One of my favorite smart a** lines from one of my favorite movies, A Few Good Men, in which Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) is questioning Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) as to why he ordered the transfer of Private Santiago:
Jessup: I thought his life might be in danger
Kaffee: Grave danger?
Jessup: Is there another kind?
This question was also at the forefront of my mind as I set out to streamline the teaching in my passing game. I wanted to make sure, in the process of surveying all the necessities of a "complete" passing game, that I didn't leave anything out. You see - a lot of the "streamlined" systems out there simply don't include the apparatus for certain pattern structures; my goal was to have the ABILITY to get to whatever structure we desired, yet have a solid, functional base from which to start.
Something in football that's always given me heartburn are systems that are so cumbersome that that "base" of the offense isn't what you play/ practice with during the season! Such is the case with many "Pro" systems. I played in such a system in college, and can tell you that while it was a whale of a system, all the "cool stuff" we played (and won) with wasn't installed in early in camp. Thoughout my career, I set out to make sure this wasn't the case in my system.
Well before my book, I identified 9 pass concepts (Quick, Drag, Vertical, 2 Man, Numbers, Horizontal, 3 Level, Corner, and Obect) in an attempt to clarifiy the murky waters that the passing game can be. This method of teaching served me (and those who've subscribed to my system) well. What I've been able to do recently, however, is condense and refine even further, boiling down to just :
- 3 Advantage Principles
- 3 Read Concepts
I'm defining advantage principles, as I did in my book, as a route or route combination that discourages the defense from "sitting" on the primary concept. A CONCEPT, according to the dictionary, is as defined as "an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars." With just 3 generalized ways of looking at pass patterns, the seemingly infinite combinations of pass routes can be distilled into common sense, learnable chunks -- the foundation of which can even be taught at the most beginning levels of organized football.
This way, the learning is sequential, and can be visualized in somthing like this:
Jessup: I thought his life might be in danger
Kaffee: Grave danger?
Jessup: Is there another kind?
This question was also at the forefront of my mind as I set out to streamline the teaching in my passing game. I wanted to make sure, in the process of surveying all the necessities of a "complete" passing game, that I didn't leave anything out. You see - a lot of the "streamlined" systems out there simply don't include the apparatus for certain pattern structures; my goal was to have the ABILITY to get to whatever structure we desired, yet have a solid, functional base from which to start.
Something in football that's always given me heartburn are systems that are so cumbersome that that "base" of the offense isn't what you play/ practice with during the season! Such is the case with many "Pro" systems. I played in such a system in college, and can tell you that while it was a whale of a system, all the "cool stuff" we played (and won) with wasn't installed in early in camp. Thoughout my career, I set out to make sure this wasn't the case in my system.
Well before my book, I identified 9 pass concepts (Quick, Drag, Vertical, 2 Man, Numbers, Horizontal, 3 Level, Corner, and Obect) in an attempt to clarifiy the murky waters that the passing game can be. This method of teaching served me (and those who've subscribed to my system) well. What I've been able to do recently, however, is condense and refine even further, boiling down to just :
- 3 Advantage Principles
- 3 Read Concepts
I'm defining advantage principles, as I did in my book, as a route or route combination that discourages the defense from "sitting" on the primary concept. A CONCEPT, according to the dictionary, is as defined as "an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars." With just 3 generalized ways of looking at pass patterns, the seemingly infinite combinations of pass routes can be distilled into common sense, learnable chunks -- the foundation of which can even be taught at the most beginning levels of organized football.
This way, the learning is sequential, and can be visualized in somthing like this:
With this format, each concept has a few different classifications, which can be separated by degree of difficulty, or perhaps situational thought process. From there, there are terms that clearly delineate each. The classification makes sense, not only in thought process, but verbiage as well; the system, from top to bottom is clean and structured in a learnable, common sense fashion. Further, MEMORIZATION is minimized, as my dealings recently with players remind me that terms we as coaches take for granted have no meaning to many of them.
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