The Triple Option, Week One

This is an example of one of our option plays. In this case, the play called was Wishbone Option Right. That's just about as basic as we get. The video has some narration, so turn your speakers on if would like to hear my description.

This was our first touchdown in league play this year, and it was on a true triple option. It was pretty well done for the 4th grade, if I do say so. Credit the boys for paying attention and understanding their jobs, and the coaches for their patient persistence teaching.

Our QB, BK (#5) reads pull from the defensive tackle going inside, and then gets a pitch read from their defensive end. Our halfback is in great pitch relationship position, makes the catch, beats the corner and the OLB to the boundary, and they're not going to catch him.

A couple of things to note about this version of the play. The dive read was the head-up tackle on Ox (#00). He was the 4th man, counting from outside in. Here's what their defense looked like. I colored the dive read key red, and the pitch read key blue:

X  X    X     X  X

 X  X X   X X  X

  O O O O O O O

        O

        O

     O     O

The way this version of the option play is designed, the fullback's running path should have been to the guard-tackle gap. In our offense, we call that the 4 hole. Our fullback ran to the 2 hole, which is more or less where he runs on the Midline version of the option.

(For Midline, the dive read would have been the man head up on our right guard. If our guard can rip inside of him, we give the ball to the fullback. If he gets hung up, or the dive read jumps to the A gap, we pull. We also have what we call a 'veer' version that is really just an outside option off-tackle.)

But back to this one - it was supposed to feature the FB to the 4 hole, but often times young kids want to run to the path of least resistance. The quarterback nevertheless made the correct read, and our offensive tackle did too. He knows that if the defender crosses his face, he blocks him down, and that's what he did.

The quarterback moves down the line, and the defensive end - the #2 man from outside in - comes right at him. With ideal timing, our QB makes a good pitch.

Because it was off the frame, you couldn't see that our lead halfback pretty much missed the #1 outside man, the cornerback. This was early in the year, and like I said in the video, we weren't perfect on this play. But the corner took a step inside toward the quarterback too, and by the time he realized that a pitch was going to happen all he could do was dive at our halfback's feet. Normally defensive coaches will make that #1 man responsible for the pitch back, and if we don't get at least a piece of him, we're in some trouble if we pitch.

Our tight end was supposed to block the outside linebacker, who would be the #3 man. I don't think he got very much of him. But he may have forced him to the inside briefly, because by the time he re-appears in the frame, he has very poor angle to try to tackle a kid as fast as our halfback.

One of the neat things about the option is that even if you don't do things perfectly, you often have just a little bit of space to let a good athlete make some things happen. In this case, the space was out on the perimeter, and our halfback (Peyton, #21) was plenty fast enough.

We won this game 12-0, and yes, we did throw it a couple of times on them. Had to really, as they had no safeties at all. 

What Coach Said, From Dad's Point of View

I have four kids in sports. I've had the opportunity to coach them all at one time or another. But I have actually spent far more time as a parent, watching them coached by others, than I have as their coach.

One of the frustrating things about being the non-coaching parent of a player is that you don't know entirely what the coaches are saying. You suspect that your child is perhaps a better player than he's showing, or that the coaches might be telling him two different things and he's confused. Or maybe they just aren't playing him in the position in which he needs to be play. Or perhaps you suspect your kid isn't quite there where you want him to be yet. Sometimes it is difficult to tell, but that in itself is frustrating.

To reduce my frustration, I try to do three things every time I'm talking to my kid about their participation.

• I always ask my kid, "How did it go out there?"
• I always ask my kid, "What did coach have to say afterwards?"
• I try to remember to always tell my kid "I really enjoyed watching you play."

I picked some of this up from the NAIA. I do enjoy watching my kids compete. And I think it helps them love the game more, and it is my way of thanking them for being involved and playing the game.

Regarding the first question, especially in football or soccer, you might think that I know how things went, because I have some coaching experience. But the truth is, I don't know. I wasn't out there. I didn't experience the game the way they did. My arm didn't get whacked by that helmet, the ball didn't skid away from me because of a bad bounce. I don't know how hard things were, when things were going badly.

I also want to know their mindset, and an open-ended question like "How did it go out there?" gives them opportunity to expand on any topic they want to discuss. I think it helps that I have a genuine interest in the nuts and bolts of what they experienced, but even if they want to talk about the officiating, or their opponent, or the weather, or the field - whatever - they're the star of that conversation.

But this post is really about that second thing I always ask. Doesn't every parent want to know the thoughts of the coach? And why is that? For me, about half the time I want to reinforce what coach said, and the other half of the time I want to modulate it or improve it.

But nowadays, in my advanced age and medium-depth wisdom, I try not to do either. When I ask my athlete what coach had to say, I'm trying to make sure that they've listened, and that they know from my asking that I think whatever coach had to say is an important part of the equation. But my response to whatever it was that coach had to say is non-committal. Or, at least I try to keep it that way in front of my kid.

I really do try to avoid editorializing, criticizing, or even applauding the opinions of the coaches. If I undermine what coach says, or if my kid can only wait until I've approved what coach said before they can accept it, that hurts his development. He can't be as successful as he might otherwise become trying to serve three masters - coach, dad, and himself.

For a parent, letting go of what coach said - being non-committal, when you just KNOW that the coaching they're getting isn't what you'd do - is quite difficult. But it's the right thing to do.

I did a little math, and determined that I now have accumulated 105 youth, high school, or collegiate parent-of-the-athlete seasons, with three more in progress at this moment. My children have had almost 70 different adults that coached or assisted coaching them. In all that time, among all those coaches, I've had a grand total of one coach for two seasons that I thought MAYBE did more harm than good.

That's not to say I haven't had issues with coaches, or questioned whether they were doing it the way I would do it - that's pretty much a daily occurrence in my little brain. What I'm saying is, in the biggest equation - relatively good, or relatively bad - my wife and I have been blessed by the adults that have coached our kids.

As you engage your kids about their athletic experiences, I understand you'll want to know what we coaches had to say about things. And in your shoes, I do the same thing. But this fall my two college kids won't be where I can ask them what coach had to say, and consequently I can't be any sort of barrier, buffer, filter, or lens for them. But I think they'll be ready.

Super Bowl Sunday

The NFL finishes its season today, while those of us with younger players are all in the thick of basketball, wrestling, and various activities of winter. It is the end of things for one season, even as the beginnings of things for next season have already commenced.

College signing day is behind us now, though many are yet to decide. My son Austin, for those of you that follow the ONW program, is still debating between Benedictine and the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.

Some college coaches have taken off for greener pastures - see Carrol, Kiffin, Gill, etc. Other college coaches have been shown the door - Mangino, Charlie Weiss, Mike Leach, etc.

Local small colleges have made news - William Jewell's Fran Schwenk has retired. Kirby Cannon has resigned after 11 years at Missouri S&T to take an assistant coaching gig at D I Central Michigan with a new coaching staff there.

Even the high schools change things a bit, as former St. Thomas Aquinas coach Kevin Kopecky finds himself in Leavenworth. Happily, he's not behind bars - just coaching at the high school - but a college coach told me that the two are much the same. He called the Leavenworth job a "coaching graveyard". Coach Kopecky had a great run with the Saints. It will be interesting to see if he can get it going that way with Leavenworth. They've always had some athletes - they've just never seemed to be able to put it together as a football team.

Ryan Majors is out at Shawnee Mission North and in as an assistant at William Jewell. Jewell will transition to Division II by 2012, and I wonder if it is out of the frying pan, into the fire, for Coach Majors.

Closer to home, rumor has it that 4th grade dad/ONW math teacher Greg Morgan will coach the freshman football team at Olathe Northwest next year. Let's hope so - it that pans out, what a great grab for ONW.

Soon enough we will be talking about NFL draft prospects, FCCJC board meetings, summer football camps, league sign-ups, and a new season of football will roll around again before you know it. But until then, and for today, enjoy the game.

Drive by Navy

Against Notre Dame, Navy showed patience and persistence in a really solid drive. I liked the counter option at 1:30 - our version will have a little motion preceding. I also like what they're doing with their ends, often lining them up about two or three yards off the tackles. That is just wide enough to force the #2 man to line up inside of them, but tight enough to block him for toss sweeps. And they have great leverage on the #3 man for the option plays.

Navy was helped out by a facemask penalty late in the drive, but it was still a pretty solid set of plays.

Thanks to danewhytboy and NBC for the video post.

Tweeting

Follow me on twitter.

I can't believe that I've just written that, but there it is. All the cool kids are doing it, so I guess I will too. There's a link down to the right.

@CoachJimAdam

Survey Says

I have tabulated the results of the survey. We received 33 responses and many comments. Thank you! If you don't know or didn't see, we passed out a survey at the banquet Monday night. The key was:

5 = Strongly Agree

4 = Agree

3 = Neutral or Don't Know

2 = Disagree

1 = Strongly Disagree

The survey had ten statements and space for comments. Below are the results and my impressions of what they meant.

Statement: My child had fun playing football this year. Average Answer: 4.78

Strongly Agree: 25

Agree: 7

Neutral or Don't Know: 1

Disagree:

Strongly Disagree:

97% of the parents thought their son had fun playing football, with one TBD. Since goal number one was to Have Fun, we feel pretty good about that outcome.

Statement: My child became a better player this year. Average Answer 4.59

Strongly Agree: 21

Agree: 10

Neutral or Don't Know: 2

Disagree:

Strongly Disagree:

94% of the parents thought their son became a better football player. Since goal #2 is Get Better, we feel pretty good about that outcome too. And from a coaching point of view, I thought the numbers were probably 38 out of 38 players. I can point out something about every single kid that improved versus the beginning of the year, though it may be harder to see from the bleachers.

Statement: I enjoyed the experience of being a football parent this year. Average Answer 4.66

Strongly Agree: 23

Agree: 8

Neutral or Don't Know: 2

Disagree:

Strongly Disagree:

94% of the parents had fun. As long as we're all out there together, I'm glad that we all had fun too.

Statement: Two squads with the same coaches was better than dividing into separate teams. Average Answer 3.72

Strongly Agree: 8

Agree: 15

Neutral or Don't Know: 3

Disagree: 2

Strongly Disagree: 4

I thought this was the most difficult question on the survey to answer. The parents that disagreed with the way we did it had comments like "Combining the teams to practice together in my opinion was very non productive" and "I would like to see the squads practice as separate teams and then scrimmage each other." One parent that liked the way we did it offered "It seemed better for practices, it allowed more per player play time; It may have decreased coach player time during practice" and "The two squads allowed for newer guys more time I think. It seemed to work out better for us as first year people." We had 23 responses (about 70%) that favored the way we did it. About 20% didn't care for it, and 10% were neutral. I had hoped that it would be a little more clear than that, but it is still a pretty substantial majority that thought it was a good system.

I have many more thoughts about this system and what worked and didn't, and I will write an entire post about it shortly. I want to meet with the coaches first to de-construct the season and get their impressions.

Statement: I liked the way my son was coached this year. Average Answer 4.25

Strongly Agree: 17

Agree: 10

Neutral or Don't Know: 3

Disagree:

Strongly Disagree: 2

27 out of 32 liked the way their son was coached. That's over 84%, and there were many kind comments about our efforts. Thanks for those. It appears that the two that didn't like "the way my son was coached" were not thrilled with the one team, two squads system. One of them even wrote "Thank you for your time & support. You're all great. But I didn't like the 2 teams." There were a couple of critiques as well about the offense - "The wishbone was a little too complex in the blocking schemes to have success in achieving long drives" and, more directly put, "I would like to see them run a different offense!!" But other than that, people seemed generally pleased.

In my view, our offense was decent for the black squad, and below average for the blue squad. I don't agree that the blocking schemes were too complex. Some boys totally understood them, and some boys struggled. I did study the 'long drive' comment, using the black squad, which was a middle of the pack team in their division. Looking back at the long drives for the season (and I will characterize a long drive as one of more than 50 yards) our black squad had seven drives of over 50 yards. Our opponents had only four. It is possible that the comment was alluding to long, multi-play drives that were absent of big plays. And most of our long drives did have a big play or two. But the long drives against us were similar.

Drives of 50+ against ONW Black

Olathe East - 70 yards, two 25 yard plays were big

Olathe East - 74 yards, a 57 yard TD was the big play

Gardner - 53 yards, a 53 yard TD play was the only yardage

Olathe South - 53 yards, a 53 yard TD play was the only yardage

Drives of 50+ for ONW Black

Blue Valley West - 80 yards, a 75 yard option pitch for TD

Olathe South Masters - 70 yards, big plays were 19, 26, & 21 spread between five other plays

Olathe South Masters - 54 yards, big play was 49 yard option pitch for TD

Gardner - 50 yards, big play was 43 yard option keep

Gardner - 71 yards, big play was 67 yard option keep for TD

SMNW - 51 yards, big play was option keep for 42

SMNW - 54 yards, 12 plays, longest was 18 yard pass

So while I agree that our offense did not have very many long, multi-play drives, I would argue that nobody does in youth football. Another way to measure the driving capability of the offense is to measure first downs plus touchdowns. Considering only the six similar opponents for the black squad (eliminating over-matched SMW and Olathe South Masters) our first downs plus touchdowns were virtually even. We had 31, while our six top opponents managed 34.

Statement: My son was placed on the appropriate squad based on his ability and experience. Average Answer 4.63

Strongly Agree: 23

Agree: 7

Neutral or Don't Know: 1

Disagree:

Strongly Disagree: 1

30 out of 32 thought that placement was correct, for 94%. One probably thought that son could have played on either team (likely) and the parent that strongly disagreed was one that did not care for the 1 team, 2 squads system.

Statement: I would have liked for my son to get more playing time. Average Answer 3.19

Strongly Agree: 2

Agree: 5

Neutral or Don't Know: 11

Disagree: 9

Strongly Disagree: 4

This was a tricky question to answer too. If you want more playing time for your son, then you would agree with the statement - but only 2 of 32 strongly agreed. The five others that agreed weren't adamant about it, and I would suspect recognize the difficulty of the numbers. For the same reason many of us put neutral or don't know - that is, sure, it would be nice if my kid got to play more, but he didn't have to. The score for this answer was the closest to neutral of all the questions.

Statement: I wish my son could have played a different position. Average Answer 2.78

Strongly Agree: 2

Agree: 5

Neutral or Don't Know: 13

Disagree: 8

Strongly Disagree: 4

This statement was also fairly close to neutral. If a parent answered neutral or disagree, then I took it to mean that they were at least comfortable with the position their son played. So that worked out to 78%. The other 22% would have liked to have seen their sons play a different position, which may also mean playing on another side of the ball - I don't disagree with that at all, but once again, roster numbers tended to reduce our ability to do that and still have fun.

Statement: I would like for my son to play football again next year. Average Answer 4.84

Strongly Agree: 29

Agree: 2

Neutral or Don't Know: 1

Disagree:

Strongly Disagree:

This statement garnered the most positive reactions on the survey. 97% of you parents would like for your son to play football again next year. I deliberately left the statement vague, i.e. what position, what coach, what team, etc. I wanted to make sure that we hadn't ruined the game for anybody, as that would be really disheartening. So far, so good.

Statement: Football is expensive. Average Answer 3.52

Strongly Agree: 7

Agree: 5

Neutral or Don't Know: 12

Disagree: 4

Strongly Disagree: 1

The one that strongly disagreed with this statement probably pays for premier soccer. I think football is a little bit expensive, but when I compare it to some other sports, it actually becomes somewhat reasonable. Nevertheless, I ask this in part to communicate to the FCCJC board that costs do matter, and to let our sponsors know that every little bit helps.

Thank you all so much for your responses and insight about our program!

Two Plays

Great effort this weekend by both squads.

Our Blue squad won against SMN - an experienced team that already had two wins against teams that had wins over us. Great job Blue squad!

Our Black squad played the other 3rd place team, Shawnee Mission Northwest. The Cougars had given BVNW their only division loss and had the most points in the National division. Two plays made all the difference.

The first play was our touchdown play. If you option out to the right often enough, then start that way one more time you can wrong-side the linebackers. Watch all three of SMNW's linebacker's end up on the wrong side of the umpire.

The other play was 4th and goal for SMNW, in their overtime period. They'd managed to get to the 1 inch line in three plays, and this was the whole ball game. Coach Lee was pretty excited.