learning to teach the pre-snap process

a simple two step process.

This first week of spring football taught me the importance of teaching a solid pre-snap process to the quarterback.

Without one, the quarterback is not able to properly prepare himself for the fast action of the post-snap world.

The tricky part is what information to focus the quarterback’s attention on. There are a variety of pre-existing processes that coaches teach, but most speak to a fully matured process. With young or inexperienced quarterbacks (but in need of being ready to play varsity ball), the progression of how we get them to a robust pre-snap process which delivers the necessary information as well as provides them a way to interpret that information is worth a lot of time and effort.

The reason:

Sports psychologists have studied the mental processes of athletes when they try to perform more than one task at a time and have concluded that there is a steep drop off in physical performance when the brain is overwhelmed.

So we need to create a process that doesn’t overwhelm the quarterback but instead gives him information to reduce the possibility of being overwhelmed.

Here’s how I’m starting to teach it and why:

The Drop

Right now, we will not be talking about understanding the game situation — that will come later once the quarterback can operate an isolated play.

So, to begin the quarterback needs to know how he will play the play.

Upon receiving a passing call, the quarterback will process which drop he will take — and that’s it for step one.

What I have found is that if the quarterback skips this step, then his drop will be inconsistent across plays. Over the course of a practice, he might take a different drop for the same play. Now this step in the process should slowly become instinctual and take less time and energy as the quarterback gets more reps. But right now, the quarterback must make this decision as a distinct step in the process.

By maintaining a uniform connection between drops and plays, the quarterback has a physical representation of the timing of the play. He can determine where he is at in the timeline of the play by where he is in his drop. If this drop were to change for the same play, he would disorient his timing.

This first step — deciding how to play the play — allows the quarterback to orient himself within the offense. The next step orients the quarterback against the defense.

The Hard Deck Scan

The Hard Deck scan orients the quarterback in relation to the defense by focusing his eyes on the same players on every play.

Whether run or pass, the quarterback will point out the boundary safety, the field safety, the field outside linebacker (or the nickel), and then the boundary outside linebacker (3-4) or inside linebacker (4-2/3).

I learned this scan from What is Open? by Dub Maddox. Here’s his drawing of the scan:

While Maddox explains the use of this scan to locate the bubbles of space in relation to the H.A.L.O., we are using it for the quarterbacks in the pre-snap process (he might use it to teach quarterbacks, I do not know).

Now to teach the scan, I had to start doing it myself. So while watching film, I would go through this scan on every single play. What I found is that going through the same scan every single play sequentially really helped me get a good feel for not just where these key defenders were, but where the ball should go post-snap.

The purpose of this scan is to do just that — influence post-snap decision making. But right now, our quarterbacks just aren’t there yet. They scan the field and identify these players (I am having them physically point them out right now), but the scan has minimal (if any) impact on their post-snap decision making.

And that’s okay — for now.

The goal is to train them in going through this process before asking them to interpret it at the same time. The habit of the process needs to be in solid place in order for them not to be multitasking when they try to interpret what they are seeing.

Putting it together — the plan moving forward

Having the quarterbacks take this two step process has introduced them to the process — that’s it and that’s okay.

The drop step has effects right now and it’s working well. The Hard Deck scan is just a part of the foundation for right now. This upcoming week, we’ll introduce the horizontal plane of leverage (inside or outside) and how that affects our “best guess” as to where the ball will go.

In the passing game, I see my primary job as quarterbacks coach as to focus the quarterback’s eyes and provide him a repeatable process for making a best guess pre-snap and then the tools to interpret post-snap movements. Right now in the teaching progression, we are focusing on the pre-snap best guess.

As spring progresses (but more so in summer), we will start to dive deeper in learning how to read the post-snap events.

But for now, the pre-snap process needs to become an instinctual habit that directs their eyes to important information. Once it’s a habit, we’ll start to learn what that information means.

Until next week —

Emory