learning to teach players HOW to play
with a digression on what a philosophy is and what it is not
Welcome to learning to teach, a weekly newsletter where I explore different strategies and topics to help us all become better teachers of the game of football.
Please subscribe below if you haven’t already:
Why does your offense take the field?
I recently asked a bunch of coaches what their offensive philosophies were.
Here were a few of the responses:
“Score 1 more point than they do”
“Score more points than they do.”
“Score enough points to win”
“Be simple, go fast.”
“Downhill running and shots”
“Run it down their throats”
“Keep it simple stupid”
“Score more than them”
“Throw the ball short to people who score”
“Get the ball to your DUDES!”
And there were plenty more, all quite similar. But I must admit, these answers did not really answer the question I thought I was asking. Many of the answers, like “score more than them” and “downhill running and shots,” sound more like job descriptions rather than philosophies.
So that leads us to this question:
What is a philosophy?
I anticipated the majority of coaches’ answers were going to sound like the red-boxed definition below:
But most people answered the question with what they wanted to do rather than how they wanted to do it.
And after diving deep into Art Briles’ Baylor Bears and their offensive attitude, I am learning (and becoming convinced) about what the devastating effects of a well-defined philosophy (or attitude) can be.
In fact, watching their offense taught me (and a few other things we’ll go over later in this article) that attitude is the most important thing you can foster in your players.
Do you believe that?
Why I believe that
One of the best football books that I have read is How to Become a Successful Coach (written in 1958 by James Bonder). While this book is now 64 years old and people aren’t running the same offenses and defenses, I have found the book to be ever true.
Early on in the book, Bonder claims that “the jet fuel that drives a team is enthusiasm.” And for the rest of the book, he makes this argument repeatedly even though this argument was not the central piece of the book. But the emphasis can’t be ignored while reading.
If your players do not have enthusiasm for playing the game, then they probably won’t play well.
And what you do in your offense can certainly generate a particular attitude. But what you do isn’t necessarily the attitude itself.
So let’s use the Baylor Bears as an example of how a way of playing translates into an attitude.
Here’s what Baylor did
Baylor did 3 things in their offense:
Threw the ball deep.
Threw the ball wide.
Ran the ball up the middle.
Then they repeated those three things as fast as possible. Everything else they did was small in comparison to these 3 things. Yes, they ran glance RPOs and yes, they even lined up under center and ran toss.
But nothing contributed to their success like throwing deep, throwing wide, and running the ball up the middle.
Let’s dive into each, and look at how WHAT they did affected HOW they did it.
Throw the ball deep
Throwing deep isn’t something that anyone can do.
And no, I’m not talking about the arm strength of the quarterback or the speed of the receivers.
Those are distractions keeping you from addressing the real reason you won’t throw it deep (and when I say you, I am speaking to myself, first and foremost).
If you want to throw deep a lot, you must be okay with looking like a fool. You must be okay with it not working a lot of the times. You must be okay with 3rd and longs.
But you’ll be okay with all of that because you understand that football is a short game.
While we may talk about “60 minutes” of play, a person who has just watched their first game would be awfully confused. Where were the 60 minutes of play?
Instead, a football game is a bunch of short 4 to 8 seconds of violent action. Some people’s attitude toward the game are to slow the game down by running the ball a lot and only taking shots when the defense gives them a particular look. People like this usually say “3 yards and a cloud of dust.” This attitude is an ambush attitude where they will only attack when the conditions are near perfect.
But Baylor could not be farther from this. That is why they throw deep. By throwing deep repeatedly, you are making clear your intentions.
You will not back down. You will not stop throwing deep. You do not care about anything but scoring points.
Throw it wide
In all honestly, I have not been a fan of wide receiver screens for most of my football life. But I think I’m changing.
As a Tallahassee native, I went to Florida State football games for most of my childhood. And during these times, Coach Fisher loved the quick wide receiver screen — but it seemed like they never worked well enough to justify how often he called them.
Now I have no idea what the statistical success was on these plays, but to my younger self, I thought them to be the worst plays imaginable simply because I never saw them work consistently. And when they did work, they only managed a few yards.
Coach Fisher’s reasoning seemed to be in line with what everyone says: you must stretch the defense horizontally, from sideline to sideline.
The Noles acted like it was a “protection” for their base offense. They would run a quick bubble to get the ball out wide, so that the defense had to prepare for it by alignment. The natural hope is that the inside of the offense will open up.
But watching Baylor’s execute screens at the highest level I’ve ever seen seems to provide the blueprint for the most optimal screen game I have ever witnessed.
Now I am sure there are other ways to do it.
Baylor’s wide receiver screens aren’t like other people’s. They don’t run bubble screens or the traditional screens where the wide receiver is behind the line of scrimmage.
No, their wide receivers push up the field and will even have the audacity to block while a wide receiver is catching the ball (that is highly illegal!).
Just watch:
These screens push the rules to the edge, but they work. Just like the rest of Baylor’s offense, you’re always left wondering, “how in the world did they just get away with that?”
And that’s a beautiful thing.
Because as they stretch the defense deep and wide, they then take the run yards right the middle like the bandits they were.
Run it up the middle
One of the best philosophies I saw was from Coach Kevin Swift. This is what he said:
Now those last 5 words are a philosophy.
Read it again:
“that will crush the defense[‘s] soul”
And where does that come from for Coach Swift? His run game.
As great as throwing the ball is, and as devastating as it is to the defense, there is something so much more demoralizing about being able to run at will against a defense.
The best evidence of this is that feeling you get when the opponent is able to run at will against you.
It’s a feeling of helplessness in football that stands alone.
And Baylor could inflict that feeling upon their opponents at will.
Just take a look at their feature running back Shock Linwood’s stats:
When you think of Baylor back then, you might not think of their devastating run game. But just like their wide passes, the run game only worked because of the other plays in the offense.
A brief interlude on systems and simplicity
Baylor’s system is “simple” in that they don’t appear to do a lot schematically. I say “appear” because as I have just gone through in this article, they seem to only do three things: throw it deep, throw it wide, and run it up the middle. But the reality is, their offense is not simple, but complex. And that’s not because they do a lot.
It’s because everything fits together. Everything has an answer for the problems the defense is going to give them.
And all three of these elements work in harmony. Their deep passing game works because they can throw it wide and run it up the middle. Their wide passing game works because they throw it deep and run it up the middle. Their run game works because they throw it deep and wide.
Everything works because the defense is worried about getting attacked in completely other ways.
And on top of that, they go really fast.
Repeat as fast as possible
So not only is Baylor stretching you in all directions with their passing game and then running the ball down your throat at will, but they are doing all of it as fast as possible.
In fact, Coach Briles said that “the biggest thing in the success of our offense is the tempo at which we played” (SOURCE).
This offense was appearing to attack you very simply. They throw it all over the field and run at you as fast as humanly possible.
In fact, their speed and style of play masked the brilliance of their scheme. As Chris Brown of SmartFootball.com once said, “the offense is less about executing football plays and more about waging psychological warfare” (SOURCE).
Just ask one of their opponents. Here’s what West Virginia’s Defensive Coordinator said after a loss: “it was just catastrophic in a lot of ways to our psyche.”
Baylor was betting that their “simple” scheme would be effective because of the ferocity with which they played. They bet that defenses would not be able to handle the tempo along with the stress their scheme effected.
And they were right.
Final thoughts
Each day I become more and more convinced that attitude is the single most important factor in the success of your offense.
If your players do not believe they will win, then they probably will not play like players who win.
So, to tie all of this back to the beginning question that struck the writing of this article — what is your offensive philosophy?
A philosophy can’t just be a description of what you want to do (like scoring points or running a certain offense).
Instead, a philosophy must be a description of HOW you want to do what you want to do.
So, again, what is your offensive philosophy?
Or rather, what attitude are your players going to play with?
Until next time —
Emory