| Naval Academy Football and the Option Game
I would like to start with something one of my coaches gave to me a while back. He just handed it to me. I think it is one of the greatest compliments I have ever received as a coach. It is a quote by Abraham Lincoln. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power, —Abraham Lincoln Sometimes, as coaches, we are looked upon as being bigger than life. We are human beings just like anyone else. We are just men. This is just a great reminder for me to never forget that. We as coaches are in a great profession. We are in the profession of developing people. I have been at the United States Naval Academy since 1995. It is a great institution, and I am proud to be there. It is gratifying to go to work every day and see the men and women that are there. They are there because they want to serve our country. We live in the greatest country in the world. Sure, things could be better for everyone, but nonetheless, we live in the greatest country in the world. Those men and women are there to give the ultimate sacrifice for us and those of us who live in our country. This always comes to my mind as I coach these young men. From the beginning of our academy, people come there to learn how to lead. What I have found out in the 14 years I have been at the Naval Academy is you cannot learn how to lead until you learn how to serve. My dad was a cook in the Coast Guard for 23 years. When he got out, he was the manager of a restaurant. When I was young, every time I would go look for my dad in his office, he was never there. I would ask if anybody had seen my dad, and they would say yes, he is in the kitchen. When I went into the kitchen, there was my dad cooking with the cooks. I saw how those men and women, the bakers and the cooks, had such great respect for my dad because he was not an office type of guy. He served. It was amazing to me to see how they followed my dad as he learned how to lead them by serving them. For us as coaches, that is a great thing for us to learn. I like to use an acronym: LEAD You can be a coach who has the greatest knowledge in the world, but if your players or the people who work for you do not know you love them, they will shut you off. Coaching is not just about yelling at people and getting after them. Do not get me wrong–I like to coach hard too. You have to be able to pick up a guy when you go to the locker room and ask a guy how he is doing and how things are going in his life for him to see you as a leader. You have to make sure you love those you lead. We have to be an example. We always want our players to be on time. You cannot expect your players to be on time if you do not start your meetings and your practices on time. Get out there early and make sure everything is set up before practice starts. When your players come to practice, be out there waiting on them. This is not a time to be cool as a coach; this is the time to set an example. If you want your players to be early for team meetings, you need to be there early. Our players are going to hear what we say, but what we do speaks volumes. It is important to appreciate what these guys go through. What their background is, what they have to overcome, and all the things that go on in their lives. The biggest part to me about winning football is development. At the Naval Academy, we are typically not going to get the four- and five-star athletes. We do not get the big, strong, and fast athletes some of the major schools are getting. We might get a taller skinny kid we have to play at defensive end. We are going to develop these people. There is a lot of patience involved with that. To be a great coach, you have to be a great teacher. Some people teach differently than other people. The good coaches get their message across. First and foremost in this is good communication. As a sender of a message, you may think the message is pretty clear, but the receiver has to receive that same message, and it has to be clear. As coaches, you have to look at how you are communicating your ideas and are they getting through. If the receiver of the message is not as clear as the sender, it can cost you a game. A good teacher will make sure his pupils are prepared and organized when they go to class or meetings. When our players walk into one of our meetings, I want to make sure it is a conducive learning environment. If we want them to write something, we provide a pen and paper. If your players come in and see you are organized in a classroom setting, it makes it easier for them to learn. It is the same thing with practice. I let my assistant coaches coach, and the one thing I make sure they do is to be prepared for practice. Everything has to be detailed. Everything they need for a drill must be there before everyone else. If certain players need more reps during a drill, my coaches need to have that spelled out beforehand. We do not have very long with our players, so we have to make the most of our time. Every second is precious, so we have to be prepared. This transfers to the games. Setting clear goals is important for a program. The goals for our entire program are: first, to win the Commander-in-Chief trophy, which means we have to beat the Air Force Academy and Army; our second goal is to win a bowl game. When I go visit schools across the country, sometimes I notice schools have a separate set of goals for offense and defense. Sometimes, their goals are not clear and precise. If that is the case, it is hard to accomplish them. Your program has to have clear goals established.
In order to reach our goals, we have a clear plan. 1. Run the ball on offense (option). We talk about this plan every year. First, we are going to run the football. That is who we are. We are going to limit the number of times our opponent's offense is going to have the ball. If our opponent is used to having the ball 13 times, we are going to give it to them 9. If our opponent is used to getting the ball 12 times, we are going to give it to them 8. We run the football because we are an option football team. For us, that gives us an opportunity to be successful. We feel like running the ball and keeping the clock running gives us the best opportunity to win football games. We feel the option gives us the best opportunity to do that. If we had to line up and run power and isolation plays, we would get killed. We want to be known as a team that runs to the football. All our drills are predicated on running to the football. We are not the biggest team in the world. If we do not have 11 guys running to the ball, we are not going to be a successful defense. We may not have the best call or be in the best position, but we are going to make sure we run to the football on every single snap. In the practice drills we have, we make sure we finish with all 11 guys running to the football. We want to make sure we are good at what we do. We are not going to worry about what everyone else is doing. We are going to work on what we do. There are a lot of different great ideas out there, but we have to remember we have to be good at what we do. Our biggest offensive linemen are about 6-3 and 280 pounds. They are not the biggest guys in the game. For us to line up and try to throw the football every day and every down would be very hard for us. We want to make sure we are sound in the kicking game. A lot of teams will have a philosophy that they are going to be aggressive and go after every kick, but our philosophy is to be sound. Being tougher than our opponents and playing harder than our opponents have been very important for our program. We have to be tougher and play harder than all of our opponents. If we do not accomplish #5 and #6, we are in trouble. We emphasize this to our players every time we can. It is important to make sure we do not beat ourselves. This year marks the third year in a row we have had the least amount of penalties in the country. We are always in the top 20 in preventing turnovers. Even if we are not having penalties, turnovers, and missed assignments, we are not the biggest team out there, so we are going to struggle. If we cannot accomplish items 5,6, and 7, we might as well hit the showers. We have to do those things just to give us a chance of winning football games. If someone is to ask what our culture is, it is items 5, 6, and 7. Be tougher than everyone else, play harder than everyone else, and do not beat ourselves. Skills are very important part of the football game. I think this quote by Bill Walsh encompasses what I feel about skills.
We talk about skills. Skills are the very essence of playing the game of football. The best coaches select the skills that are related to their program, their philosophy, or their system of football. They isolate those skills and then they develop drills to teach those skills. The very essence of coaching or teaching is to isolate skills and then find an efficient way to teach them that's practical–that can be applied to playing a game of football. That's the toughest job. So, a staff member should take full advantage of developing a full knowledge of the skills that he must teach his players. Then, he should develop drills and establish drills that players totally understand–that are an efficient way to impart those drills and those skills to the players. That is an absolute critical part of coaching.
The key is finding the skill for a given position. Finally, when you have identified those skills, come up with drills that will accentuate the skills that are needed to win. When we look at each position, we determine what types of skills are needed for that position. Once we have identified those skills, we ask what are we doing to develop and improve those skills. This is how we organize our practices. We start practice with a team get-off. This is where we do our stretching and calisthenics. The thing I focus on is at the end of this part of the practice. I want our players ready to go. I do not want them to need another 5 or 10 minutes in order to get ready to practice. Whether it is 12 or 15 minutes, whatever it takes, our players need to be ready to go at the end of this period. We have a team get-off session where we are trying to build our intensity and breaking the huddle and getting off on the snap count. Sometimes, I will have a score period rather than a team get-off period. Every defense has the pursuit drill, so I wanted to have something we could do offensively. In the score drill, we are going to start on the 20- or 25-yard line and we are going to score. We are going to be excited when we score. It allows us to do two things. It is a way to start off practice and get some momentum going, and it will get our condition going. I guarantee you our offensive linemen hate this drill. This is what we start off with every day. We are going to make sure everyone is involved. I do not want guys standing around. We will either start out with our score period or our team get-off period. While we are doing this, the defense is either doing pursuit drills or they are doing tackling drills. Right from the get-go, we are getting after it. The next phase of our practice is ball security. I want all of our skilled guys to start off with ball security. We want to make sure we emphasize taking care of the ball. If we do not take care of the football, we are done. We want to make sure we have the ball tucked high and tight. We want four points of pressure. We emphasize they must keep the ball secure up until the time they give the ball to the manager. I do not ever want to see anybody carrying the ball loosely at any time. Right after that, we go into our individual fundamental drills. We are going to have individual drills every day of practice from day one until the end when we play Army. Just like Bill Walsh said, we are going to make sure our skill set is strong in what we are doing. We work on that through our fundamentals in our individual period every day. This period will last 20 to 30 minutes each day. The quarterbacks and the running backs might work on their mesh during this period. The number one skill set for our A backs is arc blocking the perimeter. This is where they would be working on that. They are going to drop-step with their outside foot and cross over. Their aiming point is to the outside thigh. Our wide receivers do not see a football for the first 10 minutes of practice. That is the culture we are trying to create. We practice our blocking first. We want them to have the mentality that they can be the person that makes the block to spring a big play. If they need to catch the ball during the course of the game, they can do that too. Their first priority is to block. This is the culture we are creating. One that is very unselfish and of tireless workers working hard. Our wide receivers will practice their stock block as well. This is a very high priority for our receivers. We start off with drills where they can work on their feet. Our offensive linemen will work with the chute in their drills. The first step our linemen take in drills is our zone step. We really exaggerate the backside knee to push the hips over. We want to make sure we are north and south and our shoulder pads are over our thighs. Our knees should be leading our toes so we always have angles in our knees. We want to keep a flat back. These are just some of the drills that we might run during this period. Fundamental group work comes next for about 15 minutes. We work on this every day. For us, it might include a three-on-three drill versus a 50 look or an odd front. It does not have to be long. Later on, we may have the receivers involved so they can practice their perimeter block. It does not have to be complicated. The next part of our practice is our team option period. It goes for 20 minutes and is live. We get a lot done during this part of our practice. We get as many reps as we can. We have two huddles versus one scout team. We usually get 40 snaps during this time frame. Our plays are scripted, and we have a lot of energy on the field for this. We have three-foot interior splits across the board. Our basic formation is the spread formation (Diagram #1).  This is a look at our double flex formation (Diagram #2). It has been a good formation for us because our basic rules stay in place. With the double flex formation, we can do different things with our wideouts. It makes the defense adjust down, so when we do pitch the ball, we have more grass on the edges.   Over right is one of our unbalanced looks (Diagram #4). Obviously, the X end is covered up and is ineligible. This gives us another formation. If the defense does not adjust, we have better angles, and it gives us an advantage.  If the defense does make an adjustment, we want to know what they did. Once we know their adjustments, we attack from there. If the defense makes an adjustment by playing our X up tight because it knows he is ineligible, we move to our over right green formation (Diagram #5).  We can run a trips look with the tight end as the third receiver (Diagram #6).  Our heavy formations have been very good to us (Diagram #7). We bring our heavy tackle to the right side.  We still have two eligible receivers on the left side. Everybody knows we are going to run the veer. If teams cheat over too much, we can hurt them on the backside with either a run or a pass. If we know we want to run to the backside, we have a third tackle on the left side and run jumbo (Diagram #8).  The last formation I have is our heavy right over (Diagram #9). None of this is rocket science. These are our rules for running the triple option. We have nothing to hide. It is nothing complicated. Every defensive coordinator we go up against knows what we are going to do. What we do, we do. If we have a problem, we know how to fix it.  TRIPLE OPTION RULES PSWR–Near deep defender: This allows the wideout to come off the ball. The number one skill for him is stalk blocking. We work on it every day. PSA –Run support (whomever that may be): Normally with three deep, it is the free safety. If #3 is in the middle of the field, we will end up load-blocking him. This basically means the playside tackle and the playside A back block the playside linebacker and free safety, however it unfolds. Anytime the run support defender is outside the tackle, we are not going to load-block. PST–PSLB: The playside tackle has the playside linebacker. The rule for him to determine who that is is the first guy from his outside hip and in. He is making that call so everyone knows who he is blocking. His rule for the veer is simple. If the playside guard is uncovered he runs an outside release and loops because the playside guard can protect for a run-through. If the guard is covered, he is going to veer inside to protect the B gap if there is a B gap threat. The number one skill of our playside tackle is veer releasing. We want to make sure he steps, dips, and rips. PSG–Base: If he is covered by a down lineman, he is going to block him. If he is uncovered, he has the Will linebacker. Where the playside linebacker is lined up will determine if we try to help the guard with a combo block if we have a 3 technique lineman. If the playside linebacker is lined up right on top of the tackle, we are solo. We go into it with the idea that we are going to help the guard with a 3 technique, but it depends on how the playside linebacker lines up and how he plays. From a rules standpoint, the guard is blocking for the dive. The tackle is blocking the quarterback to pitch. Our blocking rules can change based on how the defense lines up and what it likes to do. C–Scoop: If he is covered with a 0 technique, he will T-board right, His second step is going to be right on the ball. Then, he runs his track. If the nose fights through his hip, he will block him. If the nose goes backside, he works up to the next level. BSG–Scoop: Run their track and block whomever shows. BST–Scoop: Run their track and block whomever shows. BSA–Tall motion/pitch path: His first step is right at the rear end of the fullback, and he is at a full sprint. We do not want a half jog. Once he reaches the rear end of the fullback, he is going to take three steps and then mirror the quarterback. The fullback is lined up at five yards. We can use different types of motion packages to get him there. BSWR–Cut off B Back–Veer track: The read for the fullback is the first guy inside the tackle. The fullback has to listen for the call of the playside tackle so he knows what is happening ahead of him. If there is a combo call, he will start on his track, but he knows he may have to cut it back. He still has to read it. QB–Veer footwork/option reads: The pitch read key is going to be the first guy touching the tackle on an out. The quarterback is going to read #1 on the dive. The next guy out is going to be the pitch key. Even though he is reading #1, if #2 comes hard, he is thinking quick pitch. He will read his angle; if #2 is covering the pitch, the quarterback will tuck it up inside. Over the years, we have had different types of keys for the quarterback to decide whether to give the ball to the fullback. We have come down to can someone tackle the fullback? If no one can tackle the fullback, give him the ball. |
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Naval Academy Football and the Option Game
