"He doesn't make halftime adjustments!"

Our halftime adjustments on offense have pretty much been limited to:

1. Running a base play out of a different BUT EXISTING formation in our system that will give us the advantage we think we need.
2. Running a base play but changing the blocking scheme. Example, Belly isn't working, so let's try running Belly "G" instead, becasue we need the blocking angles.
3. Thinking about route combinations or pass plays that are IN OUR SYSTEM already, but maybe weren't in our original game plan that we think we may be able to use.
4. Placing greater emphasis on what HAS been successful up to this point.

Adjustments on defense:

1. Perhaps changing an alignment somewhere because we need to take something that has been killing us away. For example, we are playing a 2 TE 1 WR team that is killing us on the slant to the WR. We may get our SS out a little bit wider than he normally plays to get in the passing lane and take that away.

2. Putting in a "call" that allows us to change an alignment in certain down or distance situations. So, for example, someone is killing us with Sweep on 3rd and long. We tell the kids whenever we say "wide," that means the field side DE is going to a 9 technique...but only when we call it.

3. We may make some personnel changes to get better match-ups if we're getting killed somewhere that we thought we would be okay.

We never EVER put in new plays, schemes, etc. We never break any established rules of our base offense or defense. We never wholesale change our philosophy.

Those kinds of thigs send the wrong message to the kids and usually end up inviting more disaster than you are already dealing with.

Unfortunately, fans and parents are idiots.

We lost our starting QB the night before our first playoff game. He was also our starting SS and punter. The backup QB was a smart, capable kid, but had very little athletic ability and certainly was nothing more than a possession passer. So, at halftime, we're walking off the field and some mom yells at us:

"Come on coaches! Do something creative for a change and THROW THE BALL more!!!"

I'm thinking to myself...WOW have you been paying attention to anything that is going on here???

WHAT I LOVE EVEN BETTER:

We go in at halftime down and we make NO adjustments because (like you said) we know it's not a schematic thing...we're just not playing well. So, we come out and win the game in the second half and we have fans / parents slapping us on the back telling us how great we are at halftime adjustments. That's happened quite a bit, actually...I always think it's hysterical.

can you elaborate (clarify)?

lochness,

Good post. I hope to see more like it. But nothing wrong with "there is no plan B" either.

I coached in a game once where partway thru the 3rd quarter our TE came over to the sideline and told us I can take the DE by mysellf, he's lining up inside. So we ran 88 super power about 10 times in a row, literally, and marched and scored. We just wore them down more than anything. No adjustments at all. Then in the opposing coaches comments in the paper he complemented us for making good halftime adjustments......

I agree that parents are silly. They listen to announcers on Sundays, who are also silly sometimes, and then think they know something about the game. They like to throw around words like zone blitz, penetration, contain.....

Our adjustments would be to use new formations or alter the blocking schemes. Nothing completely new, just different tools.

Coach Huey,

It was coachwoodall that said there is no plan b. I'm not a coach, not a real one anyway. Have volunteer coached a little pee wee ball, and played HS ball 20+ years ago, but the game is very different now in some respects. I'm just trying to learn as I'd like to be a student of the game and not one of those idiot fans making such silly comments as the title of the thread. You got a good site here for that. I'm not in a position to question one who is "in the areana" if they say "There is no Plan B". Personally, I'd have one...I think. And I think those others here that have said what they'd do, helps me learn a little bit.

Coach, I love it! HOOHA!

It would be VERY confusing to our program if we were to implement that acronym, however, because we use HUA quite frequently to define the OPPOSITE condition, and those two acronyms sound very alike!!

;D

coachwoodall,

Good stuff!

Opposite was the problem last year, our head coach would try too many adjustments and leave the core plays of our offense behind. When you are better, man up and run the lead series. Stop trying to pull trick plays out of a hat that have not even worked well in practice.

If teams had a solid feel for our base series(usually not, he'd just try calling sweeps instead of interior leads) then we'd simply go to spread and have the same items in mind. Running and control passes. Other deemed it more important to throw go routes with less than 50% completion rates to them, so our QB usually ended up getting the makority of our spread yardage running.

Fortunately we stayed on their side of the field so much that we were in four down territory a lot of the time and would get a few yards back from having an extra play, or the law of averages would come back to us on the favored lesser percentage calls.

I agree with staying in the base calls of your offense and doing slight block adjustments(ISO/leads and kickouts, a double at the point).Our line splits were so small that teams rarely got penetration so we could aim the other back's block at whoever came over the end of the play or filled the call hole.

The one team that effectively pulled the ball had to switch their C to G to make the pull, so we keyed that and started chasing the pull through the play by squeezing him down with the man over.

Most of the league is still into basics, man blocking, some down/kick by teams that ran I but the base defense usually handled that. Teams either had to spread or power down, but base teams almost never got results against a reduced front from standard forms vs. our box defenders. They had to switch up into different looks to either end of the spectrum and go very conservative or go with more open looks.

That was something I considered a success, when the base defense forces the other team out of their first choice for offensive play calling.

What you do when they adjust is more of an adjustment. We trailed by the half in four games and won two of them, and took the lead back in another before a late loss. The main adjustment differences were to go back with my base front and blitz the gaps I had called for the formations the other teams relied on. Players would see our practice keys and stay within their recognition set. They weren't actually blitzes so much as they were gap control, control your gap first.

At the youth level you can basically use one formation to change things, and still use items out of your series calls with it unless something is pretty drastic.

Our major adjustments were schematic and involved formations. After the second game I suggested we go from slot to double tight. We had great split backs but teams were getting to the ball because the splits were so narrow they'd come over the weak side. We either had to increase the splits or add a tight end to make the distance off the edge greater.

He was putting the slot off the tackle's shoulder on runs and it signalled what we would do. We won those games with talent and defense, but the best plays were slower developing counters and they kept reading the slot and getting under his block. We put an extra OL as the strong side TE, he stayed to that side consistently, our best reveiver was the other TE and we'd get him isolated on the back side. Suddenly teams were not getting to our passer or to our runners. No backfield penetration on the interior from tight splits and power blockers, no outside leakage from blitzes because they had to gap wide to get around the extra TE, he extended the LOS without compromising the interior gaps. It gave us a pretty uniform appearance so there was no way of telling if it was a run or pass, but with two tight it's obviously run oriented.


Now we were getting the edge on sweeps and as teams added people to stop it we could play pass or run counters and break big yards.

We switched it up to keep teams from getting a feel for stopping that, by every fourth series we went spread, sometimes every third series. Just as they got settled in to finaly deal with our power guys we had a lot of quick passes and QB runs. This was done as a type of constraint to the other team finding ways to stop base set. We did this if we'd been held scoreless early by the third series if their form was getting us instead of penatlies, etc. Otherwise it was our way to control tempo after we had established something and thought they might be near feeling the way to address what we were running with.

If we get back the players I expect to see, we'll try to add the jet series out of that. Also, formation shifts to stay with what we are doing best, but going to the look late in the call so the other team gets less opportunity to key and gap it.


We faced ten man deep safety fronts, six over/GAM equivalents, 4-3, 3-4 and 3-5 and 5-3/4-4, and a 52 two deep(our main form, a team copied late in the year.) The 3-5 played like a 3-4 with the safety walked down vs. 2 TE so it helped change what the opponent could really show that might confuse our QB.

It's a copy cat league in many respects so if we did well others went to that style. When I first got there every played even fronts in town, two out of town teams played odd man and even fronts.

Went to the 52/Eagle full time and kept the league scorers to their lowest totals. Soon everyone else was doing a similar set.

Only one team ran a 4-3 consistently since, and two others alternate depending on who show to play(one team has a minimum roster for the most part, small town).

We stick to call series and route combos based on what they front with. Only one other team consistently used two deep, but they would often try a 4-4 at times and we always moved the ball well against it. Had the most trouble with a 53 if we didn't stay with the lead series. We got the line movement that could seal the MIKE on a 5-3 on interior leads and moved the ball almost at will, but the love of adjustments would always come back and stop what was working.

Now when they went 4-4 I had the team go to the counter series plays first because they keyed flow one way and then bellied off that midline and their guys would be lost in head on a swivel mode. Going to the counter 53 was not good because they read downhill first and the MIKE could recover sometimes. The downhill man would meet the back in the hole and he had no lead blocker so it was far less effective, we'd get about six yards at the most but be lucky to get more than a yard, by then MIKE was back to the right direction or could have been sent on an A blitz against BOB blocking.

If you got the numbers and it's about tech, just reinfocre that item, the guys usually correct their stance, approach, etc. if playing healthy. It was not my preference to bench a guy for a mistake, it was better to let him learn from the experience and reinforce that item, he'd accelerate the learn curve and make the play next time, and he still had all of the week's practice keys for other looks.

Most of the other coaches would run a play and come back to it, but if they saw you screaming to a new player to look only for that they'd run something else and he'd be lost on an island. Then they're coming back with the play you benched a starter for after you tell the new player to go after what they just ran instead of the play he was sent in to stop, etc. Just give the kid depth at his position to see it develop and give him the keys. If you're in doubt and it's not your gap, get some depth and set up a pursuit angle, stay with your keys.

My preference for adjustment was on some personnel more than it was any defensive series, with a shell coverage you could basically change some matchups with coverage backers/safeties better at one style of play. Our three main stars took turns at LB/SS, two more powerful guys on early downs, the will type speed man on spread sets because he'd get walked out. By giving each turns as a two deep he could see how the plays were developing and get an even better feel for coming downhill back at LB, or whose release to key on a passing down.

Now there were some things I think teams could have done better out of the defensive series, and I had counters for it but they were rarely used. Depending on which team needs the most help for coaching can implement some of those more often. One of the HC is gone so I may join a team of players that merged with my first team when the league had to consolidate by merging two teams and assimilating the third into a pool of draft picks for the entire league so we had roster depth to the extent nobody would forfeit games. It's four teams here now, we'll add two more if a nearby town has someone want to coach there and be back into an eight team league counting the two south county teams.

Otherwise it's six teams with a double up of town/regional rivalry games, presumably based on the prior season's seedings in town matchups.