What’s Your Passing Game Operating System💻?
Apr 12, 2023 4:31 pm
Coach ,
In 2009, I clinic-ed with two coaches who were able to completely clear up my thinking on designing pass concepts and how a quarterback should read them.
This is an extensive discussion, but I want to highlight what these coaches do and how it applies to any passing game.
These two coaches were Dub Maddox and Dan Gonzalez. Their extensive study of the passing game was crystalized in what each developed as an “operating system” for the passing game. Both are born out of ideas from the late Homer Smith who was an expert at calibrating a passing game and understanding the components necessary to put together a concept that attacks the full field and gives the quarterback a clear and consistent thought process on where and when to go with the football.
I don’t favor one of these systems over the other, in fact, I borrowed from both.
Let’s start with Dub Maddox’s R4 System. R4 stands for Rhythm, Read, Rush, Release. In general, these are four types of routes that are identified by when those routes come open in a play’s timeline.
A Rhythm route is hit on the last step of the drop at 1.80-2.0 seconds. These are routes like a post that breaks on the 7th step or a corner that breaks on the sixth step of the receiver. The quarterback can hit the last step of the drop and the throw will calibrate with the break of the receiver.
Read routes are intermediate routes like Digs or Curls. These calibrate with a hitch or shuffle-up step. Of course, a quarterback could stair these down and wait, but that would spell disaster.
A Rush route is one that can be hit on any step of the progression and provides a place to throw the ball under pressure.
Release is simply the quarterback getting out of the pocket and running after he has exhausted the possibilities of a throw to the Rhythm, Read, or Rush routes.
You know that you’ve put something together that is good when coaches have to talk about it in their own clinic talks because now they use the operating system. It happens a lot now with R4.
That’s true for former Liberty HS Head Coach Chris Partridge who won a state championship in California. He now coaches at the FBS level as the wide receivers coach for U Mass.
In this video, he explains their use of R4 (click on images for videos).
Adam Mathieson is a HS coach in Washington who sculpted together an offense born from ideas from the West Coast, Spread, and Wing-T systems. While that sounds like a Dr. Frankenstein procedure, but the operating system of R4 provided the framework which brings it all together into a coherent system. He explains how he applies it to one of his concepts here:
Dan Gonzalez is a student of the game and studied Homer Smith’s offense extensively. Dan detailed this in his 2009 book Concept Passing: Teaching the Modern Passing Game. He identifies the components of a pass play as Advantage, Concept, Third Fix, and Scramble, or the acronym A.C.T.S.
For him, the Advantage is either the player or a combination of players who will be open if the defense takes away the core design of the play referred to as the “Concept.” The Third Fix is the next part of the progression which is a single outlet route or combination of routes that attack a specific defender, and “Scramble” is that option the QB uses with and without pressure to keep a play alive or gain the yards with his legs.
Coach Gonzalez explains A.C.T.S. is this video which lays out the features of a well-designed passing play.
Whether it’s R4, A.C.T.S., or your own terminology, an effective passing play will have the features described in these operating systems. It also provides the consistency needed in both the communication between a coach and the quarterback as well as giving the quarterback the progression for both his eyes and feet as he works to the correct decision.
A good exercise to do right now with your offensive staff and quarterbacks is to go through your existing concepts and use the filter of timing to be sure everything fits in a cohesive way as well as create open routes in a sequential manner.
Always be growing!
Coach Grabowski