By Keith Grabowski

You’ve just come out of a long pre season period focused on installing and drilling your playbook.  The season presents new challenges as the goal is to improve execution and technique of what you installed in the summer.  

It’s good to have drills that you work throughout the season, but falling into the trap of “everyday drills” can make for a situation in which players aren’t approaching the skill development with the energy they did when the pre season was young.

Finding ways to keep drills fresh and fun stimulates the players mind and helps them focus on the improvement.

An area that always seems to need some extra drilling is the blitz pick up and pass protection for the running backs.  The challenge is that this usually becomes a monotonous drill as the season progresses. Isolated on it’s own it just looks like one player running into another.  In order for the drill to be good, it needs some context and some energy.

One drill that is both fun and challenging is what SEMO running backs coach Issac Read called “Bulls Ball” when he coached the running backs at the University of Buffalo last season.  

The drill has its origins in the old American Gladiators series where it was called “Power Ball.”  The set up of the drill is simple.  A trash can is placed behind the running back who is working his pass protection technique.  The player opposite him has a ball and his objective as the rusher is to get past the running back and dunk the ball into the can.

The drill brings out the competitive side in both players and forces the blocker to use his footwork and hand placement to stop the rush and keep the rusher from dunking the ball in the can.

In a quick 5 minute period, you could set this up as a mini-tournament to determine who is the best blocker.  You will get some good quality reps with a lot of energy from the competitive nature of the drill.

Here is a video of Coach Reed explaining and showing the drill on film (click on image for video):

This clip was taken from Coach Reed’s complete coaching course. To learn more about the course click the following link: Buffalo Running Back Fundamentals

By Keith Grabowski

Offensive coaches love to talk about attacking every inch of the field.  In order to do that, having a perimeter run game is necessary.  The 10 personnel spread teams may utilize the bubbles and smokes as an extension of their run game, but being able to turn around and hand it to one of your weapons is the “old school” method to attacking on the perimeter.

Get the Perimeter Run Game Going 

Coach Mike Cummings has seen it all, having coached at the high school, D2, D3, FCS and FBS levels, and he likes utilizing the pin and pull as his perimeter play.

When it comes to coaching any concept that makes his insight valuable because he knows the challenges at every level of football.

That’s true of his teaching of the Pin and Pull Concept. Cummings defines Pin and Pull as a man scheme.  All blockers are assigned to a particular defender on the frontside of the play and it is usually zoned on the backside of the play as illustrated here:

In the run game it’s always important to get a hat on a hat.  If you can do that, every play has a chance.  Structure and communication create that consistency for Cummings. This starts with identifying the Mike linebacker and understanding the rules.  

The easy rules to identify the Mike is: 

• He is middle of 3 man side
• or the backside of 2 man side 
• or he is always to the shade. 

It is a rule that holds up.  He explains that in this video:

The next aspect is teaching the technique.  There’s always a down blocker (pin) and a puller.  The down blocker isn’t necessarily looking for a devastating block.  He wants to keep that defender where he is and account for any movement. To do that, he will settle with the inside foot and adjust to movement. Using the hands is key. He wants to play long and use hands remembering that one arm is longer than two.

The Puller’s main objective is to get away from penetration by taking a pull that is deep enough.  Cummings teaches both open pulls and skip pulls to accomplish this. He needs to have his eyes on his assignment and attack playside # of 2nd level defender.

The best way to understand this is in the progression from individual to group then team.  In his course, Cummings illustrates this with individual drills and spends a lot of time teaching off of team/game film to troubleshoot technique.  Below is a video from group period:

Coach Cummings does a thorough job covering this play from multiple fronts and answers common questions.  If you are looking for a place to start your implementation or improvement of the pin and pull play this is the place to start. 

If you want to learn more, check out Coach Cumming’s Clinic “Teaching Pin and Pull Schemes” and get that perimeter run game going.

With the dominant run game of the wing-t offense, finding ways to protect the running game when the defense starts to cheat can be a huge tool to both pick-up chunks of yardage as well as get them to play honest.  As with any offense in football, the RPO is one of the best tools for accomplishing this.

Here are three RPO’s that you will want to add to your offense.

#1 Empty Jet Buck Sweep with Bubble. The bubble is a staple in RPO types of offense.  It immediately forces the defense to take a defender out of the box and cover down.  When you mix it with formations and a QB who can run, the equal numbers in the box or a numbers advantage on the perimeter become a difficult choice that the defense must make.  The bonus for  the offense is that you are always in a good play. Here is Scott Meadows QB Buck Sweep with Bubble to create the RPO (click on image for video).

To learn more about the complete course that this clip was taken from click here

#2 Belly with Slant and Go – When the defense begins to cover down to take away RPO and play man coverage, the double move creates a huge opportunity.  That’s exactly what Hancel Phipps does with this wrinkle off of the Belly-Slant RPO, giving the QB an easy through to a receiver running wide open. Here is game video of the play:

To learn more about the complete course this clip was taken from click here

#3 Counter-Go RPO – Making the defense pay on over playing your buck sweep with counter is always a great plan.  Kenny Simpson makes the answers even more explosive by being able to add an RPO to Counter, this one with a go route.  The video shows just how effective this play can be:

To learn more about the complete course this clip was taken from click here

A good defensive staff is going to know you and your offense inside and out.  

They usually will not leave any stone unturned, so when something different than what they normally see from offenses shows up on film, you can bet they will spend extra time analyzing it, planning against it, and devoting meeting time and practice time to prepare for it.

This is exactly what you want!

The key is that doing something like this is CHEAP for You BUT EXPENSIVE for them.

Why is it expensive to them? Because they spend time on this and it takes time away from preparing for what your offense really does.

State champion coach Thad Wells, now on the UVA staff, has a method and strategy for you to do exactly that. 

It doesn’t matter if you are a spread, wing-t, pro style, etc.  You can implement this package and force the opponent to spend time on it.

5 minutes for an install along with throwing in one rep per day keeps it “cheap.” He shares his entire basic P.I.T.A. Package here (click on image for video):

If you want to take it to the next level, Coach Wells also has an Advanced P.I.T.A. Package which includes shifts, motions, use in special teams, his dynamic huddle, and practice and much more. Plus it’s available for at a 50% discount.

The idea of this is to do something simple that can benefit your regular offense. If you are a DC and you are still reading, he also shares the details of how to defend these types of packages.