Your offense should be complex and simple.
but how?
Why do football coaches seek simplicity so much?
Football coaches talk about “simplicity” in a positive light all the time. In the sharing of ideas online, at clinics, in books, or within personal conversations, coaches claim that what they do is simple and then claim that simplicity to be a good thing.
That claim rarely gets explored to any meaningful depth. As a result, nobody has to defend simplicity in any level of detail that reveals what exactly they are talking about or is persuasive in regards the benefits of simplicity.
Here, I want to explore the word simple to propose a different way to think about its relationship to football.
I am arguing that you do not need to pursue a simple structure to produce simplicity. Instead, to produce simplicity for your players, you need to have a well-defined structure and teach well.
What makes something simple?
Let’s look at how our friends at Merriam-Webster define the word simple:
readily understood or performed
For our purposes, simple is an adjective. For example, a “simple offense” would be an offense that the players can easily understand and perform.
There is no suggestion that the offense has only a few formations, motions, shifts, and plays, that the offense doesn’t contain lots of verbiage, or that the offense is run by players who have a “low football IQ.”
The only reasonable interpretation is that the players are able to understand the offense and then execute it.
And if that’s the case, then why is simple worth mentioning as a differentiating factor? Shouldn’t every offense be easily understood and executed by the players?
Coach Smith expresses well how simple is a poor descriptor here:
So if you want something to be “simple,” then it better be learnable. In other words, if you want something to be simple, then you need to be a good teacher.
Albert Einstein supposedly said that “the definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” With a new understanding of the word simple, Einstein was simply saying that a genius takes that which is complex, and teaches it well so that people can understand it. Now I am not saying that we have to be geniuses, but we can pursue genius in our commitment to pursuing simplicity as a result of our effective teaching.
So now we must look at what makes something complex to round out my point.
What makes something complex?
Here’s how our friends at Merriam-Webster define complex:
a whole made up of complicated or interrelated parts
For our purposes, the “whole” is an offense. The “complicated or interrelated parts” are the players, the coaches, the formations, the motions, the routes, the blocking schemes, etc.
There is no suggestion that the execution of something complex cannot be done simply. There is a suggestion that to execute something complex, you need to be able to understand the connection between the “complicated or interrelated parts.” A good teacher connected those complicated or interrelated parts and communicates those connections well to their students.
Now people often say that football is simple by nature. They might claim that it’s just about numbers or matchups. I disagree.
Anything that involves 22 human beings interacting with each other after hours and hours of planning cannot be simple. That number does not even include the coaches, support staff, family, or the rest of the school. Whether we like it or not, there are many factors outside of football that affect football (and complicate it).
And that is the precise reason that coaches strive for simplicity. Football is not simple, so in order to combat the chaos, we attempt to simplify what we can control. In the conversation here, that would be an offense.
Marrying the two
You must have a level of complexity in your offense because football is a reactionary sport.
But you can’t react in the most optimal way if you cannot make quick connections.
In football, you must teach your players to react to certain stimuli over and over again in a way that puts them in position to succeed for whatever task you are asking them to execute. But if you have simplified their reactions, then you are pulling tools from their tool belt.
Instead you must simplify the process for how they are to react, not the number of reactions they have available to them.
I used to prioritize simplicity because I needed simplicity. However, I am a coach — I’m not on the field expected to make plays.
So the level of complexity or simplicity that your system will have is directly related to what your players need to win football games against the opponents you face.
In other words, you must provide your players all the tools they need to execute at a high level. It is then your job as a coach to teach the connections between the tools and provide a clear structure for your players to operate in. That could mean you have lots of plays, formations, or motions. That could mean you have just a few. But you have to give your players what they need. You cannot simplify for the sake of simplifying.
Final thoughts
Football is a fun, complex game. There are too many factors that go into a singular game for us to even consider.
And even though that drives us to seek simplicity for our players in the form of structure, we must prepare for what we see. We must have answers in our systems because the more answers your players have, the more you increase your odds at winning.
I do not know if you are as interested in this conversation as me. But I have struggled with and continue to struggle with simplicity in football. If you think different than me, please hit reply and let me know.
Until next week,
Emory