ilovetheoption
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 2,816
So, there has been a lot of talk on this forum about schemes and using players, and such, so I thought I'd do a little piece showing what it is that you guys actually do, so that if you're watching the game, and want to rewind a play and understand what's actually going on you can.
Before we start this, we should talk about what the problem is that offenses are trying to solve, before we talk about how they plan to solve it. (As you guys are engineers, this should appeal to you).
The basic problem in the run game is as follows: As the offense, we're required to freeze for a full second before the play starts. The defense is not. That means that although we know where we want to go, what we DON'T know is whether there will be a guy lined up in the way. We have to plan for him being in the way, though, because if we just HOPE we can guess right, and there won't be somebody there, we'll win 50% of the time which….not good enough.
Over time, offenses have devised 5 basic strategies to solve that problem:
1) Have your blocker be better than him, and kick his butt out of the hole (AKA be Alabama)
2) Don't run it (AKA be Mike Leach)
3) Double team him with blockers (AKA Zone Running)
4) Change where you're going to run it if he gets in the way (AKA Option running)
5) Give your blocker a running start (AKA Gap Running)
We're going to start at the end with Gap Running, because, interestingly enough, it was basically the first solution anybody ever came up with, and they came up with it a LONG time ago. 1908, specifically. The basic idea was "we can't guarantee that our guy is just going to be able to beat their guy in a fair matchup, so we're going to give our guy the advantage of a running start because (As you guys know) F=M*A.
So, as I mentioned in 1908, at a place in Carlisle PA at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a guy named Pop Warner came up with an offense called the Single Wing, and the bread and butter of his offense was a play called "Power". (Clever, I know).
Before we start this, we should talk about what the problem is that offenses are trying to solve, before we talk about how they plan to solve it. (As you guys are engineers, this should appeal to you).
The basic problem in the run game is as follows: As the offense, we're required to freeze for a full second before the play starts. The defense is not. That means that although we know where we want to go, what we DON'T know is whether there will be a guy lined up in the way. We have to plan for him being in the way, though, because if we just HOPE we can guess right, and there won't be somebody there, we'll win 50% of the time which….not good enough.
Over time, offenses have devised 5 basic strategies to solve that problem:
1) Have your blocker be better than him, and kick his butt out of the hole (AKA be Alabama)
2) Don't run it (AKA be Mike Leach)
3) Double team him with blockers (AKA Zone Running)
4) Change where you're going to run it if he gets in the way (AKA Option running)
5) Give your blocker a running start (AKA Gap Running)
We're going to start at the end with Gap Running, because, interestingly enough, it was basically the first solution anybody ever came up with, and they came up with it a LONG time ago. 1908, specifically. The basic idea was "we can't guarantee that our guy is just going to be able to beat their guy in a fair matchup, so we're going to give our guy the advantage of a running start because (As you guys know) F=M*A.
So, as I mentioned in 1908, at a place in Carlisle PA at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a guy named Pop Warner came up with an offense called the Single Wing, and the bread and butter of his offense was a play called "Power". (Clever, I know).
