Playing Against the Best Players

Youth football players seem to fall into three types, and every youth team has certain numbers of each. I call the types Stud, Decent, and Learning. This is just my own terminology, and a gross over-generalization of course. Every player can improve, and no player is hopeless. Nevertheless, I offer you

• The STUD. This is one of the best players on the team. He can beat blocks, tackle, and run. He's a do-everything-well type of guy.

• The DECENT player. This guy doesn't hurt the team. He's average, or sometimes just above or just below average. He isn't a stud because of some flaw. He may be a little bit slow, or small, or not competitive, or not athletic. But he also typically brings some other abilities to the game that let him make plays when he is in the right position. The majority of the players that we coach fall into this category.

• The LEARNING player. Often this is a new player, very small, or slow, or all three. He can probably position himself correctly at the snap, and he may not lack for courage, but athletically he can't handle the stud player. Even the decent players can block and tackle him relatively easily.

These categories are relative to all the other players on the field. A 'stud' in one league might only be a decent player in the next league up.

Every youth defense that we see has some stud players, and some decent players. Some of the youth defenses we see, at least some of the time, will also have learning players on the field. In our football league there is a minimum play rule, so the newer, smaller, or slower guys will absolutely get a chance to play. Those kids are more prevalent in the B divisions than in the A divisions.

So where are those stud defenders? What is the likelihood that any particular defender will be a stud or not a stud?  We usually find studs in the middle of the field as middle linebackers and safeties. We regularly see them as the EMLOS, which stands for End Man on the Line of Scrimmage. Linebackers are also quite often studs.

We don't usually see studs at cornerback. And usually only one defensive lineman, if any, will be a stud in youth football. Defensive line and cornerback are two common places teams put their decent or learning players.

For the offensive coordinator of a youth football team, I've always thought that a key part of the job is to put the offense in a position to get the ball past the stud defenders, and then let our ball carrier take on the decent or weak players.

One of my favorite things about option football is that while our guys may not be able to block a stud defender one-on-one, there are four other things that we can do to try to handle him.

• We can Angle block him. If he is already lined up away from the play, and we bring a decent blocker into him, the defender's effectiveness is cut in half at least.
• We can Double Team him. Even if he's a stud, we can probably control him briefly with two decent blockers.
• We can Run Away from him. If he's clearly on one side of the field or the other, we can run to the other side.
• We can Option him. If we don't block him, but instead force him to choose incorrectly, then our ball carrier can run right past him.

The first three strategies are available to ANY offense of course.  But only an option offense introduces that fourth way of handling the stud defender.

Below is a drawing of how our option can handle the stud defenders on a defense we ran into last year. I've designated the Studs on both sides of the ball with the letter S and the Decent players with the letter D. Our opponent had four really great defensive players, and they played them at Safety (Ss), Defensive End (S2), Middle Linebacker (Sb), and as a stand-up Defensive Tackle (S4).  The rest of their players were what I would call Decent.

And at the bottom of this post is a video that shows one of the plays we ran.

They aligned pretty much like the drawing above, but it is a little confusing because none of their defensive linemen were in a three or four point stance.

S4 lines up in the B gap, so he would be relatively easy for our decent offensive tackle to block down - but in the video he stands up and tries to blitz the A gap, and takes himself entirely out of the play. He'd have been much trickier if he'd played a 4 technique, but they had him line up in a 3 tech much of the night, and that's an easy read for our offensive tackle.

S2 was a hard charger. We'd run so much outside veer against them the first time we played them that they were determined to get him (#17 in the video) into the mesh. Fortunately on this play we were running inside option, so our QB had already faked and was thinking pitch as he came in hot.

D3 is decent but small and somewhat unaware. He gets crushed by our split end on a crack block.

Sb is in the middle of the field, and looks for the fullback and QB Dive Follow first. Since he hangs around inside, our fullback is able to pick him off as he attempts to flow over the top.

Ss is far enough behind the play that we chose not to block him. His ability is such that we won't get many breakaway touchdowns against this team, but by playing him at safety we've got a better chance to make positive yardage then if they played him up one level as an OLB.

Our Stud running back (who is very small, but a fabulous blocker) is lead blocking on this play, isoloated on the cornerback, and just wipes him out. You can see them both on the ground as the play gets outside.

Even though our ball carrier is just a decent, not great, runner, he IS somewhat hard to bring down, and gets some extra yards after they try to tackle him.

Here's a video of Option Right, and a pretty good example of working the option to isolate and defeat the other team's best players.

Just What Coach Requested

And now Kevin Ross has been selected to the Chiefs Hall of Fame.

http://chiefsblog.kansascity.com/?q=node/1690

If I could get my family to respond as quickly as the Chiefs did to my request - see Favorite Players, #6, in this post from January - well, I guess I wouldn't be a dad would I? I'd be a mom or something.

Football vs. Soccer - Guessing Numbers

I confess to starting this project with the assumption that boys youth soccer would be found to be far larger than youth football in Johnson County. I think I may be wrong about that.

I started comparing 4th, 5th, & 6th grade numbers of teams to their roughly corresponding soccer age groups (U10, U11, and U12) by looking at the Football and Cheerleading Club of Johnson County, the Blue Valley Football Club, and the Heartland Soccer Association.

I know there are more clubs for both football and soccer. Leawood, Shawnee, and the YMCA have recreational soccer teams that I'm not counting. Likewise DeSoto, Lees Summit, and CYO have sizable tackle football programs. And there are probably dozens of Parks and Rec programs for both soccer and flag football that might skew the numbers some. But I had to start somewhere.

In the Football and Cheerleading Club of Johnson County (FCCJC) last year there were 61 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teams playing last season. For those same three grades in the Blue Valley Football Club, there were 59 teams, making a total of 120 teams playing tackle football in those grades in our area.

By comparison, in the fall of 2010 there were 175 premier and recreational U10, U11, and U12 boys soccer teams playing in the Heartland Soccer Association.

I only studied those grades and ages because Olathe middle schools start playing school football now in the 7th grade, and some 2nd and 3rd graders play flag football rather than tackle. In addition, soccer has larger recreational programs in the individual Heartland member clubs at younger ages, that then subsequently gravitate toward Heartland competition beginning at about U10.

Bear in mind that the soccer teams have smaller rosters. U10 teams play 6 v 6 with maximum roster sizes of twelve, and U11 and U12 teams play 8 v 8 with maximum rosters of fourteen. In my experience, the 6 v 6 teams often carry ten or eleven players, and 8 v 8 teams average about fourteen players.

Football teams play 11 v 11 at all ages, and rosters can become quite large - but coaches and area directors don't really like that, and we usually see teams try to have between fifteen and twenty-two players. I estimate eighteen as average.

Soccer is far more stratified than football. Both FCCJC and Blue Valley Football seed their teams, placing them in A and B leagues. FCCJC occasionally has divisions within a league for scheduling purposes, but they are equal. 

Soccer has as many as five premier divisions, and sometimes 2 or 3 recreational divisions. These numbers consolidate somewhat at higher ages 11 v 11 teams, but there are almost always three or more divisions, even through high school. Their seeding meetings can sometimes be quite contentious.

Finally, all these numbers are somewhat cloudy due to players that play both sports. Not every soccer team has a football player, but an awful lot of football coaches I talk to have kids rostered that also play soccer.

Just doing the math of my unscientific estimates (10.5, 14, and 18-player rosters) here's a snapshot of how football numbers might look versus soccer in Johnson County. I looked at top divisions, then second level divisions (usually one B division in football, and as many as six in soccer), and then a grand total.

Football Soccer Teams Estimated # Players Comparison	FB Teams	S Teams	FB Players	S Players
4th Grade/U10 A Divisions	16	7	288	75
4th Grade/U10 B and C-G Divisions	21	46	378	483
4th Grade/U10 TOTAL All Divisions	37	53	666	558
5th Grade/U11 A Divisions	16	8	288	112
5th Grade/U11 B and C-G Divisions	25	58	450	812
5th Grade/U11 TOTAL All Divisions	41	66	738	924
6th Grade/U12 A Divisions	21	7	378	98
6th Grade/U12 B and C-G Divisions	21	49	378	686
6th Grade/U12 TOTAL All Divisions	42	56	756	784
All 3 Grade-Ages, A Divisions	53	22	954	285
All 3 Grade-Ages, B-G Divisions	67	153	1,206	1,981
All 3 Grade-Ages, All Divisions	120	175	2,160	2,266

I'm not sure what, if any, conclusions to draw from these extrapolated numbers. Both FCCJC and Blue Valley are 1/2 the size of Heartland Soccer, but taken together are right there in terms of numbers. And that surprised me.

Emory Ballard

Almost missed this.

Emory Ballard died earlier this month. In 1968 he was an offensive coordinator for Daryl Royal at Texas, where he invented the wishbone formation.

Later on as head coach at Mississippi State, he 'broke' the 'bone by putting a wingback on one side or the other and bringing him in motion. This ultimately lead to the flexbone formations seen today at the service academies, Georgia Tech, and others (including our FCCJC ONW Ravens 2018 teams.)

You can read more about the history of Emory Ballard here, and the wishbone formation here.

When I started playing youth football in 1972, everybody knew about the wishbone of course, because Texas won about 30 games in a row and two national championships running it.

We started using it on my youth team in 1974 because our coaches had seen Oklahoma start running it, and they thought it was the wave of the future.

I'm pretty sure that influential KU alumni must have seen our Indian Hills Warriors running the wishbone and decided then and there to hire Bud Moore, an Alabama assistant coach, to bring the formation to the hill.

(Bud probably wasn't a great head coach, but he had a great safety from Ransom, Kansas named Nolan Cromwell. The 'Ransom Rambler' as Tom Hedrick used to call him, was turned by Coach Moore into one of the very best option quarterbacks ever. He held the single game rushing record for quarterbacks for many, many years. KU lost to Pittsburgh and Tony Dorsett in the '75 Sun Bowl. We wuz robbed - I spoke to Cromwell about it when I saw him at a wedding in 1976, and he agreed. So there.)

As a long-time high school coach, Ballard was probably influenced by a Fort Worth, Texas junior-high coach named Charles 'Spud' Cason, who was having success with a third back in the backfield. And Ballard himself had seen another high school coach put a offensive guard in the backfield to give him a running start.  When Royal asked him to create a three-back triple option offense for the Longhorns in '68, undoubtedly those memories were influential.

Nevertheless, Ballard was the first one to introduce the system at the college level, and he really organized and perfected it.

It is amazing to me that the imagination of a long-time high school football coach ended up touching so many lives, and creating so much athletic history.

Parent Treat

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/01/katie-prefect.html

Go Chiefs!

Good luck to my favorite professional football team in the playoffs Sunday! You guys are fun to watch, and you play hard. In your honor, I bestow the following lengthy post.

Coach Schriner asked me tonight who I thought the all time best Kansas City Chief player was. Trevor told him it was Priest Holmes. He was certainly a good one, and absolutely one of my all-time favorites.  It got me thinking about my 'best' and 'favorite' lists - which are two distinct things. So I will list them for you. Not because I'm right (though I am) but because these are fun.

I'll start with the list of the BEST Kansas City Chiefs. I admit a bias toward players that had the majority of their glory days in KC.

The top 7 are all members of the NFL Hall of Fame. And they were easy to put on the list, though difficult to sort. Numbers eight through ten though were very difficult, as I've left off Will Shields (who is the best guard to ever play for the Chiefs), as well as Marcus Allen, Joe Montana, Ed Podalak, Jerrel Wilson, Jonny Robinson, Art Still, Curly Culp, Deron Cherry, Jim Tyrer, Christian Okoye, Willie Roaf, and Joe Delaney. I'm sure any number of those guys would be on other people's lists.

• 10. Otis Taylor - the best wide receiver to ever wear the red and gold.
• 9. Tony Gonzalez - he redefined the position of Tight End in the NFL. Now everybody looks for ex-basketball players. He will be in the NFL Hall of Fame.
• 8. Priest Holmes - the best offensive player from the best offensive teams in the history of the franchise.
• 7. Emmitt Thomas - the best cornerback to ever wear the red and gold.
• 6. Jan Stenerud - Redefined the position of place kicker in the NFL.
• 5. Buck Buchanon - 6' 7", 287 pounds, and the best defensive tackle the Chiefs have ever had. Aside from being an 8-time All AFL or All Pro player, he did two other really amazing things. The first is that he completely changed the Oakland Raiders, because they got Art Shell (another NFL Hall-Of-Famer) specifically to block Buck. The second is, he ran a 10.2 second 100 yard dash at Grambling. That's probably 11 flat for 100 meters. Think about a 6' 7" guy moving that fast just to lay you out... and tremble. 
• 4. Willie Lanier - Redefined the position of middle linebacker in the NFL.
• 3 - Derick Thomas - Most thrilling player ever to wear the red and gold. I loved going to the 'military flyover' games. Hardest I ever laughed after a Chiefs loss was the DT-7-Sacks-of-Dave-Kreig game, when Bill Grigsby and Len Dawson were chatting about the devastating last-second loss on the post-game radio show:

G: "Lenny, I'm too old to cry, and not quite sick enough to puke."

D: (chuckling) "So what are you going to do then?"

G: "I'm gonna go home and have a big stiff one. 

D: "Well." (starts laughing)

G: (starts laughing)

D & G: (now they are getting each other going and neither one of them can stop laughing.)

As funny as those guys were, it made it a little better day. And it was the greatest single individual defensive performance I have ever seen. 

• 2 - Len Dawson - The first and still greatest 'face of the franchise' type guy in this town. Lenny the cool.
• 1 - Bobby Bell - Redefined the position of outside linebacker in the NFL. 

And now, because first and foremost I'm a FAN, I get to give you my ten FAVORITE players. These are the guys that I loved to watch, and made the game a blast for me.

• 10. Ed Podalak. Christmas Day, 1971. I WASN'T there for the longest game in NFL history, because my dad gave MY ticket to my great uncle Blair. But I watched the whole thing on TV, and it was the greatest offensive performance I have ever seen. What an incredible player he was, and we were so lucky to watch him play.
• 9. Super Gnat - Long before Dexter McCluster, ages before Dante Hall, the Chiefs had a diminutive, hold-your-breath-there-he-goes kick returner named Noland Smith. He was good, he was tiny, and he was in the movie MASH. Which is pretty cool.
• 8. Jerrel Wilson. I know, he was a punter. But so was I in junior high, so it's OK for me to put him on my favorite list. Plus, he was really, really good. He absolutely KILLED the ball. You could hear the WHUMP from the upper deck.
• 7. Mike Garrett. 65 Toss Power Trap. Enough said.
• 6. Kevin Ross. I told anybody that would listen, after his rookie season, CUT HIM, he will never be any good. He taught me why I am not a professional football coach, or a general manager. His effort, and attitude, and indomitable willpower made him an incredible team leader. Every other member of that secondary he played in is now a member of the Chiefs Hall Of Fame. He needs to be there too.
• 5. Dino Hackett. On the day they drafted Hackett, I was watching ESPN. They did a little interview with this backwater hick kid, and they asked him some inane thing about his greatest strength or something. Hacket kind of got this sleepy-eyed assassin look in his eye and drawled, "I just like to hit." Right then and there - favorite. And he did not disappoint.
• 4. Art Still. He was huge. And he was un-blockable. And he had nine kids and he just ate nuts and berries and really didn't give a darn what anybody thought about it. He was the coolest of the cool.
• 3. Willie Roaf.  To watch him pull and lead was awe inspiring. He was a devastating and dominant machine. Mind-boggling athlete in a body that large. NFL Hall of Famer for sure.
• 2. Priest Holmes. Incredible, amazing, unbelievable. Favorite offensive player ever.
• 1. Derrick Thomas. Incredible, amazing, unbelievable. Favorite defensive player ever. RIP.

Good luck Chiefs!

Game Theory

For your Christmas present this year, allow me to introduce you to a little Game Theory. Let's start with Minimax Theory. Impress your friends! Freak out your relatives! Here's a summary of that theory:

"For every two-person, zero-sum game with finite strategies, there exists a value V and a mixed strategy for each player, such that (a) Given player 2's strategy, the best payoff possible for player 1 is V, and (b) Given player 1's strategy, the best payoff possible for player 2 is −V."

Let me take a crack at it for you, without the algebra... Two opponents in a game where one will win and the other will lose will each try to minimize their bad outcomes, and maximize their good outcomes.

A gentleman named John Forbes Nash created a game solution concept for a zero-sum game (one with a winner and loser) that implies two equally matched players, each knowing the best strategies of their opponent, would adopt opposing strategies such that neither could successfully do what would be optimally best. When you get to that point, you're in what's called a Nash Equilibrium. Two tic-tac-toe players that know what they're doing can easily get to a Nash Equilibrium.

Let's think for just a moment about youth football, and the decisions of offensive and defensive coordinators. Without worrying about passing too much, since passing isn't that easy for fifth graders, then as a defensive coach you might choose to defend the outside run, or the inside run, or 'play it safe' and attempt to defend both types of running plays equally well.

As an offensive coach I can choose to run inside or run outside.  On the table below, I've shown what the defense can do on the top column labels, and what the offense can do on the row labels, and within the matrix, what the yardage gain outcome might be given the circumstances.

	D Defends Outside	D Defends Inside	D Defends Both
O Runs Outside	0	5	4
O Runs Inside	5	0	4

There are four downs available to gain ten yards for an offense. But the risks associated with giving possession back to the opposing team on a fourth down failure make three downs the effective opportunity.

Under two out of three scenarios shown in the matrix above, as an offensive coach I can run a successful play. At first blush, that would seem to be pretty good odds. To optimize my chances for a five yard play, I need to 'keep you guessing' so let us presume that I will try to run as often inside as I do outside.

Also notice that your defense can't just sit in a defense-of-both posture. If you do that then I will gain 12 yards every three plays and march down the field.

Given my criteria, your defense would best be served to guess and defend either inside or outside on every first down. Two outcomes would be possible. If you guess correctly, I gain 0 yards. If you guess incorrectly, I gain 5 yards.

So the down and distance for the next play is either 2nd and 10, or 2nd and 5. If the distance is 10, then for both of the next two downs you should play safely against both types of runs, and force my offense into 4th and 2.

If though, you did not guess correctly on first down, you are now defending a 2nd and 5 situation. You should guess again. If you guess correctly on second down, you will force our offense to face a 3rd and 5, at which point you can safely defend against both and inside and outside run and likely force us into 4th and 1. If you guessed wrong for a second consecutive time then you have just allowed me a first down. But you should guess again, and hope you won't be wrong four times in a row.

Unfortunately for most offenses, if the defense guesses correctly even ONCE in any series of three consecutive downs, which they are statistically likely to do, then the offense will encounter a fourth down situation within four to six plays.

By guessing in this manner, your defense minimized risk over a series of three downs, and maximized the chance of creating a fourth-down during the possession. That's Minimax theory at work.

Because it gets really hard to string three first downs together, offenses reach a Nash Equilibrium in the game, and can't score.

Enter the option. (You knew it was coming, didn't you?)

The coolest thing about the triple option is that it tilts the odds in favor of the offense running the right play. The guesswork has been removed. My offense no longer cares whether your defense is defending the inside or outside, until the play has commenced.

Running the triple effectively is like being able to bet at the roulette wheel for both red and black with the same chip. Once the ball gets rolling, you're pretty sure that one or the other is going to work.

I've not just minimized, but actually eliminated the statistical advantage for the defense of defending either the inside or the outside. If you defend the outside, the triple runs inside. If you defend the inside, the option goes outside.

The test of course, especially in youth football, is that the next best strategy for your defense will then be to force my offense (or our coach) into errors. Your defense will try to get us to make the wrong read, or run the wrong version of the option, or defeat our blocks, or make a big play with some type of high-risk strategy that might leave the defense in an otherwise unsound position, but could create a big loss of yardage.

And that's another whole set of circumstances that we would have to draw out, and won't worry about today.

The triple option isn't the exclusive way to apply these game theories to football. Many modern college spread offenses have options on pass patterns as intrinsic components - so depending on how the defense is aligned, a pattern may break off or take off in different directions and timings. Zone read running plays are option running plays from shotgun, and NFL offenses throw quick slants and wide receiver zip passes off called running plays all the time, depending on what the defenses show. These are all more modern ways of using real-time decision making to maximize good outcomes.

These games within games are all Minimax efforts to tilt the Nash Equilibrium out of balance and into the favor of the offense.

To all our players, parents and friends, here's hoping your holidays are maximized for great outcomes, and  don't let the eggnog effect your equilibrium too much.

Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!