Adjustments to Set Your Players Up for Success
Aug 28, 2023 2:49 pm
Coach ,
Once the season hits, adjustments are constantly at the forefront of a coach's mind. The thought is always, “How can we put our players in the best situation for success?”
One tip is to remember the expertise on your staff. Asking the other side of the ball for ideas can prove to be very beneficial. Look to the likes of the New England Patriots and other programs that flip offensive and defensive coaches back and forth to promote knowledge and experience.
Oftentimes if there is a formation or play that is giving your defense fits, there is merit to your offense using something similar that fits into your scheme.
Having resources you can go to when putting together your plan as well as continuing development throughout the season sets you up for success as their leader.
Adapt, develop and implement the various information to set up the situational success you desire.
With that in mind, we share information from three different resources from our clinics to spark some ideas of how you can make some simple adjustments this week to put your players in a position to win.
Important Reminders on RPO + Tempo
Make sure the defense has to defend the entire field, and adding the RPO gets the defense to be “pause” players. You want to eliminate the free hitter.
Ball State Joey Hecklinski explains it here:
He goes on in his presentation to make some important points about tempo. One that sometimes gets tough is to allow the offensive line to make their calls, so understanding which runs affect their calls or rely on their calls the least are best suited for tempo. Runs with a lot of ID may need to be operated at a slower pace.
Overload the Defense
David Marsh, OC/OL Coach at Texas Southern is a big fane of stressors like shifts and unbalanced formations. He runs them from a spread set at tempo to force defenses to adjust quickly and in the process cause them to make errors.
He’s put a modern twist on unbalanced creating his sets not with the traditional tackle over, but rather in a spread environment.
The “Why” behind using unbalanced is very strong. He see that for them it causes an impact on the defnse in how it affects:
- Rules
- Practice time
- Run fits, especially in putting defenders in spots they are not used to
- Coaches time in planning
- And takes away time-out occasionally
The goal is manipulation of the defense. Getting players in positions they normally do not play is advantageous. In this first clip from his playlist “Bengal Formation which is a 4x0 set, the Mike bumps and the Cornerback comes into the box. While it wasn’t the explosive they wanted, the play gained 7 yards:
Video: Bengal Formation - CB in Box
Win the Money Downs
As an offense at the end of the day you have to know that you can capitalize in your money down situations. We would all obviously wish to succeed every single time within these situations but, we know that is not really possible.
Being able to open up the playbook in these situations and be repeatedly successful drives confidence. A year ago Rice was 89% successful in short yardage and goal line situations.
Plays help but, approach and attitude oftentimes is the biggest driver in these situations and execution in the end is the ultimate deciding factor.
Head Coach Mike Bloomgren explains it in this video:
As always, our weekly ideas for adjustments aren’t calling for you to make big changes in-season. The season is not about the macro, it’s about the micro. Hopefully these ideas sparked a small idea that can pay off big this weekend!
Always be growing!
Coach Grabowski
P.S. Here are some other clinics From Coach Marsh:
Quarterback Run Packages: Creating a System
Quarterback Run Packages: Quarterback Gap Schemes
Quarterback Run Packages: Gap Read Series
David Marsh, Texas Southern - Building An Offensive Identity