Defensive Coordinators...STOP IT!!!
Running some fancy, unique defense against a Wing-T does not mean success...especially if it really doesn't fit your base scheme!!!
That is something I noticed quite often this past season with Delphos Jefferson. We would get these fancy defenses or modified versions of a base defense. You could see that the kids felt out of position and not comfortable with their reads/responsibilities. They would think too much and make way too many mistakes to be an effective defense. The teams that played us tough were also the ones that stayed in their base defense with minimal adjustments made. Our defense runs our base defense against any Wing-T team on our schedule and did very well against those teams.
So why the hell am I writing about defense and telling them exactly what to do against us as a Wing-T team?
Because deep down, I am just as fanatic about defense as I am about offense. I have been a defensive coach that has helped call and adjust defenses in games for many years. I also am a coach that looks to give people ideas on how to better themselves and their team's success.
With that said, I would like to give a few ideas of what you need to keep in perspective when playing a Wing-T team:
1. Any defense can work against a Wing-T, it just needs to be EXECUTED.
I am not to promote any specific defense, as I have played Wing-T teams with many different defenses and have had success with those defenses. The key to the defense working has always been that the defense was executed to near perfection. Execution is the key to the game of football...scheme doesn't really matter because they all work if they can be executed.
2. Make sure your base defense is flexible and sticks to the KISS method.
A base defense is no good if you have to have a million checks or shifts to adjust to different offenses. You are just shooting yourself in the foot by trying to get kids to learn all that and be able to execute it. I have always found that the simplest answer is usually the best answer when it comes to football. The least amount of checks/shifts/adjustments is going to lead to minimal thinking on the part of your defense. That will lead to execution of the defense if the kids just react and are not frozen by thinking.
The best defense I have ran that fits this description is the 4-3 Cover 4 defense. It is not for everyone because you need to have certain personnel to run it. It is probably the most flexible defense I have ran where we had minimal checks and the defense flows well with changes in the offense. I have run it with 2 different programs, 2 different ways, but had success with both programs. Our kids were able to line up and play ball with minimal thinking about responsibilities or reads.
3. Practice your Wing-T responsibilities/reads during the summer/start of the season.
You cannot expect your guys to just jump into Wing-T week and get it within the week. You need to address what adjustments you would make to a Wing-T team during the summer when 2-a-days are going on. That way when you get to Wing-T week, the kids are familiar with the adjustments and recall them back from previous experience. I do with all kids of different offenses that would require adjustments, like Empty teams, Option teams, and Wing-T teams. Use the time you have in the summer to get the defense install and you can fine tune the adjustments when you get to the week of the game.
4. Realize your defense has weaknesses and find ways to minimize the damage of that weakness.
Every scheme, offensively or defensively, has a weakness. That is the nature of football. Someone will find the chink in the armor and exploit it. Your job is to minimize the effects of that weakness. Make the kids aware of the weakness and coach them up on how the other team will attack you. That will give them confidence in the scheme and they will know what to expect because if the other team is smart, they would attack the weak spot. It minimizes the options of what the other team will run against you and focuses the limited options your guys have to defend.
If you run some fancy defense, the guys are not familiar with the weak spots and now they are running a defense they don't normally run and are not sure how they will be attack or where the weakness is. That will set you up for failure.
5. Realize what the ultimate philosophy of Wing-T is...Conflict and Flexibility.
The Wing-T offense is not just a formation and a set of plays...It is a philosophy. It is about putting the defense in conflict and taking advantage of the conflict. When a team puts in a fancy defense to stop a specific set of plays, all you have done is put yourself in a bad position where the Wing-T team can still attack you somewhere else.
Wing-T teams almost have a set checklist of what they are looking for a defense to do. They always have an answer for some alignment by a defense (talent does not factor into that statement because the Jimmys and Joes discussion trumps that). So when you go into a wacky defense to take away something, you are putting your guys in an unfamiliar defense, unsure of their reads/adjustments, unsure of the weak points, and now can be attacked by some other set of plays that you exploited yourself to.
Just a few things for you DCs to think about when going up against Wing-T.
I also wrote this so that Wing-T guys also think the same way a defensive coach would. I have always felt that to be a great offensive coach, you have to be almost just as good of a defensive coach. If you understand the defense and what they do, then you know where to attack and when.
Just some food for thought....
Friday, November 6, 2015
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
R&D Labwork: Wing-T Offense with Spread Package...Great Example of K.I.S.S and Wing-T philosophy.
Sorry, guys...its been awhile.
School started, football got heavy into the season, and health issues reared their ugly head. Now things are good, I'm in the flow of things with school and now we have parent-teacher conferences (which equal a lot of down time since hardly any parents come to the conferences).
Update on my current team, Delphos Jefferson: We went 9-1 regular season and won the conference championship!!! The only loss was to a good Coldwater team (that will probably win state in their division) and we probably played our worst game in terms of execution (refs didn't help either, but not the biggest issue). We beat our undefeated rivals week 10 soundly and now play them week 11 in the playoffs. It will be tough to beat the same team twice back to back, but our boys are excited and ready for the challenge, especially since the game is being played at our place now. Wish us luck and hopefully we go the distance and get to the Shoe to win the big one!!!!
Now, what is this nonsense about a Wing-T offense running a spread package?!? I know deep down that there are probably plenty of teams that do this, but I also know a lot of people would look at me funny and call me a blasphemer. These two styles of offenses are on the opposite side of the spectrum of football, but both can be tied together to create an effective and dangerous offense.
I also want to clarify that I am not talking about running the Spread Wing-T style of offense. I feel that it can be a good offense, but I feel you lose the deception and speed to the hole that you get with under center and standard Wing-T. I also am not a big fan of the Pistol Wing-T due to the motion required and the mechanics of formations/plays. I have looked at both of these styles of Wing-T, but just do not get the same feelings I have for a standard Wing-T.
I am talking about having a base offense of Wing-T, but having a spread package that is easy to get into and can be run effectively to attack the defense.
At Delphos Jefferson, we run a pretty standard Wing-T offense, with only a few different tweaks to how certain base plays are run. So when someone plays Jefferson, they know they have to prep for Wing-T. The thing that I thought was a great addition and has been difficult for our opponents to adjust to is a simple spread package that can run by our base Wing-T personnel. We can run or pass out of the spread sets and they are true spread formations: 2x2 and 3x1 standard spread formations. We have about 5-7 pass plays and 3-5 run plays, with about 2 pass protections installed for the passing game.
The key to the success of this package is our tempo and our personnel being skilled enough to adjust to spread formations.
We are a up-tempo huddle team, which will break the huddle and snap the ball within 3-4 seconds. It dramatically affects how defenses play us, because they cannot switch personnel and align fast enough to keep up with our pace. With putting the spread package in, we can still break a huddle and get into our spread sets in about 3-5 seconds and get the ball snapped. Now, instead of just aligning to our base Wing-T formations, their defense has to get into spread mode and spread guys out. This leads to a very basic defense being run against us, with coverage being usually man and usually not much blitzing due to the DC not knowing if we would be Wing-T or Spread that specific play. So now teams have to spend all week trying to get use to our Wing-T offense, but must be able to adjust immediately to our spread game, which would require a lot of communication if they wanted to pressure us or get fancy with coverage. A big conflict that is there without us running a play!!! The ultimate goal of the Wing-T philosophy is already present before we even start the game...CONFLICT!!!
Our personnel is also a unique one that lends itself to being able to spread it out...not every team has that talent level or players that fit that scheme. Our QB is a solid player who understands schemes, our TE is a former WR, and our HBs are great athlete who can catch. That is what allows us to use our base Wing-T personnel for our spread personnel. The TE plays like a SE and our HBs are slot WRs. Our FB is our back in the backfield and is part of our protection most plays. The plays are limited and are very basic in design. So when it comes to our playbook, our players are not confused because our Wing-T plays are limited and simple in scheme and the Spread plays are based off of Wing-T run schemes. As far as passing, we run basic route combinations and very basic pass protections that are effective, but not taxing on our OL/FB.
I know some people might ask how we practice all that, but it really isn't "all that". We could not live off of just running our spread package, so that should tell you that it is basic. Our coaching staff has done a great job of balancing the time in practice appropriately to match our philosophy. Most of practice is dedicated to the Wing-T, but we have periods that we work specifically Spread or it gets mixed into periods with Wing-T. We also made sure that we installed everything at the right time during the summer and used things like 7-on-7's to work on our Spread package. As far as a run game, the schemes for Spread are the same as our Wing-T plays, just modified for Spread. I think this is the one area we need to work on making more effective and can rely on heavily as a curveball against better teams.
If you have the personnel to do it, running a Spread package out of your Wing-T offense is something you might want to look at in the off season. We just dabbed in it this year, but the positives are immense versus how much we have actually used it in games. We will probably look to expand it and integrate it more into our base game plan next year.
Good to be back, and expect more once my season ends (which hopefully ends in about 5 weeks with a D6 State Title!!!).
School started, football got heavy into the season, and health issues reared their ugly head. Now things are good, I'm in the flow of things with school and now we have parent-teacher conferences (which equal a lot of down time since hardly any parents come to the conferences).
Update on my current team, Delphos Jefferson: We went 9-1 regular season and won the conference championship!!! The only loss was to a good Coldwater team (that will probably win state in their division) and we probably played our worst game in terms of execution (refs didn't help either, but not the biggest issue). We beat our undefeated rivals week 10 soundly and now play them week 11 in the playoffs. It will be tough to beat the same team twice back to back, but our boys are excited and ready for the challenge, especially since the game is being played at our place now. Wish us luck and hopefully we go the distance and get to the Shoe to win the big one!!!!
Now, what is this nonsense about a Wing-T offense running a spread package?!? I know deep down that there are probably plenty of teams that do this, but I also know a lot of people would look at me funny and call me a blasphemer. These two styles of offenses are on the opposite side of the spectrum of football, but both can be tied together to create an effective and dangerous offense.
I also want to clarify that I am not talking about running the Spread Wing-T style of offense. I feel that it can be a good offense, but I feel you lose the deception and speed to the hole that you get with under center and standard Wing-T. I also am not a big fan of the Pistol Wing-T due to the motion required and the mechanics of formations/plays. I have looked at both of these styles of Wing-T, but just do not get the same feelings I have for a standard Wing-T.
I am talking about having a base offense of Wing-T, but having a spread package that is easy to get into and can be run effectively to attack the defense.
At Delphos Jefferson, we run a pretty standard Wing-T offense, with only a few different tweaks to how certain base plays are run. So when someone plays Jefferson, they know they have to prep for Wing-T. The thing that I thought was a great addition and has been difficult for our opponents to adjust to is a simple spread package that can run by our base Wing-T personnel. We can run or pass out of the spread sets and they are true spread formations: 2x2 and 3x1 standard spread formations. We have about 5-7 pass plays and 3-5 run plays, with about 2 pass protections installed for the passing game.
The key to the success of this package is our tempo and our personnel being skilled enough to adjust to spread formations.
We are a up-tempo huddle team, which will break the huddle and snap the ball within 3-4 seconds. It dramatically affects how defenses play us, because they cannot switch personnel and align fast enough to keep up with our pace. With putting the spread package in, we can still break a huddle and get into our spread sets in about 3-5 seconds and get the ball snapped. Now, instead of just aligning to our base Wing-T formations, their defense has to get into spread mode and spread guys out. This leads to a very basic defense being run against us, with coverage being usually man and usually not much blitzing due to the DC not knowing if we would be Wing-T or Spread that specific play. So now teams have to spend all week trying to get use to our Wing-T offense, but must be able to adjust immediately to our spread game, which would require a lot of communication if they wanted to pressure us or get fancy with coverage. A big conflict that is there without us running a play!!! The ultimate goal of the Wing-T philosophy is already present before we even start the game...CONFLICT!!!
Our personnel is also a unique one that lends itself to being able to spread it out...not every team has that talent level or players that fit that scheme. Our QB is a solid player who understands schemes, our TE is a former WR, and our HBs are great athlete who can catch. That is what allows us to use our base Wing-T personnel for our spread personnel. The TE plays like a SE and our HBs are slot WRs. Our FB is our back in the backfield and is part of our protection most plays. The plays are limited and are very basic in design. So when it comes to our playbook, our players are not confused because our Wing-T plays are limited and simple in scheme and the Spread plays are based off of Wing-T run schemes. As far as passing, we run basic route combinations and very basic pass protections that are effective, but not taxing on our OL/FB.
I know some people might ask how we practice all that, but it really isn't "all that". We could not live off of just running our spread package, so that should tell you that it is basic. Our coaching staff has done a great job of balancing the time in practice appropriately to match our philosophy. Most of practice is dedicated to the Wing-T, but we have periods that we work specifically Spread or it gets mixed into periods with Wing-T. We also made sure that we installed everything at the right time during the summer and used things like 7-on-7's to work on our Spread package. As far as a run game, the schemes for Spread are the same as our Wing-T plays, just modified for Spread. I think this is the one area we need to work on making more effective and can rely on heavily as a curveball against better teams.
If you have the personnel to do it, running a Spread package out of your Wing-T offense is something you might want to look at in the off season. We just dabbed in it this year, but the positives are immense versus how much we have actually used it in games. We will probably look to expand it and integrate it more into our base game plan next year.
Good to be back, and expect more once my season ends (which hopefully ends in about 5 weeks with a D6 State Title!!!).
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