RE: Scheme

One of the things I learned over the years in coaching the LB'ers was if we wanted the LB'ers to key the guards, we needed to start the season that way, keying the guards. If we started the season keying backs or backfield action, and then midway through the season we would want to key the guards . . . it didn't happen.

Still to this day, across the land, high school teams still have to defeat one of the WingT offensive schemes. And that means you really do need to key the guards.

So, that line of reasoning was the stimulus for the offensive question this week: Is it better to be a running team that passes, or a passing team that can run . . . for a high school team.

Speaking from my experience, here's the deal. There are not too many of us that go out and recruit players for our team like colleges get to recruit players for their team. That means we have to play the hand that is dealt us every year.

Now IF you are staying at the school for a number of years, there is a certain amount of talents you can develop with kids as they move through the years. This is made more difficult when systems cut out Junior High Sports and turn things over to community clubs.

Recently I attended a high school game that had two teams playing who were trying to execute offensive schemes (variations of the spread) that they clearly did not have the talent to execute well. The kids on those teams were put out on the field in a position to . . . . fail because they did not have the talent to do all that stuff.

So, would the kids have to go through seasons winning just a game or two till perhaps talent came along that could run the system? We always felt that if we got a real tailback to come along, it was a bonus. And a real tailback would come along perhaps once every 7 years or so.

When the 'player' came along, we would always tweak the system to feature the 'player.' The rest of the time we would stress TEAM concepts.

It's like, year in - year out, we never were blessed with a great deal of speed. I remember doing a clinic and had some cut ups playing. One of the coaches commented, "Those guys do not have any speed. They look just like out kids." That's right, average ability kids is what we had to coach.

But if all those defenders at the corner were blocked, we could run sweep. If the line would open up a huge hole, we could run through it.

So we felt that since football is a game of blocking and tackling, we would start with that. Snap the ball, hand off, run straight ahead, gain some yards. Year in, year out, we could get kids to do that. And we could work with kids in the weightroom to develop their strength, so they could do all that better next year and the year after.

If we had a QB that could throw the ball coupled with people that could catch the ball, we could tweaked the system and feature an expanded passing attack.

One year we had a QB that literally had a shot-put action for throwing the ball. Man it was ugly. But with the play action pass, and the fact that we really did not want him to throw anything more than 22 yards deep with the vast majority of passes being just 9 yard passes, we were able to have an adequate passing attack.

So I am with the idea that it's better to start with a running attack that passes for high school ball.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Be11!

RF