I played high school ball from 1966-1968. I have been coaching since 1974, so figure 45 years on the sideline.
I attended a Glazier Clinic recently and listened to a coach speak with great enthusiasm about his offense.
His stats were impressive, nearly 2,000 yards rushing and over 3,500 yards passing.
I found that his terminology and method of play calling very difficult to follow.
No numbers for holes or backs, everything had a code name, in some cases several code names ,because they were high speed- no huddle and wanted to keep the defense off balance and be able to call the same thing several ways to keep the defense from locking in.
To me this required a lot of rote memorization by the kids.
A clap for the cadence. O.K. I got that, a lot of colleges are doing this.
His series and system was not real apparent to me. More like a situational sequence based on down and distance, along with some defensive reaction conflicts.
He was running plays so fast that the new play was being called before the ball was set.
How did he know what to call?
He ran a combination of Jet Sweep and complimentary plays, plus a playaction , and bootleg passing game.
His goal was to score 70 points per game.
Every one of his plays had a read and an RPO built in.
It seemed extraordinarily QB centric. (The QB was his son has signed with a major university).
I was sitting thinking to myself:
"I can't teach this." This seemed to be way too much for a kid to handle and
this old dog can't learn these new tricks.
Now I ran triple option for a lot of years, but moved away from offenses like this, to match the talent that I had available. I found out the hard way that you can't make chicken salad out of chicken feathers, and wishful thinking doesn't help you achieve success on the field.
My young HC wants to install a system like this. He is 3-27 over the past 3 years, running a vanilla Spread. I am trying to keep him from repeating the hard lessons I learned many moons ago.
I am being very resistant, because our talent is mediocre, at best. We would be much better off IMO slowing the game down instead of speeding it up, and exposing our defense due to the 3 and outs.
So I am left wondering: "Am I a dinosaur, or am I a fossil?"
A dinosaur is still alive, but a fossil.........
