Heading into spring (and other notes)

I, like you, am anxiously awaiting hemlock's dissertation on Run & Shoot (and you may not find a more qualified authority), and to kill time, I will share the recent developments of our spring program. Trust me, once Hemlock gets going, I'll do my best to STFU.

This post may be interesting to those without 6th period football and/or spring football (or program development, in general).

We have been using 6th period (final period of the day) for the last 5 months for lifting. The past month or so (since the weather has been gorgeous) we have been taking the kids out to run through skelly sessions twice a week. This certainly helps and gives a jump start on what spring football will actually be in the coming weeks.

We have one bonafide offensive player (our Y) returning from last season, who was our leading yardage gainer. We have our starting quarterback, and one developing split receiver, and a bevy of young sophomore skill and lineman talent. This largely would not be the case, had interim HC (now official HC) not pressed for a full-time freshman squad. Had he not been so adamant about the freshmen, we wouldn’t have much to be optimistic about this year. I preface that, because as we move forward making plans for spring ball, we are faced with a dilemma of what to do with this talent on offense. How does it define what we do? Do we change from what we attempted last year after losing a once-in-a-lifetime “do-everything” stud (Jacoby Moseley) and a DI skill position player (Jarrett Fobbs)? Losing two game-changing talents may significantly affect the direction we move towards, especially when both were the sole contributors to our run game.

Of note, current freshman, Joshua Hunt (tallest player in picture), looks to be the next rising star out of our program and may give us the luxury of supplanting our current Y, to allow Desmon to be featured as a more flexible threat. There are also two distinctive running backs up and coming, that will be relied upon to shoulder the burden of explosive plays out of the backfield.

Conventional wisdom says, "you should stick to what you do", right? Well, I agree, but we really didn’t have anything as a foundation to begin with, so where do you go? I could go in a thousand directions with a personal tangent, one that I have already shared when this came up last year, however, for the sake of sanity, I’ll just shut up and get in where I can fit in.

If you have a quarterback who is a thrower and not much of a runner, can you get away with a veer/option run game (* I would argue yes, especially with zone running) ? The argument is if you do not, then you must go to some type of 2-back, power/lead attack to get an extra body/threat at the point of attack. How does this hamstring you when you are deficient in the run game. The OC is exploring pistol/rifle looks to base the lead/power/counter/triple run game out of. If you are not that great of a running team to begin with, when you introduce 2-backs (from the gun or under center) you in turn, invite more defenders into the box, making a hard job even harder. So, have you really gained anything with that?

What complicates this even further, is that there are dispositions that exclude certain answers from being acknowledged. There is personal bias against TFS (even though we are basing much of what we do off of the package we initially introduced) as well as zone running (in favor of traditional base blocking). I don't see any absolute 'right' or 'wrong' answers in this and am enjoying the development of the program and players. I likely won't be involved in the offense much to begin with.

Maybe its a 'nice problem to have' (actually having talent), but one that I'm sure other staffs go through, as well.

TREME
Completely unrelated, but be sure to check out David Simon's new series, Treme, on HBO - a certifiable winner.

http://backoftown.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/thatll-work/

BRAZIL

Even more unrelated, but something I found interesting, especially considering some of the recent Kabuki politics in America (not that I have one iota of thought regarding the matter, nor a desire to pursue one) - this is an interesting story and perspective.

http://www.fdasbo.org.br/

Entirely unrelated to this event, but I have been exploring expating to South America in another decade or two, so if there are football opportunities let me know....