Coaches often make tweaks to their offense or defense in the off-season, but sometimes coaches find it necessary to make significant changes to their systems. This week on “HOF Insights,” I asked how the coaches implemented major changes in the off-season.
Mike Cooper- Ottawa
About 12 years into my varsity coaching tenure I decided we needed an additional option that we could use defensively. We had been a man to man team who tried to switch as many screens as possible.
I decided to try playing a 1-3-1 zone to go along with our man defense.
I knew we had three tall athletic kids coming back so I decided to put my most athletic kid on the point, my other two posts I put in the middle and one on the baseline which is not your normal 1-3-1 defense, most teams put a guard on the bottom if their zone. I always thought Frank Tocha at Kewanee played a very good 1-3-1 zone for many years and I hated going against it. I studied our games with them over the years and then I ordered a video in which the College of Dupage men's program talked about playing 1-3-1 zone. I showed our coaches the video and my notes on the important keys to playing a successful zone.
We started working on it by playing a lot of 1-3-1 in the summer especially against teams we weren't going to play in the regular season. After seeing it during the summer we were able to make some small adjustments so it was ready for the regular season. We tried to make it fun and show the kids how we could turn steals into easy baskets. We became very good at it and used for several years.
Greg King- Sterling
I think one needs to make subtle tweaks to whatever they do in your program yearly. Your team is never the same. You may have to tweak things offensively or defensively based on your personnel. You may have to adjust your off-season workouts to account for more 2-3 sport athletes. One of the things we did was organized teams in the off-season. We had players pick teams and they got points for workouts, attendance at other Sterling sporting events, etc. In the summer, we also had competition Fridays. The teams would compete in everything from relay races, dodgeball, Simon says, and even rock-paper-scissors.
Probably the biggest philosophical change was when we switched defenses. Our team speed and athleticism was going to increase over the next several years, so I wanted to get more athletes on the field. I wanted to get our best athletes in better position to make plays. We went from a defense to where we did not blitz very often to a defense that was going to put pressure on the offense. In the 3-5-3 defense, blitzing and even fake blitzing could put pressure on offenses. I took our best player who was a big corner/safety type to a linebacker spot. I wanted him to be more effective in the run game. I did not want teams to take him out of a game by formation. I wanted him in the thick of all the action.
In deciding to do this, I wanted to make sure we did not change the fundamentals we were teaching. We were going to play things like trap, option, veer, etc like we always had. I went to any clinic I could find where someone Wass talking on the 3-5-3. At that time in our area, not a lot of people were playing it. I then got online and talked with coaches. I received tons of powerpoint presentations from all over the country from coaches that were willing to share. I went to sit down with Tim Racki an IHSFCA HOF coach that has won multiple titles with Addison Driscoll and Nazareth Academy. We put the defense together that fit us the best. We were able to simplify our terminology and schemes to make our kids play fast!
All in all it was not a fly by not operation in making the change. A lot of research, time and effort went into it. As we went year to year, we could make certain changes to fit our personnel and schemes other teams used.
Greg Bennett- Lewistown
There are very few off-seasons in my memory, that didn’t involve changes being made in preparation for the following year. Sometimes there were major changes to offensive or defensive strategies. Other times there were minor adjustments, often necessitated by changes in personnel from the previous school year.
Perhaps the most significant off-season change, that I was ever a part of, involved a major shift in the offensive philosophy of our football program. After attending clinics, picking the brains of other coaches, and doing a great deal of additional research, we sat down as a staff and made the decision to shift from gap blocking to zone blocking.
Gap blocking and zone blocking are the two primary run-game philosophies in football. To make a long story short, gap blocking involves players blocking specific defenders to create a predetermined hole. Zone blocking, on the other hand, has offensive linemen stepping in unison to block an area, rather than a specific defender, in order to create cutback lanes.
The decision to change was driven by the fact that we were going to have smaller/quicker linemen than we had in the past. As this was the case, we wanted to utilize their speed and athleticism to open up our running game by utilizing a zone system.
Switching to zone blocking required not only rewriting our offensive playbook, but also caused us to coach our players differently, as the techniques and reads of the two blocking systems are very different. As this was the case, we spent a great deal of time as a staff preparing for implementation.
The fact that the entire staff was involved in the process made installing the new system go very smoothly. The results of the change were, for the most part, positive, and did transfer into victories on the field. Our change in philosophy proved effective for several years, until we ended up with a group of bigger and slower linemen, which necessitated going back to a more traditional gap blocking offensive philosophy.
Mike Tracey- Alleman, UT
The idea of making adjustments within our football program were to me somewhat limited by the players we had available. It was our job to fit our system of defense and offense to the talents. We usually had players going both ways ; the way we set it up was that the offense would get the quarterback they wanted, but the rest of the players could go to the defensive side of the ball. From there, we would set up a rotation system, especially with our alignment. An example would be our number one defensive tackle could be the number three offensive tackle. Our starting defensive end could be the number two tight end . Obviously injuries could play a key role, and we adjusted accordingly .
We built our style of play on both sides of the ball according to the following principles. 1. Our best players play defense first we were fundamentally sound on defense with our use of hand and feet placement ,vision ,and running to the ball to either make the tackle or get in on it.
We used the same philosophy with our fundamentals on offense. Regardless of our players, we knew we were going to do four things on offense . 1. we're gonna get off the ball and play on the opposite side of the line of scrimmage . 2. we were going to run a dive -dive option offense3. we were going to run a play action pass play side from the run action and 4. a play action pass with backside action.
We struggled over the course of my career when we got away from these principles. In summary, the coaches that were the most successful did basically the same things year after year .We could have been more successful if I would've stuck to the plan even more closely. In the final evaluation, sometimes I screwed up by trying to coach too much. In hindsight, I knew what I knew. I knew what we wanted to do. We just had get the right kids in the right spots and coach them hard.
Evan Massey- Galesburg
Like Coach Cooper, we were a man to man team. I was always looking for something to use as a change up to our man to man defense. I was not looking to change defenses, just something to throw at the opponent maybe 4-8 possessions per game.
I had seen how Coach Mike Reynolds would effectively use a 1-3-1 defense to throw off opponents. He usually did this after a time out in the second quarter.
I studied game tape of 3-4 teams who played 1-3-1 against us, and then I ordered 3-4 videos of coaches explaining their 1-3-1. I purposely picked instructional videos where they each played the 1-3-1 differently. Some trapped, some extended it, and some played passing lanes.
I had a great assistant coach, Jay Barshinger. Jay had primarily been a football coach and had learned to study film and really focus on the details. I explained to Jay that I was looking for something that might throw other teams off, but that I didn’t want to invest lots of practice time. I asked him to study the tapes and come back with a recommendation.
He came back with his recommendation. He explained to me how he envisioned it working. I agreed with his analysis. At that point, I told him I wanted him to become an expert on teaching the defense. The plan would be for him to have just 10-15 minutes per practice to drill the team on the defense.
Come game time, Jay knew that I wanted to use it just 4-5 times per game. If it was really working, we would just keep going with it. Because the defense was Jay’s thing, I asked him to be the advocate of the defense during games. So while I was hesitant to get out of man to man defense, Jay was there to say at a time out, “How about we go 1-3-1 coming out of the time out?”
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