When you have “finished” offseason R&D and it’s time for spring install, one of the things we do to streamline our process as far as what to take out and what to put in is our Scheme Map. A scheme map is simply a graphical representation of our offensive scheme menu. We operate on a 3 day spring install plan. This doesn’t mean we install the entire offense in 3 days, but we install the base scheme and categories. So if on Day 1 we installed 2 quicks and 2 dropback passes, when we wrapped back around to day 4 we would be working on those same passes but potentially with tags added. In season we will have more scheme than in spring, but we operate with the same basic principle. Our practice schedules don’t change a ton, so we have a standard group of things we work on a Monday, Tuesday, etc. based on the practice periods. For example Tuesday in season is a longer, more physical day, so we work goalline and short yardage on those days. In spring training we have more time and less constraints because we are not going to put in a goalline package or situational offense for a spring scrimmage. In spring we want to accomplish these things:
“Kill Your Darlings” A famous apocryphal quote about writing (supposedly said by Faulkner and about 20 other people) is that one must “kill your darlings”. In other words a writer must learn to eliminate self-indulgent passages that don’t serve the larger narrative. I love scheme, as much as (probably even more than) the next guy, and when I find 37 pass plays I want to run every offseason, all of which I can rationalize that we need, it is a very difficult thing to kill them off. How do you do it? Math. There are literally only so many calls in a season. And you are going to repeat calls. A lot. So understanding you have to make difficult cuts in your base scheme should be self-evident. Here are some things you should know:
Now you should start to have an idea of how many calls you need to carry into a game. If you actually do this it can be a sobering reminder of how often we carry too much scheme. Now, the above process is more relevant to in-season work than spring, but you know going in that even though one of the joys of spring training is experimenting, in the end, you’re going to have to throw out some (or a lot) of stuff. That said our philosophy has always been to introduce a ton in spring and summer, but never carry a gigantic menu into each game. Once you have created the knowledge base, week to week install is easier because you can reintroduce quickly by bringing things back out of the toolbox. The Map Below is a generic (blank) scheme map. Yours probably won’t look like ours. But here are 11 categories we might look at after the R&D period. Clearly Spring might look different than in- season if we were making this chart, and I have a spring map as well as a tentative season map of where we think we might end up. There is some (and usually a lot) of carryover in the map. For instance we know that in spring we will install our 2 base screens so I would put those in the scheme map and then we may have one additional screen we want to experiment with. "Combos" are what many are now calling SPOs (Screen Pass Options) where we attach a pass to a screen. These combos would use passes installed elsewhere (probably in the quick category), thus carryover. Likewise the play-action categories would probably use patterns already found in the Quick or 90 (dropback) category. The Shift/Unbalanced section wouldn’t have any new plays, only new movement patterns or formations. More carryover. If we had a running quarterback we might not have anything in the Wildcat category. If that entire category is wiped out, then you can redistribute the time and reps elsewhere. We might not install any one word calls in Spring, so that category doesn’t have to be distributed. Every category can change from year to year. Once we have our scheme map it is a simple process of taking each play/concept from each category and plugging in the day and period of practice we will work them. Since we have a general idea of how many particular schematic concepts we can fit in during spring, after the R&D period is over, if we’re going to add something new we have to cut something old out. This is why the evaluation process I described in part 1 is so important. Even input from players can be taken into account. If one of our QBs tells me during QB School that he hates a particular pattern, I’m going to weigh that pretty heavily in the decision of whether or not to keep it. You also need contingency plans. We have always focused more on run game in spring because we have the entire summer to work passing game, but last spring we really wanted to reemphasize vertical concepts with a returning veteran QB. But as he was a key member of our baseball team which was advancing in the playoffs, we didn’t have him for a majority of our practices. Instead we reoriented our scripts/install toward run game and screens. While I certainly recommend experimenting in spring ball, as with most things in life, when it comes to new scheme, moderation is key.
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I have a confession to make. Maybe my favorite part of the football "year" is January-March. That’s research and development season for our offensive staff. I think you can win games in these months, and I think we have. Because I am a football nerd this is a glorious time. First of all it’s clinic season. You don’t have the stress of the season and aren’t as busy as the Spring Training and summer months. There is time to reflect, study, and evaluate in a clear-headed, far less-biased way without the pressure of practice schedules, scripts, gameplans, etc. Everything looks good on the board. It’s an optimistic time.
But I think you have to be systematic to make this time period useful. We give assignments for offseason study. It keeps guys involved and interested and creates a sense of accountability. For example our OL coach has been studying Oklahoma (like most of the country). I studied the LA Rams bunch package. We may tell someone else to make our fast screens better. What techniques are people using? Who is the best at it? What are we doing right or wrong? I try to make sure and study teams or ideas that are a little more obscure since we are obsessed with being different. You have to be willing to think outside the box. I read 5-6 books on the Wing-T this offseason. We are not a Wing-T team. Why? Well 3 things I was particularly interested in were improving our speed sweep package we have used for over a decade, improving our goalline/change of pace package (which is essentially an unbalanced wing-t belly package), and also making plays look alike/better packaging plays as a series. Who does a better job with that than Wing-T teams? I also try to stay abreast of the latest defensive ideas, because some defensive guys are, if possible, even more fad-oriented than offensive guys. Here’s how we lay out the process:
We won’t be using 9 out of 10 things we learned. But they can go in the archives and may be something we can use later, even years down the road. In all, I filled up a couple of notebooks with probably a couple hundred ideas. That’s the fun part. In part 2 we’ll talk about how to talk yourself off the ledge and not actually use all of the cool stuff you learned during clinic season, as well as show how we organize a scheme map. |
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