sdhusky
1972,73 & 98 Boneyard Poster of the Year
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
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Specifically, the Air Raid Offense of Leach and Holgorsen.
They are definitely focused on execution of a limited amount of plays and formations that still have flexibility baked in to adjust to the Defense.
Core belief:
They minimized what the players had to learn:
They are definitely focused on execution of a limited amount of plays and formations that still have flexibility baked in to adjust to the Defense.
Core belief:
"that to get an advantage in modern football you need to be particularly good at something, and to be good at something you have to commit to that something, and if you’re going to commit to something it might as well be different. And thus the principles underlying the Air Raid exist externally from the many coaches who have taught it: a diligent, many-reps approach to practice; a pass-first and spread the wealth philosophy; and, above all else, a willingness to live in the extremes, to do things just a bit differently, to be willing, in a game where conformity is king, to be just a little bit weird."
They minimized what the players had to learn:
"While at Valdosta, they primarily engaged in addition by subtraction. They cut out a few passing plays that weren’t as useful, shrank the running game to little more than an “iso” lead play and a draw, and, most famously, made the offense asymmetrical:
Instead of running each play in one direction and having “right” and “left” variations on each formation, they made the offense entirely right-handed, always putting the tight-end or “Y” receiver to the right and the split-end or “X” to the left, and only moving “Z” around.
Both Leach and Mumme have said they were inspired to do this after a conversation with former Baltimore Colts great Raymond Berry, who told them that was exactly how he and Unitas and the rest of the Colts did it.
If you flip all of your formations, every time you teach a route — say, a curl or a slant — each receiver actually has to learn two routes, because he has to learn it from both the right and left sides. And the quarterback has to get used to throwing it to each receiver to his left and to his right, depending on each receiver’s quirks. The number of techniques each quarterback had to learn would grow rather quickly.
Further, Berry said, he developed multiple ways to run each route depending on the leverage of the defense; if they asked him to line up to both sides he either had to give up those subtle variations or had to learn to run each of them to both sides, which was nigh impossible.
Instead, he learned to run his routes on one side, and Unitas learned how to throw them to him on that side.
Once Mumme and his staff made that change at Valdosta, the completion percentage of their quarterback at the time, Chris Hatcher, jumped roughly ten percentage points and he went on to win the Harlon Hill trophy, known colloquially as the Heisman trophy for D-II. "
