Really neat read on Holgerson's Offense. Packaging different routes and QB drops...

[Darth Snow]

http://smartfootball.com/passing/packaging-three-step-and-five-step-concepts-into-the-same-play
A really great read, if a bit football geeky. Figured that people would be interesting after we just had such a WONDERFUL discussion on how Salaam ran out of the spread :lol:.

A few years ago, it was possible to achieve unheard of success by designing a new play, or sometimes simply by joining the bandwagon and going spread, especially if you had better athletes. Now, the innovations are ones of communication and organization; much of the talk this season centered around Oregon’s fast-paced no-huddle, particularly its fascinating playcalling system. For now, most of the biggest schematic ideas have been hashed out and the question now is how to make it all work together. Packaging pass concepts together — i.e. putting different pass concepts, each designed to beat particular pass coverages or families of pass coverages, to each side of the play — is not new. But it is limited in its own way (more on those limits in a moment), and there are ways to incorporate more of the above ideas into a single concept. Moreover, when done correctly, it’s possible to continue to be multifariously (and deceptively) simple, by using the same handful of pass concepts in new ways.

A really interesting take on a system that basically treats a passing QB like an option QB in the decision making process in that he has to make a decision on which of the "packages" he's gonna go to on any given play. I wonder if Embrrrito picked up on this during his time in the NFL? Hope so. Holgerson has used it with his version of the air raid to make a series of teams #1 in overall offense (or close to it) within a year of his arrival.

 

[sackman]

This kind of thing isn't all that new. I remember hearing Shannon Sharpe describe his routes to a reporter. He said, (paraphrasing): "Well, I have a base route, and I can take 15 different paths along that route. it's up to the QB and me to be on the same page so he knows where I'm going to be based on the defense that we're up against."

That was 15 years ago.

 

[Darth Snow]

This kind of thing isn't all that new. I remember hearing Shannon Sharpe describe his routes to a reporter. He said, (paraphrasing): "Well, I have a base route, and I can take 15 different paths along that route. it's up to the QB and me to be on the same page so he knows where I'm going to be based on the defense that we're up against."

That was 15 years ago.

Option routes are not what this article was about...

 

[sackman]

Well, fine. From what I could tell from reading the article, it was about taking base plays and tweaking them into variations. So you could really have a total of, say 20 plays in your offense. But each play could be modified at the LOS or even during the play itself to better attack the defense that was being employed. That was what Sharpe was talking about, and it seemed to me that was what the article was talking about as well.

OTOH, maybe the article was really about how much easier the pro style offense is to defend. I probably should have picked up on that.

 

[Darth Snow]

Well, fine. From what I could tell from reading the article, it was about taking base plays and tweaking them into variations. So you could really have a total of, say 20 plays in your offense. But each play could be modified at the LOS or even during the play itself to better attack the defense that was being employed. That was what Sharpe was talking about, and it seemed to me that was what the article was talking about as well.

OTOH, maybe the article was really about how much easier the pro style offense is to defend. I probably should have picked up on that.

Funny what different ppl see in the same thing. I thought it was about how you can package completely different types of routes on each side of the field and then the qb can choose which side to go to base on what the defense does. In this case, on one side of the field was the 3 step drop routes, and the other was the 5. That was the option in the play, not the routes. You can, of course, add option routes to the concept, but that is not the basis of the idea, which is to provide an easy way to defeat multiple defenses with one simple play (but requiring a choice by the qb to do so, hence, the option!).