Interesting article on College Football Offense

[sdhusky]

Specifically, the Air Raid Offense of Leach and Holgorsen.

They are definitely focused on execution of a limited amount of plays and formations that still have flexibility baked in to adjust to the Defense.

Core belief:

"that to get an advantage in modern football you need to be particularly good at something, and to be good at something you have to commit to that something, and if you’re going to commit to something it might as well be different. And thus the principles underlying the Air Raid exist externally from the many coaches who have taught it: a diligent, many-reps approach to practice; a pass-first and spread the wealth philosophy; and, above all else, a willingness to live in the extremes, to do things just a bit differently, to be willing, in a game where conformity is king, to be just a little bit weird."​

They minimized what the players had to learn:

"While at Valdosta, they primarily engaged in addition by subtraction. They cut out a few passing plays that weren’t as useful, shrank the running game to little more than an “iso” lead play and a draw, and, most famously, made the offense asymmetrical:​

​

Instead of running each play in one direction and having “right” and “left” variations on each formation, they made the offense entirely right-handed, always putting the tight-end or “Y” receiver to the right and the split-end or “X” to the left, and only moving “Z” around. ​

​

Both Leach and Mumme have said they were inspired to do this after a conversation with former Baltimore Colts great Raymond Berry, who told them that was exactly how he and Unitas and the rest of the Colts did it. ​

​

If you flip all of your formations, every time you teach a route — say, a curl or a slant — each receiver actually has to learn two routes, because he has to learn it from both the right and left sides. And the quarterback has to get used to throwing it to each receiver to his left and to his right, depending on each receiver’s quirks. The number of techniques each quarterback had to learn would grow rather quickly.​

​

Further, Berry said, he developed multiple ways to run each route depending on the leverage of the defense; if they asked him to line up to both sides he either had to give up those subtle variations or had to learn to run each of them to both sides, which was nigh impossible. ​

​

Instead, he learned to run his routes on one side, and Unitas learned how to throw them to him on that side. ​

​

Once Mumme and his staff made that change at Valdosta, the completion percentage of their quarterback at the time, Chris Hatcher, jumped roughly ten percentage points and he went on to win the Harlon Hill trophy, known colloquially as the Heisman trophy for D-II. "​

 

[sportsart]

Banned reading at UConn

 

[FfldCntyFan]

I take it that their playbooks cannot wallpaper an office.

 

[pj]

That makes too much sense. I wish we would adopt that philosophy.

 

[uchusky]

Here's another great read on Holgorsen's offense - http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/38649/chris-brown-wvu . My favorite part is that it takes him three days to install his offense...that's some fast wallpapering...

 

[ZooCougar]

I take it that their playbooks cannot wallpaper an office.

Yup, it's pretty much the opposite of hoarding.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

Loving this line of thinking. Welcome to the new millenium. Offense, offense and more offense. Excitement in world where programs compete not only with each other but the entertainment dollar.

 

[ZooCougar]

Love reading articles like that. One thing I did not see mentioned was the physical aspect. That offense is the passing equivalent of wearing out the defense with short yardage.

I read in the Michael Lewis New York Times article that Leach liked to have a fairly sizeable rotation of WRs. The are running up and down the field on every play wears out the defense's DBs.

The other thing he did was make the WRs run sprints in a sand pit barefooted. Which is supposed to increase leg and ankle stamina. Texas Tech was also one of the first programs to use the tennis ball gun to get their receivers to improve their hands.

That's how you take a bunch of one, two and three star WRs and make the most out of them. And every now and then you get a Welker or a Crabtree.

 

[RMS25CT]

Interesting article. But the end result is that their plays, limited in number or not, primarily get the ball to their playmakers in open space. Other than a select few teams who truly can over power an opponent (i.e. the Alabamas of college football), that is the strategy (or should be) for most programs. It is very difficult to make a clean one-on-one tackle in space. The vast majority of the time the offensive player is going to get some extra yards, and if he is really good, a lot of them.

 

[freescooter]

Please don't take this as a defense of OUR offense...but this is the latest unstoppable offense which will eventually be stopped, modified, maybe dropped. I am old enough to remember when the wishbone was all the rage...and when the Houston veer was going to be unstoppable, and the west coast offense was the next big thing and in each case people wrote similar pieces about the Bill Yeomans and Bill Walsh and Darrell Royal and Chuck Fairbanks and Barry Switzer and on and on...what all these had in common was that they led to the next big thing. I disagree with one thing he wrote One of the selling points of the wishbone was that it didn't have many set "plays" exactly. The quarterback made his decision at the point of attack which initailly at least caused havoc for defenses becasue any one of 4 guys could end up with the football. A coupl eof years ago I read a piece on Rich Rodriguez for his West Virginia offense which was at that time going to be the next big thing. he was going back to a variant of the single wing with modern touches..except when it wasn't the next big thing. And one wonders if Holgreson's offense works quite so well if Johnny Mac is your quarterback...Or if you can't still win with a more "traditional" approach like, say the one the Giants run, or Alabama's. There is always lots of hype on these things. Doesn't mean they are always the best solution.

 

[Carl Spackler]

The basic concept of the air raid/spread passing system, whatever you want to call it, is the Y-stick triangle. You've got three route trees for players running routes on one side of the field with goal of getting to a spot/space on the field. One route runner, is going deep to the spot LOS +20-25 sideline/back corner endzone, with goal of forcing the DB to outside leverage coming off the line scrimmage and pinned against the sideline. Second route tree is going to the spot LOS +10-15 between the hash marks and middle of the field, on a snag/curl comeback kind of move, so that he's got his coverage on his back and his chest open to the QB coming back to the ball - so that route needs to be run hard, deep, and then come back, to the spot - need a really good route runner for this one, not sure we've got one yet, and this is the only route that slows down, the others are all full speed throughout. Third route tree is going to some kind of leak out in the flat to get to the spot LOS +5-10 from numbers to sideline and looking for a ball on his back shoulder, or on his front shoulder, based on what the coverage has done. Depending on what kind of set you run it out of, and the D covers it perfectly, you will either have a dumpoff to the TE, FB, TB in teh middle of the defense LOS +5-10 open, and the X receiver is always there on the other side. If you've got a QB that can run - and the D ahs done a good job in coverage, he's got a wide, WIDE open field where that triangle opend up to run (Maryland - Whitmer fumble). If you've got well coached D, that's disguising it's linebacker roles in defending this thing, you get balls from a QB thrown directly to a LB, like we had against UMass, and BUffalo. Against WMU, Whitmer finally starting hitting on it full throttle, but the blitz got him, before we could climb out of the 17 point hole the defense allowed.

I might be totally off base, I"m just a fan, but based on what I've seen from our passing offense, these kinds of triangle concepts are the basics of what we re doing in the passing game, not exactly the same on every pass play, but the concept of opening up space on the field horizontally and vertically that way - are there, and we're getting big chunks of yardage out of it, and have started throwing TD's and gotten the ball to play makers in the middle of the field where they can be isolated and get YAC. Multiple options for the QB to throw to, as long as the QB isn't under pressure and has time.

What makes it a spread offense, or not, is what's happening at the LOS, and the running game. We are lining up the OL tight, and we're playing out of double TE sets and multiple offensive back formations, not a spread offense.

I've said all I care to say about the running game so far this week. the running gmae - RMS? - your thoughts on the run game. - other than "unacceptable?"

 

[ZooCougar]

I liked the actual article better.

 

[pj]

I might be totally off base, I"m just a fan, but based on what I've seen from our passing offense, these kinds of triangle concepts are the basics of what we re doing in the passing game, not exactly the same on every pass play, but the concept of opening up space on the field horizontally and vertically that way - are there, and we're getting big chunks of yardage out of it, and have started throwing TD's and gotten the ball to play makers in the middle of the field where they can be isolated and get YAC. Multiple options for the QB to throw to, as long as the QB isn't under pressure and has time.

What makes it a spread offense, or not, is what's happening at the LOS, and the running game. We are lining up the OL tight, and we're playing out of double TE sets and multiple offensive back formations, not a spread offense.

I've said all I care to say about the running game so far this week. the running gmae - RMS? - your thoughts on the run game. - other than "unacceptable?"

Carl, I hope you're right and the offense can develop more threats as they gain confidence in Whitmer and the o-line. Because we're going to need to perform much, much better offensively.

 

[ZooCougar]

Please don't take this as a defense of OUR offense...but this is the latest unstoppable offense which will eventually be stopped, modified, maybe dropped. I am old enough to remember when the wishbone was all the rage...and when the Houston veer was going to be unstoppable, and the west coast offense was the next big thing and in each case people wrote similar pieces about the Bill Yeomans and Bill Walsh and Darrell Royal and Chuck Fairbanks and Barry Switzer and on and on...what all these had in common was that they led to the next big thing. I disagree with one thing he wrote One of the selling points of the wishbone was that it didn't have many set "plays" exactly. The quarterback made his decision at the point of attack which initailly at least caused havoc for defenses becasue any one of 4 guys could end up with the football. A coupl eof years ago I read a piece on Rich Rodriguez for his West Virginia offense which was at that time going to be the next big thing. he was going back to a variant of the single wing with modern touches..except when it wasn't the next big thing. And one wonders if Holgreson's offense works quite so well if Johnny Mac is your quarterback...Or if you can't still win with a more "traditional" approach like, say the one the Giants run, or Alabama's. There is always lots of hype on these things. Doesn't mean they are always the best solution.

Except it's been around since the mid-90s. It's not exactly johnny come lately.

Johnny Mac might actually look alot better in an Air Raid offense. Didn't you read the article? Part of it's reason for existence is that they needed a design that most players could actually execute.

This offense has been ported to god knows how many high school programs. Now that the high schools are pumping out scores of Air Raid WRs and QBs this system could end up having some staying power.

 

[freescooter]

Except it's been around since the mid-90s. It's not exactly johnny come lately.

Johnny Mac might actually look alot better in an Air Raid offense. Didn't you read the article? Part of it's reason for existence is that they needed a design that most players could actually execute.

This offense has been ported to god knows how many high school programs. Now that the high schools are pumping out scores of Air Raid WRs and QBs this system could end up having some staying power.

On the first part, there are levels of execution...I'd argue that Geno Smith may be the best for this system so far. On the 2nd point absolutely agree though lots don't necessarily translate into good all the time.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

Please don't take this as a defense of OUR offense...but this is the latest unstoppable offense which will eventually be stopped, modified, maybe dropped. I am old enough to remember when the wishbone was all the rage...and when the Houston veer was going to be unstoppable, and the west coast offense was the next big thing and in each case people wrote similar pieces about the Bill Yeomans and Bill Walsh and Darrell Royal and Chuck Fairbanks and Barry Switzer and on and on...what all these had in common was that they led to the next big thing. I disagree with one thing he wrote One of the selling points of the wishbone was that it didn't have many set "plays" exactly. The quarterback made his decision at the point of attack which initailly at least caused havoc for defenses becasue any one of 4 guys could end up with the football. A coupl eof years ago I read a piece on Rich Rodriguez for his West Virginia offense which was at that time going to be the next big thing. he was going back to a variant of the single wing with modern touches..except when it wasn't the next big thing. And one wonders if Holgreson's offense works quite so well if Johnny Mac is your quarterback...Or if you can't still win with a more "traditional" approach like, say the one the Giants run, or Alabama's. There is always lots of hype on these things. Doesn't mean they are always the best solution.

What I got out of the article wasn't that this was the wave of the future but rather that at this level, with the limited practice time and the fact that these are kids we are working with, it is likely a far easier route to success if you minimize the number of things (offensive formations and plays for example) the players need to master and spend the time working on on mastering these few things.

 

[Carl Spackler]

What I got out of the article wasn't that this was the wave of the future but rather that at this level, with the limited practice time and the fact that these are kids we are working with, it is likely a far easier route to success if you minimize the number of things (offensive formations and plays for example) the players need to master and spend the time working on on mastering these few things.

I agree with you on that one.

My biggest worry, since the NC State offensive debacle, was that the offensive system that we've got, with the combination of the Mccummings package, and the pro-set for Whitmer - was simply too much to practice effectively during the course of a normal college football week. I actually like the offensive package for McCummings, but I think/and hope that we're far enough along in development now with Whitmer, that we can isolate that package to goal line situations, short yardage stuff - maybe....no never mind - goal line only........and really start to focus on the pro-set offensive base package, and specifically RUNNING the ball out of it.

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

What I got out of the article wasn't that this was the wave of the future but rather that at this level, with the limited practice time and the fact that these are kids we are working with, it is likely a far easier route to success if you minimize the number of things (offensive formations and plays for example) the players need to master and spend the time working on on mastering these few things.

Yep. Too much thinking going on for our offensive guys in the trenches.

 

[Carl Spackler]

I liked the actual article better.

Probably because you read it, and my summary of it, here, in this thread I started in July about how we defended WVU, and how I thought we would have a top 10 defense this year. Ironically, the same people then, that thought our defense could not be top 10, and what that meant, are still saying we aren't a top 10 D.

http://the-boneyard.com/threads/excited-about-defense.20635/

 

[sdhusky]

Probably because you read it, and my summary of it, here, in this thread I started in July about how we defended WVU, and how I thought we would have a top 10 defense this year. Ironically, the same people then, that thought our defense could not be top 10, and what that meant, are still saying we aren't a top 10 D.

http://the-boneyard.com/threads/excited-about-defense.20635/

Carl, I think its cool how you read an article and them pretend that its your ideas when you mimic it on here.

Neato. Very clever plagiarism technique. Well executed!!!