Smart Notes - 9/23/08

1. Eli Manning: Game manager? Sportscenter and all the highlights showed Eli's impressive long pass on 3rd and 10 in overtime against the Bengals. But what impressed me was that immediately after that pass -- where the receiver had to toe the sideline to stay inbounds and the referee called it a catch -- Eli did not miss a beat: he hustled his teammates to the line to quickly run and play and avoid review of the play. This is Eli growing in his self-awareness. And the Giants got the play off without any review of the catch.

2. The rise of the terrible spread team. I forecast this day some time ago, but this year's college football season has wowed me with the number of just awful spread teams. Now, there's some good ones: Florida has great talent, and just about every top team has some kind of "spread" element to their gameplan. But there's a ton of just awful spread teams. This topic deserves a much more in depth treatment, but the basic gist is what I forecast a few years ago: the offense just isn't an equalizer anymore, but instead more of an amplifier. If you have great athletes you can isolate them in space, but if you don't then you're just giving them one-on-one matchups they can't win and asking your quarterback to play perfect or you can't win.

But the biggest reason is simply that everybody is doing it and there's just not much novelty to it. And it's not like you can fool a defense with some dizzying array of spread formations when each guy on defense played against spread teams for four years in high school and every week in college. That said, this also makes the cries from these teams and their coaches that there's a "steep learning curve" with their spread offense ring rather hollow. How much different is it to tell guys to line up differently and read the defensive end on the zone-read? There's lots of teams who successfully do that who use it only sparingly; it's unconvincing when teams that rely heavily on the zone-read and zone options claim that they need more time to teach it.

3. Wildcat, meet the Patriots. There's plenty of buzz going around about the Patriots losing big to the Dolphins. And there's lots of buzz that the Dolphins used a funky formation to do it. This buzz isn't all positive, as for some reason NFL guys (announcers, everybody) can only act derisively when they see something that strikes them as a "college formation" or part a "college offense." (Nevermind that Bill Walsh's West Coast Offense began as a "college offense" at Stanford.) I generally take the view that the NFL guys actually are right when they say their game is more complex and intricate than the college game, largely because they have near infinite resources and time to devote to those things. (And most every NFL game is a close one.) But it's like these NFL guys failed to see a single college game over the past three years.

If they had, they might have realized that what the Dolphins did against the Patriots was employ the "Wildcat" formation, made famous by Arkansas which used it with Darren McFadden running the show. The basis for the set is a single quarterback -- actually the running back -- and another running back who goes in motion to either run or fake a jet sweep. The other reason it is unforgiveable that these commentators can't figure this out is that this is not a bolt out of the blue: The quarterbacks coach for the Dolphins is David Lee, who was the offensive coordinator for the Arkansas Razorbacks last season under Houston Nutt. Indeed, I will let him explain the Wildcat series, in a video the Patriots obviously had not seen:



Now, the common wisdom among these NFL guys now is that this was a one-week fad, if the Dolphins even try to use it next week it will be snuffed out because coaches around the league have analyzed this, diagnosed it, and will annihilate it if Miami ever tries to use it again. Maybe so. But I wouldn't be on it. Of course this is not an every down thing (unless Ronnie Brown starts throwing twenty passes a game), but the reason this worked -- unlike some other NFL experiments with the zone-read or other gun styles -- is that this is an actual series rather than just a play or two. That's obviously the case because, as Lee explains in the video, it hinges on being a series rather than just a "good play." And the fact that it is a series makes it a self-contained offense in itself, as the series anticipates a defense's adjustments. Maybe it won't work, but I'd be surprised if it is as useless as these talking heads seem to think it will be. Just ask the Pats.

Smart Notes

1.The Paul Johnson era at Georgia Tech started with a bang, as the flexbone ripped up the feared fighting Ryan Perrillouxs. (I'm actually at a loss for how to pluralize a proper name that ends in a silent "x" - the plural of "box" is "boxes," but the silent "x" throws me off. Oh well.) The question remains how the offense will do against the big bad BCS schools, though I'm of the belief that so long as the standard isn't that the offense must be #1 in the country and Georgia Tech must win multiple national titles in the next two years, then offense will most assuredly be judged a success.


For those of you interested in a clear explanation of the offense I would be happy to provide it, except it's already been done by SMQ (now Dr. Saturday), with the help of a football coach. It's an excellent explanation of the flexbone, so get your technical football fix there. If you're still not satisfied, there's an entire Flexbone Association with a robust playbook section for those of you who need more diagrams to help you for the next time you play as Georgia Tech on NCAA football.

One point on the offense. A lot of people don't really understand the whys of option football, and I think many of the spread teams now have further muddied the picture because they employ "reads" but don't really run "option football" in its pure form.

The regnant feature of option football, and the feature that makes the scheme so effective and timeless, is this: Instead of asking your team to successfully make a series of one-on-one blocks to gain yardage, you simply do not block multiple defenders at the point of attack, instead optioning off of them to make them wrong every time, and your other linemen double team and crash down on the rest of the defense. So instead of trying to win one-on-one matchups you may or may not win, you do things your kids can do every time: double-team blocks and successful options. As I've said before, you don't win by only creating one-on-one matchups. You put the numbers to your own advantage.


As far as the flexbone scoring against the big boys, I do remember a post-Paul Johnson Georgia Southern term scoring some points against Georgia a few years back:



2. Speaking of Georgia vs. Georgia Southern, those two square off this weekend. Georgia ought to win, but it's worth observing that Georgia Southern's current Head Coach is Chris Hatcher, an Air Raid guru whose named was for a time floated for the Florida St. offensive coordinator job. It'll be interesting to see if Hatcher's offense gives Georgia any trouble, because, under new offensive coordinator Tony Franklin (who coached with Hatcher at Kentucky), Auburn will be running the same offense, though presumably with more talent. For those curious about what the Airraid looks like, try here. (The nutshell version is that the offense is a derivative of the BYU LaVelle EdwardsWest Coast offense which Hal Mumme and Mike Leach studied, threw on some more shotgun, and stole a play from Mike Shanahan. Hatcher learned it while playing for and later coaching with Mumme and Leach, and Franklin learned it coaching with them at Kentucky.)

3. I don't like to make predictions, but here's one: If Rich Rodriguez wants to have success this year (or in any future year) at Michigan, his passing offense will have to get more sophisticated.

Now, this sounds like something Lee Corso might say, but hear me out. Many of the naysayers regarding Rodriguez's offense have based their opinion on no more than the last few seasons at West Virginia and Clemson. What they forget is that Rodriguez actually designed his offense back at Glenville State for the purpose of airing it out. He was a Run & Shoot guy, and his offense spread offense began as a simplified derivative of the 'shoot. So the naysayers overlook this history, particularly the stellar years he had at Tulane.

Yet, as much as it pains me to say, the TV guys are actually sort of right. When Rodriguez got to Tulane with Tommy Bowden they threw the ball all over the place, but (a) it was in Conference USA, (b) they were excellent at the 3-step passing game, but defenses are better at defending against those passes now than they were a decade ago, and (c) his downfield passing game left something to be desired. And in the years since, it's not that Rodriguez is at heart a running guy, it's just that was what worked and it masked some of the passing game deficiencies. When I study the route combinations, they do not appear to be designed conceptually, and instead are a kind of grab-bag of a few routes here or there. You don't see his schemes organized of horizontal, vertical, and triangle stretches.

Now, Rodriguez's saving grace is I've seen him in action, and he's an excellent fundamentals coach and is a great teacher. And I think he understands all these things - I mean the guy did exploit the zone-read spread stuff before anyone else - but hasn't had the chance to reexamine his offense with such a critical eye. This season, to be successful, I believe he will have to.

4. What's with this Dr. Lou business? I for one enjoyed the Lou Holtz pep talks on ESPN for the abstract insanity that they were, yet they've replaced them with some kind of Brechtian set-piece devoid of drama. And what is ESPN thinking? How can you meddle with this kind of genius:

"You wanna be happy? Eat a steak." - Lou Holtz

The A-11 Offense: A Pragmatic Approach

Update - Feb. 17, 2009: The A-11 has now been ruled illegal. The ruling is consistent with this piece: rather than aim directly at the offense or the formation, the National Federation of High School Athletics has clarified the scrimmage kick exception to be limited only to fourth down. As explained in the full-post, the A-11's creators, Steve Humphries and Kurt Bryan, had found a way to transform the scrimmage kick exception (which all agree was at least originally intended only for kicking situations) into an every down offense by putting the quarterback more than seven yards deep. The new ruling eliminates this by requiring that at least four players on the line of scrimmage wear an ineligible jersey number (50-79), except on fourth down.

The A-11's creators have a few arrows left in the quiver. First, they have encouraged teams interested in the A-11 to break off from their state's rulemaking body to form a loose-coalition of A-11 teams, or all A-11 league for themselves. Doing so would require that those schools would not be eligible for their state playoff systems (because they would not be following the rules/procedures that other schools did) and would have to encourage the other, non A-11 league teams locally to play them using their brand of rules. This proposal has not been met with enthusiasm, to say the least.

The other proposal they have floated, this time via email, is called "numerical camouflage." To me, part of this is an admission that the A-11 itself is not that innovative -- the major contribution Bryan and Humphries made was not the formation or the "super-spread," but was with toying with who was and was not eligible so as to confuse the other team (and officials). Basically, they would line up in the A-11 or old BYU type formations with three interior linemen, and give the eligible and ineligible guys similar numbers, like "68" and "88." This way they could still have everyone huddle up near (but not on) the line of scrimmage before the snap, and then, just like the old A-11, have some of them step onto the line and be set for only a second.

Whereas with the real A-11 each would be potentially eligible (before being covered up), here, although it would be foreordained that 68 would need to be on and 88 off, the defense might not be able to determine who was wearing 68 and 88 until it was too late. Make of that proposal what you will, but they are certainly determined.

In any event, it's slightly sad to see it go. I never had any animosity against the offense (certainly not against innovation and being spread), but the scrimmage kick exception was never the proper vehicle. Maybe football is moving the direction the A-11's creators say to being fully wide-open where linemen are a thing of the past, but why not do away with the eligibility restrictions entirely? Many states also have 8-man football leagues, which more closely resemble Arena football, which is itself something like what the A-11 proponents advocated for. Moreover, there was always so much confusion about the offense: so many thought that "A-11" actually mean that the offense could send eight, nine, ten guys downfield to catch passes, when the reality was that it only referred to what was going on pre-snap, and after the snap the offense had no more downfield receivers than the west coast offense or the wishbone. Maybe in the future we will continue moving that way, but it always struck me as bizarre that this was seen as some kind of ultimate and brand new innovation. As documented in the full-post, the actual formations have been around for fifty years, and the Canadians have been one-upping the A-11 since they can send six receivers out for a pass (rather than five as with every U.S. team, including the A-11), due to the fact that there are twelve players on each side.

If we want to change the rules we ought to do it head on. The memory of the A-11 will not fade away, and flag, Arena, and Canadian football are constant reminders of what is possible, if it is true that football is inexorably moving in the direction of being all-spread, all the time. I for one disagree that this is the only direction football goes. It is more cyclical than that and linemen are not as useless -- or as uninteresting -- as the A-11's proponents seemed to argue. Moreover, even in their vaunted offense, the players they replace them with are about as uselessly limited as a position can be: they stand on the outside of the formation and back up to possibly receive a lateral (which a lineman can currently do in any offense), but is otherwise purely a decoy. To me, the idea of the spread is to turn kids into threats by isolating them, moving them around, and unleashing them as downfield terrors. All too often, despite its "wide-open" appearance, the offense tends to restrict the number of eligible downfield receivers (because the running back is needed as a blocker with only three linemen, the offense routinely only can release four receivers downfield instead of five) and it turns players who can do multiple things to the defense -- yes, linemen -- into mere bystanders. That's not spreading; it's bad arithmetic. And that's not an argument against the spirit of the game or to persecute them, it's just that I don't think you gain a strategic advantage from the offense besides whatever deception you might get from confusing the other team about who is and is not eligible.

But that debate is over for now, and will have to be taken up in the future. It no doubt will be.

Original post

The Roman aqueducts. The Gutenberg printing press. The Wealth of Nations. The atomic bomb. The personal computer. Now, the “A-11 offense.”

The A-11 is a football offense which, in reliance on a particular high school rule exemption, puts eleven offensive players on the field who are eligible to catch a down field pass, at least until they are actually set and the ball is snapped. By contrast, on ordinary plays at least five players (the linemen) are automatically ineligible because of the numbers on their jerseys. But in the A-11, the offensive players hover near the line and then quickly set for the required one second before the ball is snapped, thus putting the burden on the defense to determine who is actually eligible to catch passes. If this sounds unique, it is. But the rhetoric of the A-11's creators might make you think that they had discovered nothing less than latest step in mankind's systematic and scientific march through history:

“We’re doing futuristic football. We’re doing football where every play is innovative.” – Steve Humphries

Others are not so impressed. According to the Washington Post, Joe Warren, the football rules interpreter (what a title!) for Maryland’s Public Schools, has called the A-11 “sneaky” and declared that it “makes a travesty of the game.” A quick perusal of the lengthy threads on Coach Huey’s site reveals the deep discord surrounding this offense. And North Carolina has banned the offense, making a second offense grounds for suspending the coach.

The debate is so vehement because the offense – and the behavior of its proponents – touches on many of football’s most timeless debates: the value of “gimmick offenses”; whether there is a type of “true football” and whether this offense violates it; the debate of whether something might be unsportsmanlike because though it is within the letter of the rules it is allegedly not within its spirit; and whether coaches are justified in marketing and selling their ideas for profit rather than sharing them freely.

Explanation of the Offense and the Related RulesIn both high school and college football, while a team is on offense it is required to have a minimum of five players wearing jerseys numbered 50-79 who line up on the line of scrimmage. These poor souls are branded “ineligible,” as in they are ineligible to receive a forward pass, regardless of where they actually line up. So you cannot throw number 63 the ball, even if he lined up in the backfield. Similarly, if 63 lines up at Flanker and 22 lines up as a covered guard, neither can go out for a forward pass, as 22 is barred under the traditional rule that only allows ends and backfield players to be eligible for forward passes. And unlike the NFL, High School and College ball does not have a reporting system to allow ineligible guys to become eligible again. This rule's animating rationale appears to have been an attempt to stamp out tackle eligible plays, possibly as a direct rebuke to Bear Bryant who in particular had used such plays with success.

This is the base rule. The A-11 offense seeks to liberate those five from their “ineligible” status by relying on an exception to the general rule: the “scrimmage kick” rule.

In both high school and college, if a team goes into a “scrimmage kick formation” (more on this in a bit) the offense can disregard the rule requiring the five-man minimum of 50-79 numbered players and can, if it likes, put eleven guys on the field who all have eligible numbers. (Still, only a total of six guys remain eligible to receive a forward pass: the two ends and the four backfield players. ) The scrimmage kick exception was put in sometime after the number-eligibility limitation to allow more flexibility on punt plays by allowing teams to put faster players on the field rather than having to keep five linemen on the field.

So the A-11 offense is built on this scrimmage kick exception. To confuse the defense, the offense puts as many guys up near (but not on the line) as possible, and then shortly before the snap six of them (two ends and four interior linemen, not counting the center who is already on the ball) move onto the line, set for one second, and the ball is snapped and off the offense goes. The defense then must figure out who is eligible to receive a forward pass. The offense compounds this confusion by having the ineligible guys put their hands up, run bubble plays or little dummy hitch routes behind the line. They also can of course block for run plays or for screens, and they can even receive laterals (backwards passes), but a lineman wearing number 63 could already do that without the scrimmage kick formation. Note also, however, that once a player has lined up on the line of scrimmage he remains ineligible and you can’t then shift who is on and who is off multiple times.

What is the scrimmage kick formation? I saved this for last because the formation is defined differently for college and high school. In high school, a team lines up in a “scrimmage kick formation” anytime they have a “receiver” of the snap lined up seven yards deep or more. (I say “a receiver” versus the receiver because it doesn’t have to be the actual recipient of the snap. For example, on a fake punt the punter lines up more than seven yards deep but the actual snap might go to the upback who is lined up only four yards deep.) So all a high school team needs to do is put its quarterback seven yards deep and then it may employ this scrimmage kick exception. This is how Piedmont turned the A-11 into an every down offense.

In college football, however, the exception is more narrow: A formation will only be deemed a “scrimmage kick formation” (thus making the offense exempt from the 50-79 numbers requirement) if the above requirements are met and it is “obvious that a kick might be attempted.” In other words, if an offense lines up on first down with the quarterback seven yards deep but with no other indication of an impending kick – field goal or punt – then the scrimmage kick exception does not apply and the offense must still have five guys with ineligible numbers. Some states like Texas use college rules for high school football so the A-11 is functionally illegal there, as well.

That’s the relevant framework. Below is some video of Piedmont:

As a final note on the possible origins of the offense, the idea of detaching the line from the usual five interior linemen set has been well known at least since the 1980s and 1990s as BYU under LaVell Edwards and Steve Spurrier both used such sets with success. Of course, both used it only in spot duty as a change up as something to make the defense prepare for a little bit extra each week. Run and Shoot innovator Tiger Ellison also explored the idea decades earlier. But, as far as I am aware, Piedmont under Humphries and Bryan were the first to wed the general idea to the scrimmage kick formation to get eleven possibly eligible players onto the field.

Below is the BYU formation, courtesy of Bruce Eien:

Controversy

In this section my aim is to take on two erroneous approaches in this debate – one on either side – and in the process hopefully shed a little light on why I think they are incorrect approaches to football itself. On the one side you have the A-11’s sycophants who have announced to us plebes that, through their Ideas, they have given intellectual birth to an offense which is truly Innovative, unlike whatever the rest of us have had previously been doing. (For some reason people like this are always compelled to capitalize otherwise commonplace words.)

The reality of course is that while no one enjoys football’s strategic complexities more than I do, at core football is a simple game, and none of us are luminous visionaries. Although there no question that it was creative to combine the BYU formation mentioned above with the Scrimmage Kick exception to create some pre-snap confusion, this is not the stuff of “Genius,” (as ESPN.com would lead us to believe), it is not “futuristic football,” (whatever that is supposed to mean), and, not only is it not Innovative (certainly not in the capital letter sense), the self-righteous obsession with transcending mere coaching to become known as an “Innovator” is immaterial, misguided, and probably just plain unhealthy.

On the other side are people who hold another set of beliefs so silly that, if they did not actually exist, Bryan and Humphries would have to make them up. These people tell us that the A-11 offense is bad because it’s not “real” or “true” football” because, apparently in some Platonic-ideal sense, it doesn’t look to them like real football. Their argument is that there’s a certain way one must play the game – no wait, a certain way you have to line up – which is likely based on no more than whatever people already do. Anything contrary to their conception of Platonic-ideal football is unsportsmanlike or simply “a travesty.” No doubt, these are the same people still grumbling about the spread, wishbone, or West Coast Offenses as being in violation of whatever football is to them in their mind’s eye. I will describe why the idea that there is some kind of pure, Platonic form of football which the A-11 violates is necessarily incorrect, and the people who make this argument are wrong. (In the section following this one I address some of the more practical questions of what actual rule makers ought to think about when assessing the offense, and I actually come out on the side that the offense should probably - though it is a close case - be made illegal.)

Self-Appointed Geniuses

One of the difficulties of discussing the offense is trying to separate the A-11's schemes from Steve Humphries (Piedmont’s director of football operations) and Kurt Bryan (Piedmont’s head coach), the offense's rather unique and vocal creators. A major reason why this offense so quickly left a bitter taste in these coach’s mouths is because it didn’t hit them the way normal football innovations do, which is by word of mouth about what some team is having success with: “Hey, have you seen what Podunk High/Eastern State U is doing? It’s really interesting! Check it out!” Instead, coaches were bombarded with the offense through some kind of directed marketing blitz more akin to laundry detergent than a football offense. To many, the “A-11 Offense” came across less like an offense to be marketed than as a marketing campaign looking for an offense.

Keep in mind that the entire history of this offense has been roughly 7-9 games of partial then full use by a single small division high school team. Within a matter of months of losing in the playoffs, Bryan and Humphries launched a soft and direct marketing campaign – complete with media and internet write-ups, websites (a11offense.com), message board postings, by hosting and attending clinics – and now of after some success there is now (surprise!) a DVD set available for purchase, where one can learn to install this magnificent offense for the low-low price of $199.99 (or $40 for a given component). Even the origin of the moniker "A-11" is preposterous: it takes a certain kind of hubris to actually name your own offense after using it for less than a season, especially considering that even the vaunted “Airraid” offense used by Mike Leach, Chris Hatcher, and Hal Mumme had been in use for nearly a decade before some employee working in marketing in the University of Kentucky’s athletic department thought it’d be a good way to sell some tickets.

But more power to them on this marketing blitz. If people want to buy these DVDs, that’s fine. What troubles me is their approach to football and their self-designation as Innovators and Idea men. Like much else in life, in football the conviction that everything you are doing is innovative (“every play is innovative”) indicates that either you are woefully ignorant of what you are doing (or else it wouldn’t seem so innovative) or you’re simply being arrogant and it's the arrogance blinding you.

The articles and sites that discuss this offense describe the three years Bryan and Humphries spent Thinking Important Thoughts about football. And, at least according to them, their resulting creation – this “All 11 offense” – is fueled not by the pedestrian concerns of common football coaches but instead (I suppose subconsciously channeling Hegel’s “Absolute Idea” in their mad reach for profundity) the A-11 is solely concerned with “IDEAS.” From Humphries's blog:

“It’s taken almost three years for the A-11 Offense to morph from a collection of different formations into a theoretical ‘offensive system,’ which then had to translate itself onto the field as an actual offense for the 2007 season. We’ve gone from ideas, to plays, to a system with techniques and throughout the whole process the driving force has been – IDEAS.”

Such self-parody hardly needs an encore. But let’s at least try to ask in what way this offense is driven by these ethereal and erudite IDEAS which, by implication, must be somehow wholly distinct from the types of IDEAS that are behind what other football coaches do. In other words, by what metric is this offense so Innovative? (Again with a capital “I”). Again, from Humphries’s blog:

“On the flip side there are many examples of new ideas making their way to the gridiron and enlightening the game. Florida’s game plan versus Ohio State in the 2007 National Championship game, spread speed across the field into open space and decimated Ohio States [sic] #1 defense. Rutger’s [sic] super spread punt in 2007 put severe stress on the defense and showed amazing promise if they tried a play. The Forty Niners tried a contrarian punt that looked a lot like our 'base' A-11 formation in week 15 of the 2007 NFL season. It almost got blocked, but Carolina definitely looked confused[.]”

So maybe the A-11 is truly innovative, so long as our definition of what is innovative includes game-changing irregularities like, uh, spread punt formations that a variety of teams have used for decades. Of course, what Humphries is really looking at as his barometer of innovation was that University of Florida offense in the 2007 BCS Title game between Florida and Ohio State. He mentions it here and it is mentioned both in the Washington Post and ESPN.com write-ups of the offense (of which the Washington Post's article was far superior; I lack the adjectives to explain how laughably abysmal the ESPN.com piece is). ESPN.com earnestly tells us, apparently in some misguided effort to convince us of Humphries’s genius and authority on the issue of his offense’s status on the Innovation-scale that – aside from going to Cal-Berkeley (holy!), Humphries (wait for it) diagrammed every single play from this Florida – Ohio St. game.

Indeed. This might be persuasive if (a) this wasn’t something that coaches did all the time to often hundreds of games a year, and (b) there was any evidence that Humphries had ever diagrammed another game in such a way. In fact, diagramming that particular game and repeatedly singling it out reveals Humphries’s ignorance on these matters. Competent “diagramming” of that game reveals that Ohio St. played poor defense, turned the ball over repeatedly, and got outplayed. Meyer’s gameplan was certainly great, but it was hardly innovative in some kind of revolutionary and game changing way. It was not much different than what he had been doing for years, and the fact that his offense at that time was a known quantity was why he was paid so much money to come to Florida. Indeed, I had discussed his offense and the spread more generally long before even that game. (Try here and here.) And make no mistake, it is not enough for Humphries argue that Meyer’s gameplan was simply clever or well planned any more than his offense is merely clever or well-planned. Instead both must be truly Innovative and “futuristic.”

Continuing with the absurdity: Apparently Humphries, in his profound quest to diagram Florida’s innovative gameplan, must have failed to diagram any of Ohio St.’s plays. Had he done so, he might have noticed that Ohio State, with Troy Smith at Quarterback, used the zone read along with many of the same sets and formations as Florida and Meyer (hello!).

But we should let Humphries go. Despite the fact that it is his name that appears most prominently in the media, I don’t believe he is the actual driving force behind the offense, though he appears happy to appear publicly. Kurt Bryan is the one who actually coaches the team and has implemented the ideas and he is the one who has made most of the rounds through the coaching and officiating circles preaching his revelations to the rest of us. And Bryan is certainly no less enthusiastic about the offense or in his belief that it is truly Innovative and Game Changing. On the Coach Huey site mentioned by the Washington Post, Bryan posted a thread innocuously titled “Seriously Innovative Ideas Forthcoming?” to post others’ ideas. Bryan invited other coaches to join in (while admonishing them and, of course, capitalizing "Innovations"):

Keeping this thread SERIOUS about forthcoming Innovations, does anyone out there believe in something Truly groundbreaking they are working on?

Bryan saved the punchline until sometime later, but of course, the big reveal was that the A-11 was (surprise!) precisely the kind of “Seriously Innovative Idea” he had in mind.

The point is that while the A-11 is certainly intriguing, what appears to drive these people is their self-aggrandizing belief that the job of a football coach is to Innovate and operate in the Realm of Big and Important Ideas, so that as a result they might be called geniuses (as ESPN.com shamelessly implies). They believe they have taken the pop-ready idea of the “Spread” to its extreme and should be praised accordingly.

As a threshold matter, I agree with Joe Theismann (in spirit, if not to the letter):

“The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

Football is a simple game. There’s plenty of complexity, but if you’ve appointed yourself a genius and a revolutionary then you not only lack humility regarding this sport (not to mention your profession) but you’re just plain missing the boat. Everybody’s got schemes. Good coaches surely spend time on schemes, but anyone who has ever been around the game realizes that schemes are just one part of coaching, and I’d say that schemes usually aren’t the outcome determinative part. I don’t even think schemes were necessarily the difference in that famed 2007 BCS game between Florida and Ohio St. that Humphries is so fond of.

And, most ironically, I think these even more egregiously miss the boat on what the importance of their own offense is in their frantic attempt to be recognized as revolutionaries and Innovators. Even with the A-11, a team is still constrained by ineligible players at the snap due to who is covered up even if it can play pre-snap games. They shouldn’t think of it as a super spread. Instead, Bryan and Humphries ought to view the philosophy behind their offense as a willingness to detach and play around with the idea that the five interior linemen don’t have to be seen as a unit of five interior linemen.

The Platonic-Idealists

The argument on the other side all-too-often goes as follows: the A-11 isn’t real or true football and therefore it is bad or illegal or sinister or poor form or the like. Yet, haven’t we heard this charge before? Yes we have: The spread isn’t real or true football and therefore it is bad. And the run and shoot isn’t real or true football and therefore it is bad. And the West Coast Offense isn’t real or true football and therefore it is bad. And the wishbone isn’t real or true football and therefore it is bad. Hell, at one time the argument was that the entire T formation with a quarterback behind the center wasn’t real or true football and therefore it was bad!

I could stop here. But the A-11 raises this important question: Is there some pure, true, Platonic-ideal football? If not, then why? The answer is that there is not such a pure, true, ideal football because football is a game; all the rules – except ones designed around safety - are arbitrary. They might have in mind competitive balance, but this doesn’t make it “true” or “real” in any meaningful sense. What are the most fundamental, “true,” important, or essential rules in football that you can think of? For me, short of the shape of the ball used, my tops would probably be the 100-yard football field, the limit on both sides to eleven players on the field, and the limit on offenses to four downs to score or get a first down. Certainly, all would rank higher than the number of players who might possibly be eligible to receive a forward pass pre-snap, which logically must also rank lower than the number of actually eligible receivers.

Yet, setting aside eight-man football, flag-football, and Arena football, look at Canadian football: the field is 110 yards long, each side has twelve players with six – aside from the quarterback – who are eligible to receive forward passes, and the offense has only three downs to work with.

Now, if the line of scrimmage was abolished and instead of scoring touchdowns by carrying an oblong ball into the end zone teams were instead required to either kick a round ball into a net or by to throw a round ball through a hoop aligned ten feet above the ground then the game could no longer be called football simply because we wouldn’t be able to recognize it as such. But obviously the ability to recognize the sport as football is something far looser than what the “true football” ideologues advocate as eight-man football and Arena Football, to say nothing of the spread, the wishbone, the West Coast Offense, or even, yes, the A-11 offense, are clearly recognizable as football.

So, again, there simply is no such thing as “real” or “true” Platonic football. The next time someone next to you says, upon seeing someone successfully employ a double-reverse pass or some next-wave offensive system, that what you just saw was not “real” football (this group includes many football coaches) you can safely think to yourself that this person has no idea what they are talking about, and you can decide for yourself whether to let them know it (if it’s your Boss or Father-in-Law, I suggest agreeing or simply staying mute). Football is a game designed for fun and its rules are designed for no other reason than to promote fun and safety for players and spectators.

This view is buttressed by the fact that the primary reason for a sport’s rules is tradition, and nowadays most sports, including football, have ruling bodies that establish the law of the land and continually adjust those rules. If there was Platonic-Ideal "true” football, then the believer would have to view these rulemaking bodies as either improperly tampering with the immortal or, somewhat more likely, that they were continuously tinkering with football in its current form to achieve in this world something more closely resembling true, idyllic football through a process that would have to be described less as rule making and instead as divination. Both are, of course, ridiculous, just as the base claim that there is such a thing as Platonic “true” football is ridiculous. I certainly don’t imagine that this is what such rule makers actually see themselves as doing, but if you accept the “true football” argument, those are your inescapable conclusions.

Verdict: The Self-Appointed Geniuses vs. The Platonic-Idealists

Despite their absurdity, Bryan and Humphries have the better of this particular strand of the argument. I will address in the next section a few thoughts on whether the Scrimmage Kick rule ought to be amended, but hopefully I have helped discredit the notion that football – or any other game – has some kind of “true,” inviolable Platonic-ideal form which makes violators of such true or ideal football both wrong and bad, and I hope I have shed some light on why the cult of Innovation is misguided.

Should the Rules be changed to outlaw this offense?

There are two lines of attack on the offense: First, it is already unsportsmanlike because, though it might be within the letter of the rules, it is not within its spirit, and, second, regardless of your answer to the first question the rules should be changed to outlaw it.

For the first, this is one of those moments where football coaches and those associated with football are forced to become like lawyers and parse some governing text for its meaning, whether in strict exegetical fashion as Humphries and Bryan necessarily do or by asking more broadly whether the A-11 offense is within the spirit or reason animating the rule. And like many lawyers, the interpretive method each side has chosen appears to depend primarily on the side they are advocating. (And it's not like this is the kind of thing that gets asked about in interviews for a coaching positions: “Enough already about tradition, being there for the kids, and building a fanbase here at our school, what I really want to know is when you read the rules, do you strictly follow the text or do you try to discern the views of the reasonable member of the athletic association that enacted them?”)

Following the discussion above, the rules governing football are simply the rules that govern a sport, and as a result are in fact arbitrary in nearly every case (again, 100 yard football fields, four downs, one foot or two feet in bounds, etc), so to say that something is invalid because it is not within a rule’s spirit even if it is within its text is an empty charge, at least in this narrow context. To say otherwise presupposes the view that Platonic-ideal football exists.

The tougher question is the second: Should the rules be changed?

The Scrimmage Kick formation was designed to enable teams to put faster players on the field when they punt. So one way to eliminate the offense would be to limit the use of the Scrimmage Kick rule to fourth down (though teams occasionally punt on third and long, depending on the situation), or to use the college rule which asks the official to only allow the formation if it is "obvious" that a kick could be attempted.

So is it so “sneaky” that it must be eliminated? There’s no doubt it is illegal in the NFL and in college football. And even Bryan and Humphries admit that the Scrimmage Kick rule was not designed with this offense in mind. So it’s fair to call this an offense based on a “loophole.”
But that isn't immediately fatal. In most states, a shotgun snap of seven or more yards triggers the rule that a defensive player may not immediately hit the snapper; the rule was similarly designed for punts and field goals to protect the long snapper who has to put his head down. But many passing teams have adopted this for their every down shotgun offenses to make their blocking easier and to provide their QB with more time. Coaches deride this as the exploitation of a loophole as well, though the rationale of protecting a snapping center from head blows still applies. But not every “loophole” must be closed.

Yet, the flipside for Bryan and Humphries of rejecting the Platonic-ideal view of “true” football is that the ruling body, being merely the body charged with establishing the arbitrary rules of a game designed for amusement, are free to do whatever they like. Coach Bryan likes to say that one of the best aspects of the A-11 is that it is fun for the kids, and he’s right that football rules are designed to foster a game that is fun to play. But not everyone’s fun is the same, and many – in my view rightfully – don’t always see the swinging of the advantage to the offense as promoting fun. Arena football and “traditional” football (a more accurate term than “true football,” though not entirely accurate because the game has still changed in many, many ways) were not meant to be the same. As a result, even the taking of certain aesthetics into consideration is permissible.

So the decision to close the loophole and eliminate the offense must be made much like we make other decisions in our democratic society in that these rule makers – many of different minds and opinions, after consulting the public – will not be able to theoretically deduce the best answer like Descartes or by appeal to Platonic-ideal football, but instead, like Montaigne (to stay with the philosopher theme), will have to bring their own best judgments to the question.

My answer: The loophole ought to be closed. I don't think there is any hurry, and it is entirely fine that it is too late now to ban it for the Fall 2008 season because I sincerely doubt that it will catch on. While it will be excruciating to hear the A-11's Innovative creators claim martyrdom from now until the end of time, the fact is that the rule does effect a rather significant change on the game and, to say nothing of whether that change is a good or bad one, it's bizarre to effect it through an exemption designed for punts.

Maybe the number eligibility rule itself should go (though if so I'd like to see the requirement that the offense be set increased to two seconds instead of one), but if it is why not abolish that rule directly instead of through this exception? To me, that - the oddity of making such a major change to football through a rule designed for punts - tips the scales in favor of banning it, rather than simply worrying about whether the defense might get confused. If Bryan and Humphries want to run their offense, they should take their results from last season and the upcoming one and lobby the rulemakers to abolish the number eligibility rule itself rather than continue with all this.

Alright, Let’s Talk Football

Alright, let’s finally discuss a couple ideas of how one might actually use this A-11 offense along with some possible problems. I personally think the best chance for success with this set is to ignore Bryan’s idea of “nodes” (three groups of players, one in the middle and one on each wing) but instead to freely flop the line around interchangeably. This includes rejecting the idea of being wedded to the minimum 3-man interior line all of Bryan’s diagrams include. These are my IDEAS. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Problems with the Offense

I have a few issues with what the A-11 set forces you into. My biggest complaint is that, if you ignore the raw confusion you might cause a defense about who to cover, it’s not a particularly effective set for dropback passing. This is because, with only three interior linemen (and only two gaps) you are largely forced to use one of your two backfield players to block. So what happens is that, while you have six guys “spread out,” you actually can only get at most four of them out to catch a forward pass. This is particularly significant because (a) the defense can largely ignore the ineligible receivers (assuming they can identify them), thus making them entirely useless to you (you will have traded one receiver for zero defenders, a fatal trade when, as I’ve discussed before, you really want to trade one receiver for two defenders to open the others up), and (b) you’ve shortened the pass rushing edges by a great deal. I know the theory is that you can spread and release it quickly, but even spread teams recognize that shortening the edges decreases the time it takes for outside rushers to get to your quarterback.

For the run game it’s hard to say because defenses haven’t yet had time to adjust so it’s guesswork to determine what fronts are expected, but generally the disadvantage of fewer linemen is that there are fewer gaps for the defense to control, and therefore it is harder to employ traps and double teams. For example, if a three-man defensive front team (i.e. a 3-4 defense or a 3-3-5 defense) lines up against a traditional set with two tight ends, there are six interior gaps to control and double teams are easier. If a three-man defensive front team lined up against the base A-11, they would have all three linemen covered and they have more defensive linemen than there are gaps. This is not fatal, but it is a concern.

Possible Advantages and Ideas

The theoretical advantage of the offense – aside from mere confusion on who can release for forward passes – is to further the spread offense’s quest to turn football into a counting game. Dan Mullen, Florida’s offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer, likes to say that as a general rule they will run the ball with their spread against five-man fronts and throw it against six-man fronts. The A-11 or an A-11 type offense can ratchet up some of these numbers with a healthy screen game. Really, if you’re going to spread out guys who are ultimately ineligible, they have to be a threat to block for screens.

This is one reason why I would advocate unbalanced sets, like the one below:

Then you could go to the line with a play like the double-screen play below where the QB reads the defensive end (if the DE rushes or stays home, throw it to R on the crack-screen; if he follows the R out throw the receiver screen) and has the option to check to an inside run like a draw or lead play. And one could also use simple quick passing plays with dummy routes by the covered guys. Again, I’m not a big fan of these dummy routes, but in spot duty they can be acceptable.

Also, if I was going to do this I would heavily employ an H-back because he would be the type of quadruple threat – block, release for a pass (or check-release), take a hand-off, or block for a few counts and release for a delayed pass – that could really help the offense. I’d like to say that there was a whole lot more to it but there really isn’t. Unless you’re going to have your spread linemen run complex trapping schemes out beyond the hash marks it’s difficult to have truly complex pass patterns or blocking schemes in this offense. (A good high school will often use sprint out blocking from this set.) But of course if it works to make the game into a counting one then that is a virtue. Simple is better.

Conclusion

How unique, this whole experience. I suppose it’s no surprise that the people who would try to turn the scrimmage kick formation into an offense (and possibly even into a Way of Life) would be like Humphries and Bryan – egomaniacs and desperate for wins. It’s a creative gesture, made all the more bold because they went right to it as an every down offense. And all the more audacious because the offense barely had gone from whiteboard to field before it became a DVD available for sale. But that’s the world, I suppose. I certainly have bought many football DVDs and materials.

And Humphries and Bryan might just be acting realistically: I expect this comet to burn up before it lands. I don’t think defenses will forever remain bewildered by the offense – indeed, Piedmont lost its last two games last season 38-15 and 56-21 – and there isn’t really a debate about whether the scrimmage kick formation was intended for this purpose (it wasn’t). Maybe the 50-79 eligibility rule ought to be done away with, but I’d guess that the rule makers will want to do it directly through amendment than indirectly as with the A-11. Nevertheless, I’m quite curious – all any of us have seen are a few p and some grainy YouTube clips – and I’m sure Piedmont will be heavily followed this fall.

Football and IQ: The Wonderlic Test

The closer you are to the ball, the higher your score.

The Wonderlic test is one of the most unique features of the NFL Combine. As I indicated in my last post (and as Michael Lewis suggested in The Blind Side), offensive tackles score the highest of any position on the field. Indeed, IQ tests are certainly not unique to football, but are an increasingly common feature of job applications for every sort of job, and the Wonderlic test itself is used in many professions. But its use in football strikes many as odd, if for no other reason than when it is given:

In another interesting twist, the test is also administered to players the day of the NFL combine—which means they first spend the day running, jumping, benching, interviewing, and lots of other -ings, before they sit down and take an intelligence test. It’s a bit like a medical student running a half marathon before taking the boards.

Hat tip Ben Fry. The questions themselves increase in difficulty over the course of the test:

The first questions on the test are easy, but they get harder and harder.
An easy question: In the following set of words, which word is different from the others? 1) copper, 2) nickel, 3) aluminum, 4) wood, 5) bronze.

A tougher one: A rectangular bin, completely filled, holds 640 cubic feet of grain. If the bin is 8 feet wide and 10 feet long, how deep is it?

If you'd like to try your hand at some sample questions, do so here.

Yet the question remains whether such IQ test results have any relevance to football. The popularity of the test suggests that it does, and much of this site is dedicated to the idea that, as they move up the ranks, players must synthesize and process lots of concepts and data in very short periods of time. But is an IQ test the best measure? Malcolm Gladwell suggests otherwise:

Picking a subject from his upcoming book, Malcolm Gladwell talked about the difficulty in hiring people in the increasingly complex thought-based contemporary workplace. Specifically that we're using a collection of antiquated tools to evaluate potential employees, creating what he calls "mismatch problems" in the workplace, when the critera for evaluating job candidates is out of step with the demands of the job.

To illustrate his point, Gladwell talked about sports combines, events that professional sports leagues hold for scouts to evaluate potential draftees based on a battery of physical, psychological, and intelligence tests. What he found, a result that echoes what Michael Lewis talks about in Moneyball, is that sports combines are a poor way to determine how well an athlete will eventually perform as a member of their eventual team. One striking example he gave is the intelligence test they give to NFL quarterbacks. Two of the test's all-time worst performers were Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw, Hall of Famers both.

Yet two anomalies do not disprove the notion. Charlie Wonderlic believes that "What the score does is help match training methods with a player's ability, [like the ability to understand] a playbook. [O]n the field, the higher the IQ, the greater the ability to understand and handle contingencies and make sound decisions on the fly."

I don't have a firm answer either way. I think there's nothing wrong with giving the test, and different teams appear to put varying degrees of emphasis on the test results. Some only care if a player scores extremely low or extremely high, while others take the test quite seriously. The image above clearly indicates it matters more or less depending on the position. Advanced NFL Stats has previously discussed studies that attempted to chart out QB performance as a function of their Wonderlic results. My guess is that the Wonderlic is a weak predictor in the same sense as the 40-yard dash, shuttle run, and the bench press: If you chart out performance with those combine statistics, although you will see a positive trend, it will be full of noise, will not give you predictions with high certainty, and counterexamples - like Dan Marino - will be abundant.

Pass Protection, the Super Bowl, Tom Brady, and the Blind Side

Question: What is the second highest paid position in the NFL? (Quarterback is first.) Cornerback? Wide receiver? Don’t guys like Randy Moss and Terrell Owens make ridiculous money? What about linebackers? Wait, it must be running back: guys like Clinton Portis and LaDainian Tomlinson command huge salaries.

No.

Answer: The second highest paid position in the NFL is left offensive tackle. It’s not really even close. Since the highest paid position is QB, it stands to reason that you’d pay a lot to protect him. Interestingly, until free agency arrived, all offensive linemen were paid the same. Centers, tackles, and guards all earned similar salaries. And, as a whole, linemen fell somewhere in the middle of the NFL salary hierarchy. When free agency hit, the age of the highly paid left tackle arrived.

Why Left Tackle?

There is a two word answer to why left tackles are now paid so highly. The first word is “Lawrence” and the second word is “Taylor.” Under Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, Lawrence Taylor destroyed opposing quarterbacks and helped the Giants win two Super Bowls. One legend tells of an opposing Quarterback calling a timeout because he couldn’t find number 56 before the snap. Identifying LT was typically necessary since the Giants moved him around on defense. But that time, the timeout was wasted: LT was simply catching a breather on the sideline. Whoops.

But LT’s hits did more than just derail a team’s passing attack for the afternoon. LT derailed careers. He knocked Joe Montana out for a season and, most famously, LT basically ended Joe Theisman’s playing career by inflicting some kind of multi-break spiral fracture of the likes not seen since the middle ages.

So the football reason that tackles are so highly paid – and the reason most practical to us here – is that an effective pass rush, particularly from a pass rusher that you cannot block, can totally shut you down. Such pass rush takes away large portions of your offense and forces you into predictable responses. The most sound of pass protections usually start out with the understanding that if the defense rushes five or six guys, you can pick them up, but your blockers will have to be able to block at least one defender one-on-one. No pass protection scheme can count on double teaming all possible rushers. If you can’t handle Lawrence Taylor man-for-man, then a five man rush becomes like a seven or eight man blitz, but also with sound coverage behind it.

I do just want to touch on the point about injuries and give credit for the above where it is due. Much of this discussion is the thesis of Michael Lewis’s book, The Blind Side.* Once modern passing teams became dependent on throwing the ball, the Quarterback, it became understood, became indispensable to team success. And once “pass rushing specialists” began to appear, one absolutely had to have guys who could block them. If your team can’t block them, it’s either going to be a long afternoon of sacks and incompletions, or your QB might end up in the hospital (taking your program or your team’s financial investment with him). Indeed, sport has no parallel for the quarterback who is consistently hit during his pass set-up and follow through. Imagine a freakishly large and fast linebacker like Shawn Merriman slamming full speed into a baseball pitcher in the middle of his wind-up, or Lawrence Taylor drilling Tiger Woods in the middle of his backswing. Remember, even LT’s 1990 New York Giants had to win the Super Bowl with their backup quarterback because their starter, Phil Simms, had gone down with an injury late in the year.

Blitzing: The All-Out Blitz

Contrary to what you might hear on TV, football is not really about “creating one-on-one matchups.” Sometimes this works, like if you’re a high school team and you have a future Randy Moss and they have a 5’10” guy who runs a 5.1 forty-yard dash at cornerback. Then one-on-one sounds great. But the better strategy is to force one defender into dealing with two offensive players. Think of option plays (one defender and two ball carriers), double-team blocks (two blockers and one defender), and good zone stretching pass concepts where one defender must account for two receivers (such as when a single free safety must deal with two receivers releasing free down the seams). An offense creates these two-for-one’s by forcing the defense to overcompensate somewhere else, such as where the defense is forced to commit two to cover one, or three to cover two receivers. One-for-one across the board will not get an offense home. Indeed, the Giants were always praying that they could get LT on a “one-on-one matchup.”

When most think of blitzing they think of all-out blitzes. It’s a truism that a defense may always bring one more guy than the offense can block: the ballcarrier’s counterpart. If an offense protects with ten the defense could still blitz eleven; if the offense protects with nine, releases one, and the QB stood back there the defense could still blitz ten. (See diagram.)

This has theoretical significance but is also (somewhat) practically irrelevant. The theoretical significance is that you can’t beat a defense by simply adding more blockers. But don’t make too much of this. On the one hand, you can’t solve blitzing problems by just adding more blockers because of the ball carrier’s counterpart problem evident in the diagram. But on the other hand, teams are less likely to blitz more people the more blockers you add. If you blocked with five most defenses might blitz six people 35% of the time; if you block with six they might blitz with seven 25%; if you protect with seven they might be willing to blitz eight 5-10% of the time; and if you protect with eight the likelihood of blitzing nine drops to almost nil.

Why that is, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a matter for cognitive psychologists, in that there is an irrational risk aversion to creating the same scenario – a single extra rusher – that arises when the D must rush eight or nine that isn’t present when the defense only needs to rush six or seven to get that extra rusher. Some offensive guys think it is extremely irrational (and thus an exploitable irrationality) because an all-out blitz against a spread set gives their QB more places to go with the football, more receivers to criss-cross and rub, and more opportunities to get an open man. Other offensive guys play the perceived irrationality the other way, knowing that if they protect with seven or eight then they will deter blitzing.

Then again, maybe this behavior from defensive coaches is rational, because more blockers might create the same scenario – a free rusher – but that free rusher might have to come from farther away, thus giving the QB more time to find an open guy. I tend to think the picture is complicated, but there is much merit to this last contention. A 15-25 yard completion against a blitz is far more threatening (and thus a better deterrent) than a 5-8 yard completion which a spread set might require with only five or six blockers.

There are excellent passing teams that take a “protect-first” approach, where the idea is to hit big passes against all-out blitzes and to play the percentages that a defense will get deterred from blitzing, and there are spread-teams that rely on hot routes, multiple receivers and quick passes. These teams seek to invite the blitz, betting that if they can get athletes the ball in space then they will break for big gains. There are good teams that mix and blend the two approaches, and there are inefficient and weak passing teams that lack focus and discipline across this spectrum. Like much in football, it is only partially a matter of what you do and more significantly an issue of how well you do whatever it is you do.

But the upshot is that the all-out blitz is not really where the action is at, at least among evenly-matched teams in high school, college, or the pros. Dealing with the all-out man blitz is a threshold question: if you can’t beat it, your offense will be shut down; if your defense gets burned every time (and you keep going to it) you will have a long afternoon. In this way, the all-out blitz battle between offense and defense is an example of constraint theory playing out.

Basic Principles of Dropback Protection

This is a deep and varied subject, but we have to have a little background to understand how the pass rush/protection game plays out. There are two types of protection schemes: (1) area or zone schemes, and (2) man schemes. Some protections blend these two approaches, either explicitly or implicitly.

(1) Area Schemes: An area scheme is where a group of blockers set up in a given areas and then sort and pick-up whatever “trash” comes through. For example, if the center, guard, and tackle are responsible for one side of the protection, and the defense crosses and twists a couple defensive linemen and a linebacker. This is probably the soundest “protect-first” approach, and good teamwork will allow the line to deal with defensive creativity with a simple sound approach.

Problems with area schemes arise when you introduce runningbacks, tight ends, or H-backs into the equation. The problem is twofold:

(a) An area scheme could leave you with a terrible match-up, such as a runningback on a defensive end (or Lawrence Taylor).

(b) An area-assigned protector who is also a skill player (like a tight end, H-back, or runningback) has a difficult time releasing into the route if the defense does not blitz. So any of those skill players who you have assigned to an area scheme likely will not get out into the route, and you might only have three receivers trying to get open against seven pass defenders. For example, see the diagram below.

Above, we put the guard, tackle, and Y (TE) on an area scheme, making them responsible for the defensive tackle, the defensive end, and the Stronside linebacker (Sam or “S”). If they were to stunt or twist, we’d be in good shape, but look what happens here: the DT and the DE just rush, and the Sam linebacker drops into coverage. So now the Y has to stay in to protect (where he is matched up with a defensive end!), the tackle blocks no one at all, and, at most, we can only get four men into the route. There are ways around this, but I want to highlight the concern.

(2) Man Schemes: The offensive front will identify their counterparts on defense and block them where they go. This is not always absolute. Typically linemen will still employ a modified area scheme (where they will trade defenders who twist), but running backs and the like, because they are set back further away from the line, can go where their counterpart goes easier than a lineman can. Look at the diagram below, the RB is assigned to the Weak (“W”) linebacker on a “man” principle. Wherever he goes, he is responsible for blocking him. If Will does not rush, the RB will release into the pass route. Similarly, H is responsible for the Strongside linebacker (“S”), and if he does not rush, then H will release into the route.

Man blocking seeks to eliminate the problems we identified with area schemes: as in the diagram above, a “BOB” approach - short for “Big on Big” and “Back on Backer.” The idea is that the linemen will take the big defensive linemen (who also tend to rush the passer on most plays), while the runningbacks or H-Backs will block the linebackers, who are both more their size and less likely to rush the passer than a defensive lineman. So you avoid both area scheme problems: the matchups should be better for the offense and, if the defense only rushes three or four, your skill guys can still get out into the route.

(3) Combo protection: An extremely common protection is to area block one side of the line and man block the other side, typically the side with the runningback. There is some dissension among coaches, but my view is that almost all six-man protections employ this concept, whether they do it explicitly (as I advocate) or implicitly, as others do. The idea is that most teams find it advantageous to teach their linemen to area block stunts and twists, so you wind up with a combo concept. I first explained this protection years ago here. Note that this protection employs my preferred form of "area" or "zone" protection, which is the "slide" protection. The details are explained below, but each area-blocking lineman "slides" to the gap away from the callside. I advocate a "full-slide" for many quick game routes, but below is my half-slide, which is the most useful and versatile protection I know of.

The base rules for this protection are as follows: Linemen to the callside [here, the right side] block man on until the first bubble (i.e. uncovered linemen, though the term "bubble" helps prevent against confusion due defensive players stunting). [Here the first uncovered lineman is the center.] From the bubble to backside the other will linemen will all slide away from the callside to that gap, and, as we like to say, pick up trash. For example versus a standard four man front, with the center uncovered, the center, backside guard and tackle will slide that way. The playside guard and tackle will block man on. The RB blocks LBs inside to out, from the bubble to outside rusher, or if you like Mike to Sam. If they don't come he releases.

There’s another very important concept, the dual-read. The dual-read is simply where a blocker is responsible for two-men. Usually there is a one and two: if one comes, he gets blocked, if two comes, the blocker must wheel out and block them. If they both come, he will only block one and the quarterback and receivers must complete the pass before two can get to the QB. This is easy and common for runningbacks. In the 1980s and for much of the 90’s it was common to do this with linemen (such as guards), but the practice has significantly decreased because it’s hard for a guard to wheel out and block an outside rusher. It became much more difficult in the late 90s and 2000s because defenses became good at freezing the lineman so he couldn’t get out there.

The Pass Protection Chess Match

So after this romp across protection concepts, we’re ready to understand some basics about the chess match between offense and defense. But first, a few preliminary remarks.

More than any other factor, sacks are primarily a function of the QB holding onto the ball too long, protection be damned. Any coach worth his salt is going to hold a stopwatch any time his QB drops back in practice. TV announcers who seek out what lineman to blame often miss the point: the QB needs to get rid of the ball quickly. The QB has just a couple of seconds to release the ball. Only a small percentage of sacks in the NFL and college can fairly be laid at the linemen’s feet. Now, the QB may get pressured, or have to throw it away, but most sacks are the QB’s fault.

Further, it is up to the playcaller not to make the QB a sitting duck. No one should ever call four straight drop-back (or play-action dropback) passes in a row. If the defense is going to take target practice, you should at least make your quarterback a moving target. I mean, “that’s [your] quarterback.”

The two best changeups – other than the run game – are the three-step passing game (see also here) and the screen game. But remember: the three-step game, as Bill Walsh said, was designed to take away obvious opportunities from the defense, such as loose outside coverage. Three-step passes are not necessarily sufficient to sustain your offense, and further, good defenses will bait you into throwing quicks and then will come up to make the tackle. Similarly for screens, if a defense is prepared for it, it’s often a negative play. So it’s all about finding the proper mix. This is all consistent with constraint theory.

Finally, do not forget about half-rolls and sprintouts. The run-and-shoot was based entirely on the half-roll principle, and I explained the sprint-out sometime ago here.

The Zone Blitz, the Hot Read, and the Dual Read

Hot Reads

I think the “zone blitz” is maybe the favorite term of the uninformed football commentator (second only to that abominable word, “trickeration”). But what is a “zone-blitz”? A defense does not zone blitz every time a defensive lineman drops into pass coverage. In fact, the defense does not even have to drop a defensive lineman at all to zone blitz. (I set aside here the abstract theoretical question of what to call it if a defense has no defensive linemen on the field at all.)

Instead, as the name implies, a “zone-blitz” means exactly what it says: a defense “zone-blitzes” anytime it “blitzes” or rushes linebackers or secondary players and plays a zone – as opposed to a man – coverage behind it. That sounds simple, right? I suppose commentators try to fancy it up since it’s obvious that teams have played zone behind blitzes for as long as teams have thrown the football. But, nevertheless, for much of the last century, most “blitzes” were tied to man coverage.

The reason is that most zone blitzes left intolerable holes in the coverage. If the defense blitzed two guys from the same side, a receiver to that side would run a route to wherever those defenders had just left, catch a quick pass, and pick up nice yardage. So defenses would typically bring their blitzes with man coverage in an attempt to take away these quick passes, and the game largely became about personnel and a QB’s poise under fire. And the Run and Shoot, among other offenses, relied on their screen game to deter all-out blitzes, because if the defense blitzed and the RB carried out his fake block properly, there was no one to cover him and he romped for a big gain. As Homer Smith has explained:

[L]earn from the great Run-And-Shoot teams that did not get blitzed for 20 years. Block a known rusher with an inside receiver and keep a second defender at bay with a delayed pass threat. (The Run-And-shoot singleback would block the end-of-line rusher and break off of the block four times a game for screen passes. Not until the advent of the zone blitz was the vaunted offense blitzed.)

So why is talk and usage of the zone-blitz so ubiquitous now? The reason is that, especially if you do have athletic defensive linemen, you can play games with where you bring your blitzers from and solve the two historical problems. See the diagram below for the basic “Fire Zone,” the most common variety ofzone-blitz.

(1) You notice in the above diagram that the defense is “blitzing” the Middle (Mike, or “M”) and Strongside (Sam, or “S”) linebackers. Under the old way, before the modern zone-blitz became prevalent, a common strategy would be to try to hit a receiver from the spot where the defense just left. Either the TE on a quick pass or, as here, the outside receiver on a slant. But, the strong safety is able to rotate down and take that away. Why can he do that? Because the backside defensive end has drifted out to the flat, and allowing the coverage to rotate towards the side the blitzers have come from. This makes the QB’s reads very murky, and murky is bad when big defensive guys are about to crush you.

So it is not the mere fact that a defensive end has dropped out and this “confuses” the QB and he throws it to some big lineman, though that sometimes happens. Defensive coaches do not want to actually put their defensive linemen in the spot where they think the ball might go – they recognize that they are not good pass defenders. The hope instead is to “hide” that defender, but still use him to allow the rest of the guys to get in a basically sound zone. Here, if the QB throws the slant, the safety will pick it off and take it the other way.

The other thing you will notice, is that by blitzing the Mike and the Sam the RB – here “F” – must stay in and protect the QB. That is significant because somewhere else on the line, either the backside tackle or guard, or possibly the center based on the stunt, will wind up blocking no one. In coach-speak this is called “blocking air.” So the defense has gained an advantage in yet another way: despite only bringing five guys, which presumably the offense would like to handle with its five offensive linemen while releasing the five receivers, the offense is protecting with six and can only release four receivers into the route. This is the chess match.

As another point, I mention that zone blitzes - since they only rush four to six defenders - are really designed to destroy six-man protections, which have traditionally been extremely popular with pass first teams. Even two-back, one TE teams like Bill Walsh's 49ers typically used six-man protections. I touch on some of the other counters to the zone-blitz in this article, but the simplest, and most effective, is to simply use a 7-man protection scheme (one is diagrammed above under "Man Schemes"). Although it is more likely that you might lose a possible receiver to a protection responsibility, it is better that than to give your QB a difficult hot or sight adjustment read or that he gets sacked. Moving on.

(2) The second point is more basic, which is that the screen to the RB that Homer Smith referenced above, which against a man blitz required two defenders to watch, is now largely neutralized – or at least its effects mitigated – because like a normal defense you have linebackers and safeties reading the play who can come up to tackle the back if they read screen.

Dual Read

In 2004, the Pittsburgh Steelers made an impressive run through the NFL playoffs, beating the Indianapolis Colts (an offensive juggernaut) along the way, and polishing off the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. I’m sure the terrible-towel wavers found this significant for many reasons, but for me, it signaled another nail in the coffin of asking offensive linemen to dual read.

As shown above, it’s not uncommon to ask a running back or even an H-back to “dual read,” or read two different men to see whether they blitz. The QB knows that if only one or the other blitzes, then it should be taken care of. He only has to read “hot” – i.e. an expedited throw – if both blitz. In theory.

Now, many coaches still teach their linemen to dual read, but it is not easy to do. The Steelers repeatedly used this tactic to gain an unblocked or free rusher. Both the Seahawks and the Colts consistently used had their guards and center dual read, and the results were not good. Below is representative of what the Steelers would do:

The left guard, shaded in green, would be responsible for blocking either of the inside or outside linebackers to his side. In theory, if the inside linebacker dropped and the outsider backer blitzed, the guard would wheel out to block him. No doubt they practiced this all the time. What the Steelers did – and this was not revolutionary – was the inside linebacker would take a step or two up, thus “freezing” the guard, while the outside linebacker came flying towards the quarterback. The guard would try to recover, but too often he was late, and the play was destroyed.

Observe how powerful that is for the defense. They only rush four, maybe five defenders, and the other six or seven all drop into coverage. The secondary can watch the Quarterback’s eyes, and he is under incredible duress from an unblocked rusher. Indeed, if the defense can get an unblocked blitzer with only four rushing, they often would blitz someone the back was responsible for, figuring that the one-for-one trade in taking the RB out of the route was a good one. See, how one-on-one matchups does not win you the game, but instead this was an example of the defense winning a numbers game.

(As an interesting aside, in the Super Bowl against the Patriots the Giants cleverly inverted this concept: Linebacker Kavika Mitchell lined up over the center, while an outside rusher lined up in threatening position away from the side the running back was responsible for. At the snap, Mitchell head-faked as if he was dropping back into pass coverage, and the center – who no doubt had a dual read and was responsible for the outside rusher, and who knew he needed to move quick if he had a prayer of getting out there – cleared out. Mitchell, instead of dropping back, blitzed directly up the middle and sacked Tom Brady. Mitchell made a great fake, but the reason it was so open was because the center had protection responsibilities besides Mitchell. Again, dual reading by a down lineman is never easy. It is much easier for a running back who has more time to see the defense in front of him.)

The Sugar Bowl and the Super Bowl: Sometimes it’s Not About Xs and Os, It's About - Yes I Get It - Jimmies and Joes. Well Guess What? Joe sucks.

In both the Super Bowl and the Sugar Bowl, high-flying spread offenses (the Patriots were basically a spread team) were largely shut down because of an inability to protect the passer. And in both, there really wasn’t a lot of clever scheming going on, it was just lots of the Lawrence Taylor phenomenon: Who do you have that can block my guy? The answer for both the Patriots and the Hawaii Rainbows was, nobody. This was doubly surprising because both offensive lines had really performed quite well through the year: both units were disciplined, hard working, and did not blow assignments. Yet, they were exposed. The reality is that sometimes, good offensive line play is not enough. At the higher levels of football, if you’re going to deal with freaks of nature on defense, you need your own freaks of nature to block them. That’s why the best left tackles get paid so much, and why, as Michael Lewis’s book (link, amazon) chronicles, coaches at every level are searching for those kids who somehow combine behemoth size with incredible athleticism.

But there has to be something you can do, right? Football is about reacting to and neutralizing the other team’s strengths. The most striking thing about the Super Bowl and the Sugar Bowl was that neither team – the Pats nor Hawaii – ever seemed that interested in trying to add H-backs or extra running backs to “chip” protect on their way out. (I.e. while they release on a pass route they get a small block or “chip” on the good pass rushers to help the other linemen make their blocks.)

I will leave it to say that I was surprised that neither team did it more. But I think a partial answer is that what made those teams excellent was a complete commitment to a particular style, especially in Hawaii’s case where they were coached by the excellent June Jones. Their offense is based out of that four-wide set, and to suddenly put tight ends and other blockers on the field, well, then you’re not a Run and Shoot team. Nevertheless, the problem of exceptional pass rushers is not isolated, so there have to be a few other things to do. I can’t cover them all here, but he’s a few.

The first thing is you must use the defense’s aggressiveness against itself. The first thing to do against aggressive defenses is to trap them. Below is a diagram of the quick inside trap, and you can read about the famous “Draw Trap” here. The theory behind the trap is that the defensive linemen will come hard charging thinking it is a pass, and the linemen directly across from them will bypass them to block a linebacker, while another linemen comes over and basically surprise-blocks them into oblivion. When done correctly, this can open up huge holes.

I already mentioned quick passes. For quick passes, I advocate a simple 6-man slide or area protection, which forces the defense to come from the furthest away to reach the quarterback. Of course, as I said above, some defenses may blitz and bait you into throwing the quick passes, so one must be cautious. But most passing teams will deliver a steady diet of quick passes to any blitz-heavy opponent.

Another approach, most famously used by Texas Tech’s Mike Leach, is to spread his linemen’s splits out wider and wider. The idea, as explained by Michael Lewis (him again):

The big gaps between the linemen made the quarterback seem more vulnerable - some defenders could seemingly run right between the blockers - but he wasn't. Stretching out the offensive line stretched out the defensive line too, forcing the most ferocious pass rushers several yards farther from the quarterback. It also opened up wide passing lanes through which even a short quarterback could see the whole field clearly.

This approach obviously requires offensive tackles with some ability, but the logic is sound: I will make the path to my QB as far for you as possible. And if we run our offense correctly, the ball should be gone. (Remember what I said at the beginning about how most sacks are the result of the QB holding onto the ball too long? Leach has transformed this rule of thumb into a philosophical mantra.)

Finally, the screens. The best modern play in football is the jailbreak screen. (By modern, I mean that it is one of the few genuine innovative ideas in the game, though by that I mean it is less than thirty years old, compared to most of what else we do which is, at minimum, fifty or sixty years old.) Properly executed, it turns a normal offensive play into a kickoff return, uses the defense’s aggressiveness against it, and it is particularly good against zone blitzes, where the play uses the fact that defensive linemen are poor in space to the offense’s advantage.

The screen involves an outside receiver taking a quick upfield step, and then he comes down the line underneath the blocks of inside receivers and the linemen. He cuts the ball up, find the alley, and goes to score. Again, this is probably the best deterrent there is against the zone blitz, as you use the defense’s aggressiveness against it, and those dropping defensive linemen don’t look too good trying to make tackles in the open field. With any luck, maybe it’ll look like one of the jailbreak screens below:

It's only fitting that I conclude with some highlights of the jailbreak screen:

Conclusion

In no way is this article an exhaustive report on the intricacies of pass protection. But it gets us far towards the end. Out of all of football, it is probably the most interesting "mini-game" within the game. The techniques are difficult - pass protecting is an essentially unnatural act that must be learned - and it is the defense that can move around, shift, and redo their alignment at will. Many a passing attack has been grounded from lack of protection. Sometimes from personnel, sometimes from scheme. Hopefully this article has shown how the two work together.

Endnotes/Postscript

* A few notes on the Blind Side and Michael Lewis. I highly recommend all of Lewis’s books. The Blind Side is good, but not as good as Moneyball or Liar’s Poker, though probably much more personal than either. It’s a unique story to football, and a good read.