So you broke down the film . . .

almost always offensively there are things to adjust, pass pro being one as well as basic blocking assignments that change with different fronts.

Speaking of not trading film, I strongly believe it is the most unethical part of football. There are certain coaches who do not trade film and I have zero respect for those coaches. An example would be that we were to play in our state championship game a few years ago and the teams head coach we were to face refused to trade film with us. We did manage to find film but this is something that is very wrong and should not be a part of football.

Defensively, we try to "do what we do" in reference to a given opponent or offense. Sure we're going to tweek the things that need it, but our rules are solid enough in the beginning that we find our gameplan within our rules.

We play Iso a certain way, we play slot receivers a certain way, we zone blitz a certain way, we play cover 2 a certain way. When we see what the opponent is trying to do we try to emulate their blocking schemes, routes, and formations against what we do so we can work on our run fits, drops, etc.

We look for ways to exploit what they dont' do well with what we do well. We look to how they've attacked similar teams, what they do in situations, what they'll do to try and get us out of our blitz game, etc.

Then we practice our tough scenarios. Speed option is tough when it's run against a certain call, we'll rep the heck out of it because we don't want to be dictated as to what we can run. We blitz a ton so teams want us out of that. Teams attempted 65 screen passes against us last year and had 1 TD and 3 INTs. We blitz a lot so we practice against screen a lot.

We work our tails off so we can "do what we do." But that means tailoring it to fit the opponent each week. My call sheet doesn't change throughout the season very much. . .in fact I had 2 fewer calls in the championship game than I had in our season opener.

67, do you do that with your spread team because you don't know exactly what you'll get from opponents? We have a spread team in our league that on film always struggles in the 1st half, goes in at halftime, comes out and scores 4-5 TDs. It seems like you're eliminating the middle man by going that route from the beginning. Sounds like you've got that figured out, just curious if that's why you look for areas and players. When we play these guys we try to give them a ton of looks to keep them guessing. We know where our weaknesses are in our calls so we try to give them plenty of looks at everything so they can't expect that "steady diet."

Thanks.

1. pass protection ... any adjustments?
2. formations ... how do they align? what are our best plays from formation vs what they do?
3. blitz tendency ... by formation? by down/distance? by field zone? what are our best formations/plays in these situations
4. blocking assignments ... any adjustments?
5. personnel matchups ... what formations & who to attack with whom?
6. additions / subtractions ... what (if any) specials or variations do we need based on a weakness or tendency? what is a "waste of time" (i.e. serves us little purpose based on what they got / do)?
7. tempo ... how do they handle changes in tempo? (no-huddle / multiple subtitutions / various packages)

irishblitzer,

That is exactly it. The first few weeks of the season teams came out and did what we had seen on film and from the scouts - once we got into league play however, we saw more differences than similarities from what we saw on film.

This can cause problems for the defense though as well. In our league most teams are two (or three!) backs and try to shorten the game and win it in the fourth quarter primarily a 4-4 D league. They just aren't used to seeing a team put it up 30-40 times a game. So they try and switch it up on us, replace an OLB with a DB and play cover 2 shell with man under and we end up running on them. When they go back to their 4-4 we open it back up again. I have also found that teams really aren't comfortable playing a new d and we can often exploit that as well.

If they come out in something completely different we typically run our base play until we are pretty comfortable with what they give us and then we begin to open it up again.

We started playing the spread this year . . . I guess I started this thread b/c I felt it was much easier to gameplan as an I team and we had a good solid plan b/c we knew what the team was going to try and take away and what we had to do to counter that. Now as a spread team I just don't have that same level of confidence and feel like my old OC that I mentioned in the earlier post.