Learning to Teach Quarterbacks Where the Ball Should Go
Here's how it went
Firstly, please excuse my absence the past few weeks — spring ball caught up to me. But I learned a lot since the last article and I hope to share that here.
Secondly, please excuse the long title.
That last article explained the process we were going through in teaching the quarterbacks how to scan the field pre-snap.
I also talked about the importance of the quarterback’s drop — how the drop was a physical representation of the timing of the play.
The idea that drives these two points of focus are the job description of the quarterback.
This job description developed more clearly throughout the spring since the last article because of a few important factors that I’ll go over in just a bit. Now this description does not account for all the quarterback’s duties to his team, but it is of a singular focus to help him focus on the singular thing he can do on the field that will help his team.
Here’s the job description:
Put the ball where it should go.
As I stated earlier, there were several factors that helped reveal this focus. But first let’s go back to the pre-snap scan and how that went over the course of the spring.
Revisiting the pre-snap scan and what it means to be a quarterback
We taught the quarterbacks to scan the field every single play and identify these four players in this order:
Boundary Safety
Field Safety
Field Linebacker
Boundary Linebacker
Here’s the picture I shared last time from Dub Maddox’s book What is Open?:
Against an odd front, this is what it might look like:
The idea is that by focusing on where these four key defenders are pre-snap, we will increase our chances of putting the ball where it should go post-snap.
And that’s all we’re trying to do — increase our chances.
Depending on the play, each or one of those defender’s pre-snap positions (or the relation of one or more of them) will help the quarterback start to work through what he must do post-snap. Instead of trying to look at everything, we tried to focus his eyes consistently to help orient himself against the defense.
Before the snap is the only time when there is “order.” So we must gather all the information we can handle in order to best prepare us for the “chaos” after the snap.
When we first started this, the quarterbacks were locating these defenders without much interpretation of what they were seeing. At first it was just about building the habit and being able to locate the defenders quickly while still getting everyone lined up and set.
While the scan has not yet a habit for us yet, we must move on and start to make sense of the defenders that we’re scanning. But to truly start interpreting the scan, we must have a really strong understanding of what we’re trying to do with the called play.
We must learn to leverage the information that the defense is giving us pre-snap to come up with a “best guess” as to where the ball should go post-snap.
“What’s your best guess?”
The quarterback must first orient himself and the rest of the offense within the called play. He must make sure everyone is lined up and set. He then must focus on himself and what he’ll be doing post-snap. What drop will he take and where will he look are his main focuses. Then he must scan the defense and come up with a “best guess” as to where the ball should go. To do that effectively, he must have two things in order:
an understanding of where we have a numbers advantage
an understanding of how our play attacks the defense
But because we didn’t have those two things in order, this “best guess” was more of a great way to correct mistakes, and not yet a great way to prevent mistakes.
That’s not to say that we never did it pre-snap, but that it was always initiated by my questions and guidances to them before the snap.
But that can’t come from me; the quarterbacks must ask themselves that question. My biggest failure of the spring was guiding them too much throughout the plays instead of investing more time going over each play and its goals. My goal going into summer is creating more instances in practice where the quarterback can practice this skill outside of just team or 7v7 periods. That might only be on the white board, but it needs to happen.
The connection between the scan and their best guess must be solid through a complete understanding of where we’re trying to put the ball within a given play.
Using the job description to correct
This realization that the quarterback’s essential job is to get the ball where it should go came about when I was watching film with them.
I kept watching the ball go where it should not go, and after watching a play through, my question to the quarterbacks would be “where should the ball have gone?”
Then they would answer correctly. And I would ask, “Why didn’t the ball go there?”
Their answer would depend on the play, but 99% of the time it came from them not understanding what they were seeing or they weren’t looking in the right places. We would then go back to the beginning of the play and I’d ask them to go through the scan and then give me their best guess as to where the ball should go.
Then when I would show them another play pre-snap and ask, “what would be your best guess as to where the ball should go based on this pre-snap picture?” they gave the correct answer 99% of the time.
So we knew that we could come up with pretty accurate best guesses in the comfort of a chair watching film, but how could we do it on the field?
What’s next?
When we began teaching the scan, I had no expectation that the quarterbacks would be able to interpret all the information that the scan provides. At first, they just needed to build the habit and the ability to filter through the defense and find those four key defenders.
During that time, we should have spent a lot more time focusing on us and what we where we are trying to put the ball. We slowly got there during the last week of spring, and I am eager to see these quarterbacks continue to grow.
Until next week —
Emory