A lot of times the offense will give away who they're going to block. The running backs will even give away where they're going by only looking in one direction and not the other. The offense pretty much needs to look at where they're going, and even if you don't think that's true, it certainly would help them. I once played against a team that ran the Cisar SW and they were really good at not giving away whom they were going to block.
Then I had a thought. A lot of teams would be really unsettled with movement on the defensive line. Whether that's a linebacker blitzing or a d-lineman changing gaps pre-snap, I think that a lot of players would find it really hard to resist looking at the movement. This should hypothetically give away the play. Now, I don't expect youth football kids to get it. I doubt I could accurately predict the play with this, but I'll bet that you could give lineman a heads up on which technique to use before hand. If you have two defenders looking at you, go into a 4 point stance and prepare for a double team. If a guard is completely ignoring you and doesn't seem to be looking at anyone, then try to chase them down because they might be pulling, and with pulling scouting obviously helps. If a wing isn't looking at anyone to block, then maybe they're going out for a pass. And if a tackle is looking outside, then maybe you send a blitz through there because it might just be where the play is going to be.
"eyes on me" is one of the key coaching points in all of Clark's Defenses. And he is spot on.
What is beautiful, lives forever.
For 7 seasons, I've been instructing offensive linemen to point at their blocks. Because they tend to get lazy about it, then eventually forget, I make a point to have them AGGRESSIVELY point at their blocks. Backs, too. Watch any of our film and you can hear me screaming "IDENTIFY!!!". I've been asked a dozen times if I think this gives away our plans. I'm guessing it does, but I don't care. The last thing I want to do is confuse the o-line while attempting to confuse the defense.
When in doot . . . glass and oot.
@gumby_in_co it seems like any competent coach would scout your team and immediately recognize what they need to do against you. Not saying that you have a bad plan or anything. I'm just saying that they wouldn't do things like have bear crawling defensive tackles like in the 6-2.
That being said, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone aligning based on the eyes of the offense. That's probably because they don't want anyone to figure out the secret of their alignments. So for example, if someone looks like they're going to down block you, you can line head up on them. If they look like they're going to reach you, you can shade the outside, stuff like that.
@gumby_in_co it seems like any competent coach would scout your team and immediately recognize what they need to do against you. Not saying that you have a bad plan or anything. I'm just saying that they wouldn't do things like have bear crawling defensive tackles like in the 6-2.
That being said, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone aligning based on the eyes of the offense. That's probably because they don't want anyone to figure out the secret of their alignments. So for example, if someone looks like they're going to down block you, you can line head up on them. If they look like they're going to reach you, you can shade the outside, stuff like that.
We kept getting flagged one game for pointing. Refs insisted our kids were in the neutral zone pre snap. I'd like to know what Bob's take is on that one. The only real telegraph is when they stop pointing meaning the snap is now immanent. So we teach the QB to change his tempo with the snap. Our Cadence is 100% first sound. Has to be or defenders would get a running start at our splits. Now they must wait one second....or 10. I thought that might be a problem for us. Have to train the OLM to be at the ready and hair triggers. The bush league teams will bark out HIT! The good Refs kill that right away but we typically have to give up 5 yards before that happens......or bump the Center silent count sneak. This game is vs the king of bush league.
I do not believe in no plays or going on two. Just my personal thing.
What is beautiful, lives forever.
We kept getting flagged one game for pointing. Refs insisted our kids were in the neutral zone pre snap. I'd like to know what Bob's take is on that one.
I think it's chicken shit.
@mahonz That's funny lol. I was thinking about running a play like that. The way I learned QB sneak was that you went on no sound at all. When the Qb was ready they just put their hands under the center for real, and the center then snapped the ball. I've run no-play like this before where we try to throw them off sides, and they don't jump, so we have the QB sneak. It raises the risk of it being an issue, but kids seem to get it.
"eyes on me" is one of the key coaching points in all of Clark's Defenses. And he is spot on.
The difference of losing in the semis and winning our chip in 1 year was "reso" .. I firmly believe that
I can explain it to you, I can't understand if for you.
A lot of times the offense will give away who they're going to block. The running backs will even give away where they're going by only looking in one direction and not the other. The offense pretty much needs to look at where they're going, and even if you don't think that's true, it certainly would help them. I once played against a team that ran the Cisar SW and they were really good at not giving away whom they were going to block.
We point out who we're going to block. It's not a secret; we want the defense to know. At the youth level, we'd have our players point them out. At high school, I'm okay with them calling the opponent's jersey number.
--Dave
"The Greater the Teacher, the More Powerful the Player."
The Mission Statement: "I want to show any young man that he is far tougher than he thinks, that he can accomplish more than what he dreamed and that his work ethic will take him wherever he wants to go."
#BattleReady newhope
@gumby_in_co it seems like any competent coach would scout your team and immediately recognize what they need to do against you.
In my experience, there aren't any magical techniques or alignments that work against anything. It really comes down to Jimmies vs Joes. One way to get in your own way is to allow a below average to average defender become a factor. Best way to do that is to not block him. By pointing, we eliminate that and force their studs to do their jobs. Then, we come up with a plan to block their studs.
Forcing a defense to do something different to stop us is something we look forward to.
You've piqued my interest though. If you know for a fact that we are blocking Inside Gap, Man On, Linebacker, what do you do differently?
When in doot . . . glass and oot.
Well first off, this has nothing to do with the topic. I think can could potentially teach some kids how to read eyes and make adjustments based on it, but that's not the same as knowing the blocking scheme and getting them to react to it in a certain way. So I just want to make it clear that I'm not trying to say I can somehow coach my kids to recognize your blocking scheme pre-snap and defeat it lol.
As far as what I'd do vs. what you've told me, I think if I had any fast or talented defensive lineman against your mega splits I would want to align them outside your guards. I would instruct them to penetrate fast and deep so that your defensive tackle had a hard time blocking down. They would also take an angle that is towards the center, again to make it harder for you to block down on them. Seems like a good bet.
Something else you could do is put some really good plays at DT and MLB, then you could line head up on the guards, but you slant outward. Your tackles will climb to line backers, your guards will try to block my slanting DTs, and my nose and MLB play Oklahoma if you run to the middle, or obviously we could blitz there and take our chances that one of the three good players gets to you before you can peel out.
Now if that isn't working, and I have potatoes instead of studs, I'm going to have them jam your guards, hopefully to slow down your release to the 2nd level, they'll get blocked by lineman. Same thing for ends. I'm going to want them to jam, so that my OLB is about as free as possible, and that's about it. I find that blitzing can really ruin a defense's day because they wind up spending a talented kid at an angle they can't recover from.
As far as reading eyes go, I think if the tackle was eyeing my OLB, I'd tell him to move outward so that he doesn't get blocked at an angle. If the MLB was getting looks from both tackles, I might tell him to auto blitz so they just miss... I'm not big on blitzing though. And as far as the DTs, they'd probably have the B or C gap based on those eye reads. They'd see the guard is ignoring them no matter what, and the tackle ignores them if they walk outside of them, and when they walk outside the TE is suddenly interested. They'd be able to identify that they can't get a double team on them, so they're going to have to defeat a single blocker. I think a good idea in that situation is to have them jam someone who isn't looking at them, so in this case the guard. Your tackle is going to block him, but hopefully the jam helps my MLB. Although I guess now that I think about it, the tackle would ignore him if he goes outside... so I guess that rule isn't exactly sufficient to figure out where he'd line up. I guess I want him taking the block of whomever he thinks is tougher. So if he thinks the tackle is tougher than the tight end, he'd choose to jam your guard so that he gets blocked by the tougher guy.
Let's shelf the mega splits aspect for this exercise. What I'm reading is that if you KNEW an offense was blocking GOB, you would:
a) heavily stunt to mess with the OLs rules
b) stunt into down blocks to neutralize mechanical advantages
c) identify and occupy climbers to turn your LBs free
d) coach and align your LBs to avoid climbers
Sounds like a pretty good plan. I tend to go overboard with this stuff when I'm coaching defense. I'll see some tendencies on film, then try to build this big Rube-Goldberg defense. It rarely works out for me. Mahonz is usually the one to reel me in and remind me to "do what we do".
I don't think many coaches in our league do any kind of scouting. One team for sure. I'm friendly with their HC and we often set up our step ladders next to each other scouting common opponents. I've seen defensive players try to outsmart our OL, but I think they are doing this on their own. 2 tech sees my OG pointing right at him and decides to run away to the other side of the ball to avoid being blocked. Yeah, I'll take that.
I adopted GOB rules simply to introduce order, not because I think it's a great scheme. The #1 rule with mega splits is that you MUST block everyone on the LOS. GOB gives me that. Blocking a LB or two is a bonus.
When in doot . . . glass and oot.
I've seen defensive players try to outsmart our OL, but I think they are doing this on their own.
Which is interesting because kids are trying to outsmart their opponent but their own coaches aren't. lol
In addition, coaches are complaining about "kids can't learn this & that," or "I had to dumb down our scheme." Which really means, "I had to dumb it down for myself, because I don't understand it enough to teach it."
--Dave
"The Greater the Teacher, the More Powerful the Player."
The Mission Statement: "I want to show any young man that he is far tougher than he thinks, that he can accomplish more than what he dreamed and that his work ethic will take him wherever he wants to go."
#BattleReady newhope
I think can could potentially teach some kids how to read eyes and make adjustments based on it, but that's not the same as knowing the blocking scheme and getting them to react to it in a certain way. So I just want to make it clear that I'm not trying to say I can somehow coach my kids to recognize your blocking scheme pre-snap and defeat it lol.
I don't want my defense to "recognize" much of anything. We have a defensive play. They have a particular responsibility within that play. They are to execute it. The minute they start trying to "recognize" something is when they begin the freelance or find themselves out of position. Which is why we point out defenders that we're going to block. We want the defense to "recognize" what they think we're going to do. Which is why we use motion. Which is why we off-set our Fullback. Which is why we point out who we're going to block.
--Dave
"The Greater the Teacher, the More Powerful the Player."
The Mission Statement: "I want to show any young man that he is far tougher than he thinks, that he can accomplish more than what he dreamed and that his work ethic will take him wherever he wants to go."
#BattleReady newhope
I would instruct them to penetrate fast and deep so that your defensive tackle had a hard time blocking down.
The Defensive Tackle blocks down? I will just stay in my state of confusion...
--Dave
"The Greater the Teacher, the More Powerful the Player."
The Mission Statement: "I want to show any young man that he is far tougher than he thinks, that he can accomplish more than what he dreamed and that his work ethic will take him wherever he wants to go."
#BattleReady newhope
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