BLACK

Just a reminder/admonishment as spring is blooming to stop and smell the roses.... the window of opportunity for ideas and refreshment will soon be closing for many high school staffs in the coming weeks.

What am I talking about? Spring football at your local college or university.

As discussed earlier ( Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics. ) visiting practice of a program, any program, outside of your own can do worlds of good for improving your process. Regardless of scheme or philosophy, taking a step back to see HOW others do what they do, may make more of dramatic impact than hearing about WHAT others are doing. Don't watch plays, watch players and how their coaches interact with them. Watch how practice is structured, observe how communication is handled, how coaches handle good and bad situations.... the devil is in the details. Don't just show up on the field, talk with the coaches and student assistants away from the game, sit in on their meetings, and take the time to build a relationship with the staff.

walk backwards.


There, you did it. Thats all there is to the "vertical set".
"Vertical Set" as it relates to Air Raid protection is just that, a replacement to the kick-slide. It is a vertical withdrawal from the line of scrimmage where you do not chase rushing defenders, but wait for them to engage you at your anchor point. This allows offensive linemen to remain square (preventing an easy loss by turning the shoulders and improper leverage in the pocket). When rushing the passer, the first step for a defender is to reach the blockers hips and gain leverage (by getting the blocker to open up a gap through turning, or by the defender getting at the same horizontal plane of the blocker). Because the blocker is moving away from the defender at relatively the same speed, he is prolonging the time it will take for the defender to execute an escape move (get past protection and get to the the quarterback/launch point).

Though, it does require a modicum of athleticism (moreso than a kick-slide), anyone can perform it and be better off for it (because of the increased speed of their retreat versus a kick).

Thanks for the comments to my previous post. I just want to clarify a couple of points that I did a poor job of explaining. The thrust of my initial post was that at the major college level AirRaid teams have cut to the chase; that is, they have reduced the number of fronts they practice against. My point was that this may be a luxary that HS programs cannot afford. The reason being that they are more likely to encounter the traditional set of base fronts that Franklin covers in his seminars. So, the upshot of this is that coaches cannot simply jettison these more "prosaic" fronts in order to get to the Nickel stuff that college programs attack right at the beginning of the teaching and installation program.

For what its worth, what LaTech is doing in this regard is really nothing new. Texas Tech started to treat everything as a some type of Nickel front about two years ago. They also stopped distinguishing between 90 and 60 vertical sets, which are different sets because they rely on different post and anchor legs.

My next post, which I hope to have up later this week, will build on some points that Chris Brown has talked about on his Blog regarding the place of spread offenses in the culture of college and high school football.

c/o Shreveporttimes.com

It's just Sonny Dykes' way of ensuring his players become members of the Good Hands Club.

On every stop in his coaching tenure, dating to his days at Kentucky with Hal Mumme, Dykes has used a tennis ball delivery machine to chunk balls at his receivers, defensive backs and quarterbacks. Offensive coordinator Tony Franklin was happy to see one show up in Ruston.
"The places I've been we haven't been able to afford one," he said a little tongue in cheek. "Sonny has had them and they do make a difference."

The idea is simple. Shooting the small ball at a high rate of speed toward a student-athlete requires the ultimate in concentration. Look away or get lost in your thoughts and the ball will likely bounce off your nose.

Louisiana Tech is now using an electronic tennis ball machine to teach players how to better concentrate on the football. We asked three current Bulldogs how they would rate the machine's help, based on other assistance they've seen in their career.
They rated it 1-10 with 10 being the most helpful.
Terry Carter: 9; Phillip Livas: 10; Colby Cameron: 9

be sure to check out previous LA Tech postings here

Manchester United striker, Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi are current leading goal scorers in Europe leagues with 26 and 25 league goals respectively. If they play all remaining league games, Wayne Rooney have 6 league games while Lionel Messi have 9 league matches and more favourite to lift the golden shooes. Last season Diego Forlan (Atlético Madrid) won the European Golden Shoe (Pichichi) after scoring 32 goals earning 64 points. Samuel Eto'o was second with 30 league goals (60 points).

I just want comment briefly on some points that Brophy made earlier regarding LaTech's protections. From my perspective, the greatest insight to be gleaned from what LaTech is doing is that the AirRaid (and I use the term simply as a type of critical shorthand here) has become exponentially simplified, perhaps even reductive as it has evolved at the college level.

That the AirRaid has become even more streamlined in recent years is no surprise. All systems, in particular languages, possess a teleological desire to simplify themselves for their users. The AirRaid is no exception to this rule, especially in regards to protection. Since most AirRaid teams have by now evolved into pure one-back figurations within some type of a detached four hot environment the protections now only deal with defensive reactions elicited by either 2x2 or 3x1 alignments. As Brophy has noted, this exponentially reduces the number of reactions a defense will most likely respond with; moreover, they are all known quantities.

Now, all of this is pretty simple and straightforward. What I would now like to spend the rest of this piece discussing is why LaTech and other programs can afford to be so reductive in their approach to protection and why High School programs that employ this offense should be leary of following their lead. At the college level, it is a given that any team that runs this offense can throw the ball and protect the passer. In other words, defensive coordinators do not doubt their counterparts' basic competency in this area. Consequently, depending on whether they are an odd or even front team, they are going to run some type of a nickel or stack scheme. By nickel here I am not just talking about 5 defensive backs. Texas last year played with three linebackers most of the game against TTech, but they were aligned in various nickel looks. As a result, when an AirRaid team goes into Spring Practice the first front they throw up on the white board is something in the nickel or odd-stack family. They no longer scheme against base 4-3s, 3-4s, 4-4s, 50s, etc because they will NEVER see them. They then can focus all their time on technique and sorting.

But can high school coaches afford to be so reductive in their approach to protection, at least schematically? My answer is no. Maybe in certain regions of the country, such as in Texas or in the South where Spring ball is permitted, teams that run the AirRaid will have the time to develop the mastery required to elicit such basic looks; however, my experiences suggest that the first thing a HS DC will do in most situations is present you with some type of a base look and pressure the living heck out of you until you prove that you can throw the ball with ease. As a result, HS teams still need to be prepared to protect base fronts, which makes the job of the HS line coach, ironically, more difficult than that of his college counterpart.