Keep It Simple

Hey Coach,
I hope you had a great week. Most of us are 4 or 5 games into the season today, so I thought it was time for a little reminder.

I am not sure where you stand today. Maybe you are 5-0 and headed toward a league championship. Maybe you are 0-5 and struggling to find an identity. Maybe you are somewhere in the middle and just focused on the week ahead. Whatever your situation today, I thought I would send a quick reminder of one of the central themes of the Win With The Pass philosophy.

Today we are going to talk about simplicity

I want to start by talking about Mike Leach’s Washington State team. If you haven’t seen the highlights from last week’s game, go on youtube and check them out. Quick stat recap… Washington State’s Anthony Gordon was 41-61 for 570 yards and 9 TD’s and 2 Picks . UCLA’s Dorian Thompson Robinson was 25-38 for 507 yards 5TD’s and 1 pick. The teams combined for 1377 yards of total offense and 130 points.

If you love offense, in particular the spread offense and, more specifically, the Air Raid (like you probably do because you subscribe to this site) this game was a thing of beauty. Don’t get me wrong, you have to figure out how to stop someone if you are ever going to win a championship, so I am sure that both defensive staffs will be hard at work evaluating everything they do. But, for the purpose of this post, I want to focus on the Cougs. The best lesson we can learn from both Mike Leach is to keep it simple.

Mike Leach has been running the same 10 concepts for the last 15 years. And, guess what. They Still Work. That old Air Raid system that Tim Couch ran at Kentucky still works. The Mesh route still works. Quick screens still supplement the run game. 4 verticals still stretches the defense. And, Mike Leach’s QB’s continue to lead the nation in passing. Luke Falk, Gardner Minshew, Anthony Gordon…it’s just the same thing over and over again.

But here is the lesson that we can learn from Leach. Last night, they had a rough one against Utah. They threw it for just over 250 yards and only scored 13 points. But, do you think WSU is going to come out in the Wing T next week? Do you think they are working on the triple option this week? Do you expect to see them in double tight?

Of course not!

Mike Leach is committed to a system and a way of playing football. He is not going to change the system because of a bad night. He’s not going to add plays. He’s not going to add formations. He is just going to work harder at doing what they do.

This is the greatest temptation for us as high school coaches. If our system isn’t working, we tend to blame the system and try to re-invent ourselves every week. I’ve been there!

As I look back on this story, it is completely embarrassing, but I’ll be real with you guys. It was early in my coaching career and we were struggling. I think we were 2-5 and looking at our toughest two league opponents over the next two weeks. We were inconsistent. We were turnover prone. We were not executing.

So I stayed up all weekend drawing up a double wing series. Seriously…Me, the biggest Air Raid guy in the history of high school football…spent the weekend drawing up a double wing series. We worked on it all week. Probably 75% of our offensive reps in practice were spent on double wing concepts. All of our meeting time was spent on learning the footwork and blocking schemes. And, going into Friday night, I was supremely confident that we were going to control the clock, march down the field 4 yards at a time, and dominate the line of scrimmage.

I bet you know what happened…

I think we had one first down in the first half. And, the whole thing was scrapped by the time we left the locker room at half time. We went back to what we had been doing for the last 5 months. We spread and out and chucked it.

Now, we didn’t win. The reality was that our opponent was a lot better than us and we were really young. But, at least we moved the ball. We scored a few times and had a lot of fun. I remember thinking as we walked off the field how much time we had wasted that week in practice. What if we just would have worked on our stuff and gotten better at it? I still think we would have lost that game, but we would have been even further ahead going toward the rest of the season. I screwed up and it cost us in the development of our football team.

As I look back on that experience, I am actually really grateful for that lesson. I didn’t keep it simple. And, that’s what I appreciate so much about Leach. Leach won’t spend the next week adding new plays. He will spend his time perfecting what they already do. In fact, I would bet that he throws a few things out that aren’t working. I bet he simplifies more and chooses to focus on what his guys do well.

And, this is the lesson for us. At this point in the year, we need to double down on what we do well. Don’t add new stuff. Don’t throw out your system. Take your best 7 or 8 plays and rep the heck out of them over and over and over. If things aren’t working, throw them out. You can play this game with 4 or 5 passing concepts and 2 run concepts. Just mix up your formations and keep running what you are good at.

I think this lesson of keeping it simple applies whether you are 5-0 or 0-5. Especially as the year wears on and your guys need rest. Do what you do well and scrap everything else. Then, get better at what you do well. Make your opponent stop you! Some would say that you should work on your weaknesses and turn them into strengths. And, to a point I agree. But, at this point in the season, we have probably repped 4 verts 200 times. If we still stink at it, do we really think 20 more reps is going to be the magic bean? Of course not. Get rid of it. If you can’t run power but you are good at zone. Scrap power. Work on zone all day every day and make your opponent adjust.

Let’t take a lesson from Leach and his tiny play sheet. Keep it simple and focus on execution.