd obviously do 7 on seven team Camp do all that stuff but you're not even you don't even have all your players right you have the basketball kids that are playing aou you have lacrosse kids that are at camps all summer and and playing travel ball baseball all this and so I didn't actually get my full roster with me until the first day of training camp so it was very challenging to put together an install plan when we weren't able to kind of get through some of that stuff earlier on now as time went on obviously as guys got more comfortable in the system I was there for five years total um it was it got a lot easier and it was you know it was kind of the similar stuff each year in and year out but initially trying to install kind of starting day one was very challenging so one of the things that I did in training camp against small school football was I prioritize meeting time as much as possible and we actually tried to limit field time if possible especially when it was kind of hot in the summer um so the typical the typical way we would we would operate is we would move from the the meeting room to an indoor walk through to an outdoor kind of run through and then we'd roll into practice and kind of be able to get to everything but by the time those guys hit hit the practice field we had reviewed it on film or excuse me we had reviewed it on the board reviewed it on film we've walked through it we've kind of run jogged through it pre-practice and then we by you know by the end you got your kind of fifth mental rep if you want to say of that particular play so in Texas it's obviously a little bit different we don't need quite as many um opportunities because we have them throughout the year a little bit more we have Spring football so guys are a little a little bit more familiar with the system but I would say in terms of like an install plan and this is this is kind of generic right I'm not necessarily giving you um every single thing we do but generically speaking we operate on a five-day cycle and every coach does it a little bit differently like I know I've talked to coaches that have you know a three-day install plan or a 4-day install plan or so on and so forth but I kind of have liked the 5day and the 5day has kind of a built-in review day we also call we call it a sequence day um so I'll kind of get through this real quick so day one is going to be kind of your hang your hat on run concept and your hang your hat on pass concept right so for example you may want to install um your outside Zone and included in your outside zone is going to be kind of your Keeper Series your kind of boot constraints okay so I I package those plays together so if I'm installing wide zone for us it's wide zone I'm installing boot as well and those are kind of one and the same and I want I want our guys to think of them as complimentary Concepts because everything in the offense kind of builds off off itself right and there are families of plays that are going to have that are going to be kind of mirrored down the road it's going to be the same track for the offensive line right and so again day one you're going to get your say for example outside Zone Boot and then you may even throw a shot play in off of that like you're not going to naked boot it but you're going to play action off of wide Zone use maybe an HB to protect the back uh the backside of that concept and throw a shot play off of it so you basically have that three- layered series of an outside Zone run a boot and then a play action where you're kind of hitching up in the pocket and throwing so those are all kind of in the same family and then on day one your kind of quote unquote past concept your true past concept maybe it's uh I don't know four verts um and you're going to work kind of your the the details of your four four verts on day one and so really what you're doing is you're creating on day one like and this is all always my goal with every day the install that theoretically we could we could play a whole game off of that one day install so it's not too constricting or constraining if you if you if you want to say that we could we could theoretically play now obviously you're going to have massive limitations if all you're running is outside Zone boot shot plays and four verts you know you have some some things you're missing there but theoretically right you could construct a game plan off of that so day one maybe that and then day two and again these aren't necessarily specific but just kind of a a rough outline of of what you may see day two is going to be kind of the introduction of a gap scheme so this may be um this may be uh counter maybe maybe goes in day two and that would be GT counter and um G we call it GH counter so H is the the HB so not the on the ball tight end but the kind of Y off so you may get your Gap schemes counter and then you may throw in mesh um some Zone beaters right so maybe you run stick or snag or you know some of these different pass Concepts kind of get bundled in and I what I always say is like the heavier the Run install the lighter the pass install should be the heavier the pass install the lighter the Run install should be so just kind of keep those things in mind as you're installing and again this is all kind of a sample and day three we want to get to kind of more constrains or like uh plays that you can l or concepts you can layer on to your base maybe say your base run Concepts so you're talking about getting all all your screen game installed and some of the RPO stuff um and then you may want to look at some more vertical pass game Concepts since you did quick game on day two go back to vertical and this again when I'm thinking through an install one of the things I'm thinking through is okay how much uh how much mileage are the receivers going to put in so day one if we're running Boot and four verts that's a pretty heavy day for them running down the field and if day two we come back and we run mesh and Zone beaters like snag and stick again shorter route Concepts so they can kind of get their legs back and then you want to go the next day okay we can go vertical maybe we work deep Choice maybe we work more shop plays um off the play action on day three we work screen game on day three so it's kind of like you have the the high low so when you're thinking of your install you're not only thinking of mentally what can what can we handle but physically what kind of load is this going to put on the players because you're thinking about training camp right this is week one of training camp so then you may go again from the Run game you may be running inside Zone with screens you may be running some RPO stuff you may be reviewing outside Zone encounter day four you're coming back and maybe doing some um some power power read stuff um and then on the uh in addition on kind of your pass game maybe you're getting to some intermediate routes right so you may be getting y Crossing and Dagger and sail and some of those kind of intermediate throws so shot plays you're thinking of deep throws quick game you're thinking of underneath throws you know pretty much 10 and under and then those in that intermediate Windows kind of like your 8 to 15 um so that may be when you get your y cross in or get your your dagger Concepts in and so that if you go through four days right and again I know this is a little bit in the weeds probably for the average fan but hopefully it gives you an understanding of how we're putting these things together um so again just quick review if you were to go through these four days it's day one is outside Zone wide Zone uh with Boot and a shot play and four verts day two Gap schemes so maybe some counter with some mesh and Zone beaters so stick and shock and snag and day three maybe your inside Zone with your screens and um maybe some deeper shot plays like deep choice or um you know more more play action max protect stuff on day three and day four come back to Gap schemes so again day one you're going uh Zone schemes Run game day two is Gap schemes three is Zone schemes four Gap scheme so it's kind of like your theme of the day so to speak um and then P game wise y cross um and then dagger blah blah blah intermediate stuff so that's your first four days and then day five you can kind of take a step back and review a little bit you can also put uh play sequences in so especially in high school I find this is really helpful um to have a sequence day where you can say hey when we have this particular kid in the game we have three plays because he plays linebacker and we can't necessarily teach him the whole offense but we want him on the field for these three plays and so we're going to install a three-play sequence with our our stud linebacker who obviously is not a full-time offensive player but we want want him to be able to be involved and you can kind of add to that as the season goes on so I like day five to be kind of a review day and a sequence day and then day when you end that week you you obviously get through your five days is you re baby basically restart the cycle and so you're back to you basically are going to review all those first four days in a sequence day but on day six I guess you would call it your review would also add in a little complexity so maybe a route adjuster um you may add like so if you just ran regular outside Zone from shotgun maybe you're under Center running outside Zone maybe you're running outside Zone with just the quarter back and the running back is leading kind of a kind of single wing type concept but it's still the same steps for the offensive line and the same is true kind of as you add in the complexity of your Gap schemes uh you're able to add a layer the the next time you go through the install so yeah I mean really in Texas the way we operate right now is you pretty much are able to get through your install plan twice so we have a 10-day Camp before we scrimmage and we it does feel pretty tight right of getting everything in um but the benefit I think for me of having coached small school ball to begin my football career was I never felt this pressure to have our whole offense installed by our first game like I never felt that pressure and in at St David's back in the day what I what we what we ultimately did was we we called it a syllabus style install so think about it this way your when you sign up for a college class your professor hands you a syllabus and it basically tells you what you're going to learn throughout the course of the the semester and for me I was like well that kind of makes sense for football too right like why don't we have a syllabus why do we try to learn everything in two weeks and then just apply it throughout the rest of the year when we should be kind of learning throughout the course of the year and so what we were able to do again coaching small school high school football with not a lot of time in the off season is we were able to add Concepts as the season progressed and so we would sit down as a staff before the season and again you don't know this for sure but kind of based on who you were playing you looked at your schedule and kind of what you expected them to run on defense you may save some concepts for down the road for that game and once you got it installed you added it to your library of plays right and so I always said when I was coaching in North Carolina that our Playbook you know looked pretty small at the beginning of the year but it just grew and grew and grew as the year went on on but it never felt overwhelming to our players and we never gave them just this massive book of everything we do um we added to it throughout the course of the year and they grew in confidence and understanding of it and so it felt like it was able to work and that's that's still the case in Texas obviously not to the same degree we get most everything in conceptually in training camp but we add wrinkles every single week uh whether it's a new formation a new motion a new shift we may add in Wildcat we may add in tackle over we may add in we're just adding something new every single week and in a in a way it's based on the opponent we play but it's also just kind of based on um based on a rhythm of like adding complexity every week and I think the way that football's going now and the access to information that people have if you're running the same offense week one that you're running week 12 it can be challenging because you've put a lot of Tendencies on film um and and I think what the the argument there may be well we run the wing te and it you know we are always kind of running the same things yes to a degree but you also have so many answers built in in that offense um and so I think for you know a high school offense it's about presenting problems for the defense and providing answers to the players so I'm going to say that one more time because it makes sense the way it hits my brain right it offense in high school in particular but really all levels is about presenting problems for the defense and providing answers for for your players on offense um and I'll never forget getting to sit down with the legendary coach at De laau Bob liser and I asked him what led to all the success they ran the split back Veer at uh de laal when they went on probably the greatest winning streak in high school football history and he told me that the thing that that really set their culture more than anything was specific football knowledge and I was like what like that kind of blew my mind but he was saying basically if a player had a question the coaches always tried to find an answer they may not have had it right away but they always tried to find an answer and they were solving problems very actively for their athletes and so I think that's kind of some something I've really taken to Heart with the install process is yes we want to have plenty of stuff in um and a big library of stuff that we need but we also want to tailor it to the players and pro be able to provide answers and there I have scrapped a lot of things from my install from my playbook if I felt like I wasn't able to actively problem solve for it and I and I think that's really important like you got to lean into the things that you know how to solve the problems for if you're presented with a different look uh you know how to work that out um so I think that's I think that's really important again I feel like I could talk all day about these things I I nerd out about installs and how to teach and how to put all these plans together um hopefully that was helpful it wasn't like super specific or in depth and maybe down the road this is something we go go more in depth on um but I think with an install plan you have to decide how many days you're going to put it in if you're going to do a three-day install do a 3-day install and try to fit everything in create constraints for yourself otherwise it'll just bleed out into everything um especially during camp and then during the season cap yourself as how much you can add like if you're going to add something you have to take something out you can't it can't it can't grow kind of exponentially um otherwise it's it's kind of a hodgepodge of stuff and you kind of lose your identity a little bit um somebody asked me this is kind of a related question somebody asked me about you know what does what does your call sheet look like um and this is this is a great question because call sheet is something that I've really struggled with um over the course of my own career when I first started coaching um I I literally had no idea what I was doing so my call sheet really didn't exist it was all kind of in my head and I learned a lot through that process but I also struggled L A Lot in that process because I wasn't um I wasn't always thinking clearly I would get kind of caught up in the the Heat of the Moment right in in football um and so the call sheet for me one of the things my goals my one of my goals was to make sure with the call sheet that I was just more organized in my thinking right and so I went from again I I I would have a reference like kind of piece of paper think Mike Leech or Cliff Kingsbury you know they had the the piece of paper in their hand and so I would have like a little reference sheet of things that I liked but I didn't have a call sheet built out initially and so as I was growing as a coach and realizing I needed a little bit more Organization for myself I started kind of copy and pasting what other people were doing so I would have friends send me templates of their call sheets and they'd have a beautiful menu of their top you know openers and first and 10 runs and uh you know sit all the situational plays and they would kind of have it organized uh and since I didn't actually create it myself one of the things that I found was I would have that call sheet in a game and I'd have trouble finding stuff and it felt like I was very robotic in the way I was calling plays because it was somebody else's system and I it just didn't really work for me and I would find myself like getting getting lost a lot on that call sheet and trying to find stuff and we would get procedure penalties we' kind you know delay of game because I was having trouble processing the call sheet in game and again it was this massive menu almost like a you know I think the the running joke is it's a Denny's menu right you're you're like you you could order anything off the menu but it's hard to decide what you want and so again call sheet for me has been an an evolutionary process right um one of the issues that I had was I would have a call on that big menu and then I would have to try to flip the call in my head based on the hash so I was doing a lot of work mentally that I didn't need to be doing like if when I think back on it it's like man I was really working hard to flip a call in my head when that's the that should be the least of my concerns and so what I've started doing kind of more recently is I will go into a game with 30 calls and that changes every single week those 30 calls change every single week um and I go in with 30 calls and they are organized kind of next to each other left hash right hash so I can look at that call sheet and I don't have to do any of the work to flip it in my head I've already done that work before the game and so when I'm making the call I just make it based on the hash and I don't have to again I don't have to do any work to Flip Flip the call in my head and so going into that game basically you have 30 calls you have 30 on the left hash and 30 on the right hash it's the same concept or the same play just flipped and so technically you're going into it with 60 calls but again it's not really 60 it's 30 um it's 30 Concepts and so you have those that are game plan for each week but then you also have have in your back pocket all of your base stuff that you've been running all season long so you can go off script a little bit and pull from the things that your team is already really comfortable with um that we maybe don't have to practice every week because they're banked plays that we' run all we've been running for years um and we could kind of do them in our sleep but those plays those 30 plays for the week are things that we have very specifically practiced and so I know had Brian harson on a couple weeks ago and he was talking about the magic number being four and I actually was like man that's that's really good stuff if you want four reps of every play that you're going to call in a game now in high school we don't always get to four but I would say between uh our walkthroughs between our inside run periods our seven on seven kind of breaking it up into smaller groups we probably get to it close to four times but it's probably not four times versus scout team or against our defense every week it's probably going to be broken up a little bit but I think having those 30 calls has kind of forced me to clarify my thinking of you know this is what we feel good about going into the game this is what we're rolling with and obviously if we have to make adjustments we can always make adjustments if we have to do some things off script that we feel comfortable with that's fine but it helps me not to do all the mental work of flipping calls in my head of trying to stay on top of everything at all times it's just really difficult to do um so yeah I mean I think the the question about installs and call sheets are really interesting I think there's a lot of coaches that were asking about how many plays they should carry into a game and for me 30 just kind of became the magic number 30 30 Concepts right and so again it may be um like they are individual plays right but really it's kind of thinking about like 30 different ways that we can attack this defense and in reality how many do we really use off that sheet you could probably pair it down even further you could probably get down to 21 um different concepts flipped hash right and so I'm sure it could go down but for me again I contend to be I in some ways I'm a minimalist in some ways I'm a maximalist like I definitely like to have those things at my um I I like to have those things at the ready in case I need them I I don't like to go in there um and feel too Limited in what we're doing but I would say the higher level you get probably the more you need but interestingly enough you know just in talking with some some NFL guys recently they're like sometimes it's it's a little boring calling an NFL game because you end up calling the same things a lot like you're presenting them a little differently but like you're calling the same things a lot um especially from a run game perspective and you just kind of have to be able to settle in and and kind of get in a rhythm and you're not trying to necessarily reinvent the wheel with every play call and so um that that was kind of an interesting perspective um talking to some of those guys and especially with the pace of play they're maybe getting 60 calls all game and if you break that down you know you're probably repeating some calls so yeah you're probably in the 35 play 40 play range if you're an NFL coach and so I figured if that's the case for them then 30 kind of makes sense for me as a high school coach and again you could probably get get away with even less but I think a really really important point that I've made with other coaches recently that's really helped me is have your 30 plays and flip them right has left hash so that you don't have to think in your head formally and how to get the look you want it's already there it's just right there in front of you that's really helped me as a coach for sure um okay more questions man we got a ton of questions I wish I could get through all of them um but I had a coach reach out and uh I could relate to this he said he's a first year OC and he said we are struggling any words of advice um yeah I've I've been there man I've been a first year OC and we were struggling and I what I what I have come to realize especially with younger teams um and when you're first year in the system you come into a program you come into an offense with your ideals of how you want it to look because you've studied as a as a coach you've studied you've watched film you've prepared you've put together your plan and that day one of Camp you pretty much realize like oof this plan might not work this might not be what we're looking to do and so I I remember a year in particular that a team I coached was really struggling I had my I had my very wellth thought out plan of what was going to work offensively and it did not work and we hit a bye and I just had to get real with myself and get real with our team and just say okay we're going to strip this thing down and we're going to change our way of operating to totally do what we do best and it's going to be a reductive form of football and so instead of being in the gun and throwing it all over the place we got under Center we condensed our formations and we ran like we just tried to make every play look the same and we tried to present sequences that goes back to the the point we made earlier about installs and creating sequences so get under Center and you can run just use a little bit of motion so you know motion split Zone inside Zone um motion split Zone play action pass and just tried to kind of make everything look the same and it didn't make us good on offense I want to clarify this it didn't make us magically good on offense but what it did was it gave us a little bit of an identity and got us a little bit of momentum and kept us in some games and I think that's really important for high teams in particular you may have a great plan for what you're doing offensively and you're not necessarily wrong but you may need to change your approach and simplify and really take football the way I describe it is like stripping it down to the studs like when you go in and Rehab a house you got to tear that thing down to the studs to rebuild it and sometimes that's the best form of offense Sometimes the best form of offense is to just say forget it we're getting in the single wing we're going to snap it to our best player we're going to run dive outside Zone and power and counter and we're going to live with it and in a sense in doing that and stripping the game down you're also controlling the clock a little bit more and again it's not to say that you will magically uh it's not that you'll magically be successful but you will give your team a little bit of confidence and so uh yeah I would say that that's something to to consider if you're really struggling um find something your guys can do try to make every play look the same and add in a couple things that you can do well and try to control the clock all right another good question we had that came through we've talked a lot about Trends in offensive football and one Trend that I think everybody is seeing especially in college football is using the T formation on on the goal line short yardage situations T formation double tight formation with three running backs in the backfield quarterback under Center the nice thing is it's a it's a balanced formation and so it can be difficult to read and what I you know the question that we got was do you have any unique ideas for the T formation they're noticing a good bit of teams are running it this year and I would say the unique formation that's not hard to get to from the T formation is to just take those two outside running backs back them up a couple steps and all of a sudden you're in the wishbone um I would be shocked if you don't start seeing more Wishbone stuff we've actually instituted it a little bit it makes toss a lot easier um it just the angles clean up a little bit more out of Wishbone as opposed to the T formation so I love the T formation we've used it this season and it's great for QB sneak um and all that but I would expect to see a little bit more Wishbone um more play action out of it I think the play action opportunities are are huge uh but it's I I would say maybe less Boot and more like same side playay action so you may go like T formation power slip the fullback into the flat front side tight end runs a corner route that's you know something you could look at um we ran a wishbone toss where the fullback kind of bluffed his block we toss it to the running back fullback Bluffs his block and we just threw it to the fullback in the flat for a touchdown so little things like that that uh add a level of nuance to it obviously it's a hammer people formation you want to get you know tight splits and and get after people a little bit put your most physical kids out there um but yeah I mean I think it's a great formation I love seeing these old school formations re resurface I think uh it was probably Bud Wilkinson that was pretty famous for the T formation I honestly have to do a little bit more research I spent a lot of time on the wishbone in the off season but I would say definitely something worth investing in if if you need some help on the goal line just need to get balanced up and need to run right at people you can run kind of wedge plays you can run dive plays you can run power counter maybe a little tough but uh yeah I like all of it um next question we had come in was thoughts on pistol instead of side car like shotgun side car um for the downhill running Advantage this a good question I've we've had a lot of debates in our coaches meetings about the merits of kind of backfield alignment I know some guys that are died in the wool pistol guys and others that hate pistol um I think there's there's Arguments for both right I will say I think that you should rep all of your run Concepts in sidecar so running back next to the quarterback and flowing with the we call it flow so flowing with the Run scheme you should rep all your run Concepts out the same side which the that means the running back is on the same side as the Run concept so say you're running counter instead of the running back flowing with counter they would run same side counter and I would also run or rep all of your run game out of pistol as well so you can kind of see what works best for running backs right there are some running backs that are just flow running backs there are some running backs that are just pistol running backs and what I'm seeing is running backs are starting to really like the same side stuff at least the guys that we're working with they they really like the same side stuff and it presents kind of an odd or strange angle for the defense even so a little tougher to read you're not getting that flow action so but I would say from the downhill running game perspective pistol has has some Merit for sure I had to take a sip of my coffee there so the benefit of pistol is that you can still have a balanced formation you can run outside Zone at a pistol but I think Pistols that its best actually when you're running counter out of pistol and so you may want to tighten that running back up a little bit but essenti say you were running GT counter to the right if you were running GT counter to the right the quarterback would actually step off the midline get perpendicular to the line of scrimmage and the running back would take one step to his left attack straight downhill and bend it back to the counter and I've seen a lot of success with teams running pistol Gap schemes so power and counter same thing with Duo right downhill run play I just think the importance is teaching that footwork to the quarterback I think when teams get in trouble is when the quarterback is not getting off the midline and the running back ends up too far off the track of the Run play so if you want to be a pistol team I think training that mesh point with the quarterback and the running back is essential and then having some play action off of it as well right like if every time your quarterback opens up off the midline it's a run um you're not really helping yourself out to to much so having some boot stuff in there having some play action stuff in there I think is is certainly beneficial um overall to your your team um next question we got this is a this is a really good question do you use motion for misdirection or for numbers like creating more numbers and which is more beneficial I think that's a really good question and I think it really depends on the defense that you're playing playing there are certain defenses that you'll play that will uh over adjust to motion potentially and there are some defenses you play that will under adjust to motion and this can be said as well of any of the line unbalance stuff like if you go tackle over some teams will overcorrect to tackle over and some teams will undercorrect to tackle over and that's kind of going to be instructive on how you how you handle that moving forward I would say from a motion perspective you have to kind of decide whether you want to use Mo motion as kind of smoking mirrors or to add numbers and then I would say do like primarily use Motion in that way and then use it the other way as like a tendency breaker so for example early in the season we may use a bunch of motion like orbit and you know fly motion to throw screen back the other way so early in the season the defense is getting a lot of motion away and then screen coming back but then later on in the season we may want to motion to the screen to create an extra number so I think it's not an either or I think it's a both and it's a great question do you use motion for kind of misdirection or to create more numbers I think it's decide which one you want to prioritize and then tendency break later in the season as time goes on don't just say like this is what we do necessarily with motion I also think motion is underutilized even even now like as much as we talk about motion the Dolphins came up with some great ways to add Motion in and and get get switches and uh really creative stuff and I still think at the high school level motion is underutilized I I see when I watch film and I'm game planning I see a ton of static formations not a lot of shifts and motions and I think what happens is you may see some shifts and motions early in the game and coaches kind of get away from it later in the game I think shifts and motions are most beneficial kind of in those later stages of the game in the third late third quarter early fourth quarter when the defense is a little bit tired you're forcing a defense to process a lot of information pre- snap defenses early in the game are usually going to have the mental energy to handle a shift and a motion as the game progresses I think shifts and motions become even more important and so yeah I think a lot of people think a lot of offensive coordinators or play callers will use motion early in a game to create confusion but I think it's actually best later in the game to create that confusion because of what you're kind of forcing um forcing defenses to to work through um all right next question this is another good one do you like the triple option this is a great question um because the obvious answer is yes I love the triple option I think the triple option is foundational for your understanding of offensive football period like if you want to understand offensive Football starting with the Run game triple option is maybe the best place to start because you're going to understand fronts you're going to understand reads you're going to understand not just first level reads but second level reads as well now triple option has evolved so when I say I love triple option I'm not necessarily saying flexbone kind of service Academy triple option although I do love flexbone triple option but I would say the flexbone is getting more difficult to run in modern football because of the rule changes you're not really allowed to cut downfield anymore so previously like you would watch Army Navy and Air Force running the triple option and you know 5 yards down the field they're chopping down a safety or a linebacker and it's creating these massive explosive plays for them now with the change in rules and not being able to cut down field it's harder to play option football on the edge because defenses have bigger more physical players that are able to set the edge or fill the alley or kind of just handle handle the the offense in a way that like the the cut block was really a great equalizer but I would say that triple option principles are still alive and well you still if you watch USC play they run a little play where it's kind of like wide zone or inside zone out of split backs and the one back will go into the flat and they'll it's not even really a boot it's like a read and then they'll just flip it out in the flat and he's Off to the Races that's kind of that's I would describe that as modern-day triple option football and it's super effective super effective and it's cool to see teams kind of iterate on the triple option because I think the principles are sound you are blocking up the Run game you're reading a first level Defender if you get a pull read you're reading a second level Defender and you can stretch that out now as a coach you can make those reads easy e for players with the ways ways defenses are lining up right now um so I I think there's just a lot of Merit to it a lot of Merit too even if you're not going to run the triple option I would say it is imperative to study the triple option so you may not want to run it and that's fine but studying it and understanding it will help your overall understanding of offensive football and will give you help conceptually moving forward I think that's yeah I think that's a really important foundational level of understanding for for football on offense just period um all right I have time for a a couple more um this is a coach asking do I prefer hand signals or wrist coaches for kind of calling plays um this is a good question too and I've gone back and forth I'll be perfectly honest with you I really hate hand signals I really I really don't like them because I think it's it gets really hard to add stuff in it gets confusing um obviously do people steal your signals yeah they do um it's really not necessarily the end of the world I've probably leaned a little bit more into risk coaches lately we've started huddling a little bit more I know the question's about uptempo uh um you know at the high school level I think the fastest way to communicate is with words and really one word and so if you can relay calls vocally I know that sounds crazy right that obviously the defense is going to pick it up and and know what you got but if you are playing with enough Tempo a lot of times you can get away with verbal one-word calls and that's almost easier or it's I think it's almost harder to decipher than the hand signals because a lot of times and again this is this is my perception of it a lot of times when you're getting your signal stolen per se by an opposing coach it's the coach who's watching the coach and is able to make the call if you're just kind of yelling out a one word a lot of times that call is not heard audibly by the other sideline it may be heard by the players but the players would then have to relay the play to each other or to a coach to get a call in on defense it's the mechanics of it are a little more complicated again I'm talking High School football here so you're almost better off yelling in a one-word call in Tempo than doing a bunch of hand signals that can be deciphered by the opposing coaches and I know everybody's got strategies for uh you know we have seven signalers and blah blah blah um My Hope Is that we eventually move to a world where the coach is communicating directly to a player through some sort of audio device in the helmet I think it's I think it's kind of ridiculous that we haven't we haven't done that yet when um they've been able to do that in the NFL since like the 60s so the fact that we haven't progressed enough to just be able to call plays directly into the quarterback's helmet in college footb football in particular like it's ridiculous and even high school football man like you could you know we we use walkie-talkies at practice a lot of times to relay calls and you could pay 20 bucks on Amazon for uh for a you know a a handheld walkie-talkie there's got to be ways to just throw a walk a 20 bu dollar receiver in the helmet and you're good to go but anyway that's that's my soap box for today I know talked about it on the podcast before I just really think we should be able to to relay those calls directly into the headset the last question that I'll get to today this has been fun man I I really enjoy answering some of these questions and talking through um you know offensive football and and specifically some of the things that we've done you know it's always fun to observe what other people are doing um and and try to take some of those ideas and apply them if possible um but yeah I I've enjoyed this for sure we'll definitely have to do it again let let us know if if this is something that's helpful or um if if you have additional questions we'll keep a bank of those questions saved and try to get to them as best we can um all right so the last question is you guys have mentioned on the podcast that the most important relationship in all of sports is between the offensive play caller and the quarterback what are some ways that you have fostered that relationship and growing that relationship as a coach and quarterback I think that's that's a really good question and uh it's just something I'm really passionate about um that relationship between quarterback and and play caller is is key obviously and I would say the goal is is not just to make the court quarterback an extension of yourself on the field but it's really to give the quarterback the tools and understanding that gives them autonomy on the football field so the ability to make checks at the line of scrimmage to audible to you know get in a better look if they if they like something or see something and what I used to do this is way back in the day when I first started coaching had young quarter backs trying to figure things out and we instituted a period in practice we called our green period so we had uh three levels of tempo red yellow green like a stop light right so red was we huddled we took our time yellow was fast tempo check with me and green was literally blur Tempo and the quarterback called every play so unless they got a look that they like were just panicked by then they would flip it back to yellow and it would be check with me but there were full drives where the quarterback would call every play every single play and it's uh it's kind of the old adage of like you know the the ultimate goal of a teacher is to really free the student to go do the thing and I think a lot of times as and I've felt this as a play caller before as well that want control over everything but really like the final frontier of teaching a quarterback is that they should be able to call an offense on the field and so we had this green period in practice and it was very simple it was we would start at the 10 yard line on air full offense the quarterback would have to call a drive down the field every 10 yards new play on air so so it's it's easy in the like the execution is easy but the way that we would create stress for them is we would uh you know randomly like call out an injured player or give him a situation like hey it's third and 10 and make them think on the Fly of playing at Tempo playing at PACE but also making the calls and relaying the calls to the entire offense on air and what I would do is I would have an assistant coach creating these scenar iOS for them right just to try to stress them out as much as possible create maximum stress and I would be on the sideline with a notebook and I would just record every call they made and the reason I did this is because I realized the plays that are top of mind for these quarterbacks were the were the calls that they felt most comfortable with and I would try to incorporate them into my play calling as much as possible cuz I knew they had confidence in them you're not going to call a play you don't like like if you're responsible for it you're not going to call a concept that you're not comfortable with and so it helped to me kind of pair down my call sheet but it also gave them the tools and again we would do this every week so by the end of the season they got way more comfortable with it it was always great having like throwing the JV quarterback in there into The Fray and making them call a full drive down the field with Tempo is kind of the way we did conditioning and by the end of that season they had so much more confidence in their ability to command the Huddle and we didn't even huddle but command the field make the calls and they knew that they were going to have that period in practice every day so they needed to come to practice with what was it you know if you're going every 10 yards you start at the 10 it's you know nine plays or so nine can't do math um so you had to come to practice with calls ready to go in your back pocket and the rule was no repeat calls you had to call something new every time so it's kind of a long-winded answer but I think it it goes to show you that there are ways to there are ways to build in Buy in and I think one of the ways to build in Buy in from the quarterback position is to give them autonomy and allow them to develop that trust right allow them to demonstrate their understanding of the offense so that you can get things rolling um so yeah that was that was one strategy maybe worth implementing a green period it was literally five minutes every every single day so it was like a little bit of conditioning for the offense running plays on air full field quarterback makes the call set the ball snap it let's roll um and the coach the really important thing is the coach recording everything what are they comfortable with what do they like um do they really know what they're doing or are they just trying to get through the period or are they trying to command it so yeah developing that relationship is really good really important um there's a lot of questions I didn't get to I apologize we'll try to do this again um got some some other things to get to today but I wanted to make sure we we went through this and and hopefully you got something out of it so we'll be back soon with some more Recaps and uh some more deep Dives as always we appreciate you guys Victory is a great play call [Music] a

Channel: Coach Dan Casey

Views: 14,080

Keywords:

Id: OeVClyiWBs0

Length: 55min 31sec (3331 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2023