FRANK LENTI
BUILDING THE GOAL-LINE OFFENSE
MOUNT CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL, IL.
I am going to talk to you this afternoon on what it
takes to build a goal-line offense. At the end of
the lecture, I will show you what we have done
over the years as far as sequence football on our
goal-line offense.
I have a list of resources that I believe provides
good football information. First is a book by Larry
Beckish. The title of the book is I Believe. He is a
retired coach now, but it is one of the best little
football books I have ever had. When I first saw
it, I bought a copy for everyone on my coaching
staff. Larry coached at a lot of great places, and he
is as sharp as they come in football.
There is the American Football Quarterly
Coaching Series of Championship Performance in
Sports Psychology which is excellent. Also, you
have some of the Coach of the Year Clinic
Manuals here on sale, and they are excellent. If
anything I talk about today interests you, the
material is in the 1999 Coach of the Year Clinics
Manual they have in the exhibit area for sale.
Before I can talk about goal-line offense, I must
talk about what my philosophy. I will not give you
many X's and O's in this session. What I want to
do is to get you to think of what you need to do to
make your goal-line offense successful. Plus, I
will show you some things I feel are important in
goal-line offense.
First of all, the offense must be based on
execution. You must do things the offense can be
successful at, as opposed to doing things they
cannot do. For example, we are a split-backs veer-
offensive team. People ask me if we change our
offense when we have to pass the ball. No, we do
not change our offense when we have to pass the
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ball. We segment our offense. We take the parts
of our offense that our quarterback can do well,
and we emphasize those things. When we have a
quarterback that can throw the ball, we throw the
ball more. We ask the kids to do what they are
physically and mentally capable of doing on
offense. We make sure they do it. If they will not
do it, we get someone else. We do not settle for
anything less. A phrase we use all of the time is
this: "A player that will not do what we want is
not any better than a player that can't do what we
want." At least the player that can’t do what we
want will die trying.
There are five things you need done with the
players. First, you must coach them and develop
them. Second, you win by doing the little things.
Coach them in the huddle, coach each individual
step, coach alignment, and coach all the little
things. The team that wins is the team that does all
the little things right. We insist that our players do
the little things and that they do them well.
Next, is the fundamental aspect of the game.
Teaching must be done in the classroom and not
on the field. I do not know how your practice is
set up, but we meet with our kids and make sure
they know what we are doing. When we go
outside, we want a lot of repetitions. We want to
be organized when we go on the field. We want to
go from whistle to whistle. We want a lot of reps
on the field. We hustle from play to play. We call
it coaching on the run. Our coaches jog from area
to area between drills. You must set the tempo for
the kids.
Mental errors will not be tolerated. The players
must know what to do and how to do it. This goes
back to the players doing what they are expected
to do. If the player will not take time to learn his
assignments, he will get you beat. You must make
sure you play kids that give you a chance to be
successful because they know what to do and how
to do it.
Offense is a team game. The team is more
important than the individual. We call it a "we"
thing and not a "me" thing. If you can get your
kids to buy into that philosophy, you are halfway
home. Our team was the "Team of the Decade" in
the 1990's in Illinois. Our record was 122 wins
and 12 losses. That is not bad when you consider
that we play a nine game regular season schedule
before the playoffs. Do you know how many
Division I running backs we had in that time
period? We only had one Division I Running
back. We had two Division I quarterbacks. We
have had some great players including Donovan
McNabb. However, he was one of the few
quarterbacks we had that did not start in a State
Championship game. The point is this. Do not
assume you are going to win just because you
have some great athletes. We are not interested in
building stars in our program. We are not going to
build statistics for one or two players.
Consistency is a must in order to be successful. If
you change your offense from year to year, it is
hard to get consistency. I do not know how your
kids or your coaches understand what you are
doing if you change from year to year.
Football should be fun. Fun comes from doing
things well and enjoying success. We tell our
players fun is doing something well. It is fun to
get an A out of the classroom. We tell them they
can have fun at practice even though we are going
to bust their tails working out. They are working
toward getting better. They must get better
physically, mentally, and emotionally. We do not
want them to think practice is a waste of time. We
want them to think of practice as a way for them
to get better and to give them a better chance to be
successful.
Here is something we do early in the season or in
early August. We call it a "do over day." We let
all of our coaches know when we feel it is a good
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time to have the "do over day." Nothing the
players do in practice is going to be good enough
and so we have them do it over. It is good to set
the tempo emotionally and mentally with our kids.
We tell the kids we are not going to be satisfied
unless they do things as near perfect as they can.
We just call it a "do over day." It lets the kids
know we are not going to accept anything but
their best effort.
We believe confidence will build consistency.
Doing the same things over and over, and doing
them right, builds confidence. I am not interested
in entertaining the kids at practice. Some of the
drills we do in August are the same drills we are
doing in the State Championship Game in
November. We call it being raised on the basics.
"Be Brilliant on the Basics." We feel we must be
great on the fundamentals.
The goal line must take priority in your offense.
There is no reason to get down there if you can't
score. We must study ourselves and go over our
goal-line tactics. Do your self-study of your
offense. Do you know what your opponents know
about what you are doing on the goal-line
offense? You must do the same thing on defense
and in your kicking game.
We want everyone doing the best they are capable
of doing and nothing less. We do not walk on the
field, and this includes the coaches. We want our
coaches to coach on the run, and they are
coaching on the go.
Let me get into the goal-line theory and
philosophy. First, you attack defenses in one of
two ways. You attack in an area where the defense
is somewhat weaker, or you attack an individual
whose style of play can be exploited. If we are
going to attack an individual, we go for a lineman
first. If we get in a game and find a player that we
feel is poorly coached or is a weak player, we will
attack that person. In practice, we attack the
alignment first. Also, when we get into the game,
we attack the alignment first.
We are going to present a well-balanced offense
inside the 10-yard line. The question is made as to
what is balanced offense. I know what balanced is
to us. Some coaches think it is 50 - 50. It is 50
percent run and 50 percent pass. Other coaches
may say they want 40 runs and 30 passes out of
70 plays. They want to spread the ball around. For
us we want to force the defense to balance up to
our offensive formations. We want to be able to
go from three wide receivers to two tight ends
with the same personnel. Today, the power teams
are big personnel teams. We will take our split
end and teach him a couple of plays so he can run
a few plays from the backside. We do this to keep
teams from trying to figure out what we are doing
with the offense.
We are going to run option football inside the 10-
yard line. We still want to attack across all fronts.
We still want to spread the defense on the goal
line if we can. We must maintain good line splits.
You must talk to your kids about their line splits.
Where do you stand in relation to the team during
practice? I stand behind the offensive line. The
first thing I do when the kids go up to the ball is to
check their splits. What happens is the offensive
line tends to tighten down when we are on the
goal line. If they do that, it tightens down the
defense as well. We try to show them what
happens with bodies on the goal line. If we tighten
down, it just makes the job easier for the defense.
You must convince your kids that the gap defense
gives the offense good angles. What we do is to
have a "check-with-me" practice. Based on what
the defense does when they line up, you can attack
them inside or outside. We must eliminate
mistakes. Penalties and missed assignments will
stop you before the other team does. We need to
look at these things as we go through the season.
Control the line of scrimmage. If the defensive
line penetrates, we should use it to our advantage.
If you are a penetrating team, you do that to stop
the option, so we are going to run the lead draw
and we are going to trap you. What answers do
you have for those questions in your offense? If
the defense is going to run up the field on you,
what are you going to do? Teams know against us
the first play they have to stop is the outside veer
and the counter option. Based on what we want to
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do, we usually have a good idea of where we want
to attack teams.
We want our linemen to sustain their blocks and
to keep their shoulders low. We want them to get
their shoulders in the end zone. We want them to
get movement at the point of attack. I coach our
offensive line. We tell them from the get-go that
anytime they get inside the 5-yard line, when we
snap the ball, they are to finish the play with their
shoulders in the end zone. Psychologically what
are they thinking? "We have to get the defender
off the line of scrimmage by getting up
underneath him. We are only going to be
successful if we can finish the play with the
shoulders in the end zone." If we can get the
offensive linemen to end up with their pads in the
end zone, where is the running back going to end
up? There is a good chance he will end up in the
end zone. These are little things that we want our
kids to know right from the start of the season.
We will use all four running backs in our goal-line
offense. We want to use the plays we run on the
goal line to either side of the line. We use speed,
deception, finesse, and power in our attack. We
have a little of each of those ingredients in our
goal-line offense. Look at your goal-line offense.
Are you a power team, a finesse team, or are you
a speed team, or do you rely on deception on the
goal line? Our power plays are our 36 and 37
plays. Those are the outside-veer plays for us. We
are going to double team at the point of attack and
read the defense from there. The finesse or
deception plays could be our draw play or the trap
plays. It could be a flat-out option play to get the
ball outside to the perimeter.
Here are a couple of other coaching points on
getting the shoulder pads low and into the end
zone. Most of the time we teach our kids to carry
the ball in their arms with three points of pressure.
When we get inside the 10-yard line, we change
the points of pressure on the ball. We want them
to carry the ball in front of them with their head
up and their shoulder pads down. They can use
one hand or two on the ball, but we want the ball
in front of them. We want their pads down and the
eyes up. We do this so the defense does not have
as good of an opportunity to get to the football.
The second point is this. We teach the kids to run
through the back of the end zone. They are not
running to the end zone. They are running through
the end zone. We want the running back to keep
his eyes up and run with the pads down. His goal
is the back of the end zone. We have kids score
touchdowns from 30 to 40 yards out. They still do
not stop until they get the ball to the back of the
end zone. That is how we coach them, and that is
what they do.
We throw play-action passes off our most
effective run plays. We use crossing routes against
man coverage. We use the dump pass as well. We
want to keep the pressure on the defense. Intensity
is a must on the goal line. How do you set the
tempo on the goal line? I will cover that later.
We use sequence football when possible. We only
need three or four running plays and two or three
pass plays. We can practice our whole offense on
the goal line. We do not need all of our offense on
the goal line, but we would rather have too much
than not enough offense.
We have two big E's down on the goal line. We
talk about them all of the time on offense. To us
the two big E's stand for Effort and Execution.
Effort and execution are going to equal success. If
you have great effort and great execution, and you
play your fanny off, and execute your assignment
to the best of your ability with second and third
effort, you have a great chance of being
successful.
We feel the goal-line package is a limited version
of our base offensive package. Again, we are back
to that word consistency again. We try to teach
our kids that consistency is more important than
greatness. If a player only makes one great play in
a game, that is no good. We cannot count on a
player that only has one great play per game. We
would rather have several good plays in the course
of the game. I think this is important to coach this
into your kids. You want consistency from them
in everything they do.
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Look at the reasons why you failed to score.
Fumbles! Was it a contact fumble or an exchange
fumble? If it was because of contact, you will
need to emphasize proper handling of the ball.
You have to emphasize this to the ball carrier and
motivate him to hold on to the football. If it was
on the exchange, we want to know if it was
caused by penetration, poor technique, or was
there a missed assignment. Do you know why the
fumble occurred? Those are questions you must
answer. Don't junk a play just because it is not
working. Find out why the play is not working?
Know why you are changing the play. Don't just
change the play to be changing it.
Another reason why we fail to score on the goal
line is because of interceptions. Ask the
quarterback "Why did you throw the ball? What
did you see?" He may have seen something that
you did not see. You may need to go back and
look at the tape. When we throw an interception,
we want to know if it was because of play
selection. Was it a physical or mental thing that
happened out on the field? Was it because of poor
mechanics on the part of the QB? Was it because
of fundamentals of throwing, catching, or pass
protection? You need to ask those questions.
Penalties will stop you from scoring on the goal
line. Concentration mistakes can't be tolerated.
Your starting count must not be too complicated.
If we run anything on the goal line that is a check-
with-me call, the snap count is always on one.
You cannot have too much in the cadence.
If I give one of our kids a play, he knows what the
snap count is for that play. Now it may change
from year to year. For example, on our 20 series,
all the snap counts are on quick. On the 30 series,
everything is called on the number. For the 40 and
50 series, everything is on one. Whatever we use,
we practice it that week. Here is my point: Don't
have your starting count for your cadence too
complicated. When we get on the goal line,
everything is going to be on a quick count which
is the first sound. We want to get off the ball and
get after your butt, and we do not want the offside
penalties.
You should evaluate your first-down calls. Make
sure you self-scout yourself on this. Know what
you like to do on offense on first down. We like to
use different formations. We run a check 36 or a
check 39 play. We may run an outside veer to one
side of the line. If the defense over shifts to that
called side, we check off to the counter option the
other way.
Review your play selection philosophy. Do not
just grab plays that you like. Decide if you are
going to attack alignment or personnel. You need
to use the press box for help. Does the coach in
the press box know what we are looking for? Are
we getting the expected look? Are we seeing the
defense we worked against in practice? We have
gotten very good in our goal-line offense over the
last several years. Teams now are playing us with
their regular defense inside the 10-yard line. They
are using their base defense to try to stop the
things that we do best on the goal line.
You need to be aware of the clock when you are
on the goal line. Do you have a no-huddle, stop-
the-clock play? Do you have a two-play sequence
you can run from the line of scrimmage? It could
be run, run; run, pass, pass; or run, pass. We give
our two-play sequence a name. We call it
“caravan.” You can call it whatever you want.
You must prepare for a situation when you do not
have time to call two plays.
Let me talk about some advantages of our goal-
line offense. Again, see if these advantages apply
to your situation. You should write down what
you think the advantages are for your goal-line
offense.
Here are the advantages of the split backs on the
goal line. First is continuity. You stay with the
same offense that got you down there. Next is
simplicity. It reduces teaching time and
techniques. Once we teach our offense in August,
there is very little we have to do after that. We do
have to polish it up from time to time. The key is
that we want our kids to be great technicians.
Some of the drills we teach in August we are still
doing the last week of the season as far as
fundamentals are concerned. Be brilliant on the
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basics! Don't shortchange your kids there.
The third advantage of our offense is that it builds
confidence. It can be done and you can prove it
with statistics. Develop your own statistics. By
doing it this way, the stats mean more to your
team and can be helpful.
Next I want to talk about some prerequisites for
any goal-line offense. First, you can't stop
yourself. What are you going to emphasize.
Emphasize what is important. Missed assignments
are points we emphasize. We do not want any
turnovers. Hang on to the football. Look to see if
you are doing the things that will allow you to be
successful on the goal line
We want to identify our bread-and-butter back
and get him the football when the game is on the
line. Does that mean he gets the ball on every
down? No, it does not. You can set things up by
formation, and if the defense sets up to stop him,
we can use the check-with-me plays. When it is
crunch time, we want to figure out a way to get
our best back the ball on the goal line. Do you
know how to get him the ball?
Evaluate your statistics. Do you always run the
ball on first down? The opponents have that
figured out if you do. Give yourself an
opportunity to be successful. Come up with the
play-action pass on first down to throw them off
balance. We keep a Goal Line Efficiency Chart.
We look at the situations and chart the number of
time we are successful and the number of times
we fail. If we scored a TD, we want to know why
we were successful. If we had to settle for a field
goal, we want to know why we did not score the
TD. Did we do a poor job, did we make the right
call, or did we get a penalty? We want to know
why we were successful or why we failed.
The first why the coaches are going to ask is
directed at us. We are not going to blame the kids.
We look at the coaching staff. What could we
have done better? It is a cardinal rule for us.
"What could we as a coaching staff have done
better to have given those kids a chance to be
more successful?" We tell the kids this. It goes
back to the "me - we" thing. It is not just about
them. We are all in this together.
The number one play on our goal-line offense is
our outside veer. It is the best goal-line and short-
yardage play that we have. I will put the play on
the overhead, and then I will show you a tape on
the play as well.
Very quickly I want to show you how we handle
the mesh point when we run the outside veer.
(Demonstration) If you are an option team, it is
something you can use. We want the back running
the veer to turn his outside hand and place the
thumb on the breastbone pointing down. We want
the top of the hand turned up from the breastbone,
but the thumb is still on the chest turned down.
We want the quarterback to put a soft squeeze on
the ball. If the quarterback wants to give the
running back the ball he pulls the back hand out
from the mesh and presses the ball into the back’s
bread basket and lets him go with it. If the
quarterback does not want the back to get the ball,
he takes his elbow and pushes him off the ball. He
can feel the elbow and he knows he is not getting
the ball, but he continues on his path. When the
quarterback is done on the mesh, he wants to get
the ball up under his chin if he pulls the ball. He is
reading the end on the line of scrimmage while he
is executing the mesh. That is his read.
The next part of the play is the reaction. We only
have one read and one reaction. The quarterback
comes down the line and is ready to pitch the ball
to the trailing back. He pitches off the scraping
linebacker or whoever shows at the line of
scrimmage.
Years ago we used to teach the pitch with the
thumbs down and flip the wrist. If the quarterback
got hit by the linebacker or first defender, the ball
went on the ground. Now we use the soft
basketball technique on the pitch. We grip the ball
from the middle to the bottom of the tip of the
ball. We pitch the ball as if we were shooting a
basketball with the near hand. When he makes the
pitch, the off-hand comes in front of him to
protect the ball. We want to teach the one-way-go.
We want one read and one reaction. On the
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outside-veer play, we think “give” first. If we are
going to run the inside-veer play, we think “pitch”
first.
If the defensive end does anything to slow the
mesh down, the quarterback gives the ball to the
running back on the veer. The quarterback is
looking at the eyes of the defensive end. If the end
is coming down toward the running back hard, the
quarterback tucks the ball and gets up the field. If
the end is coming at the back but is looking at the
quarterback, we want to give the running back the
ball. If the quarterback makes a mistake on the
play, do not chew him out. You have to work on
that play. The question on the veer is this: Can we
run the play better than you can defend it, or can
you defend the veer better than we can run it?
We have one read and one reaction. If you are
going to run option football and you tell the
quarterback that he has two reads, you are
whistling in the wind. That is too much to ask of a
kid. We ask him to make one read and one
reaction. Again, it is our power off-tackle play.
Let me talk about practice time. Our weekly goal-
line package is a limited version of our base
offense. This allows us to minimize our goal-line
practice and concentrate on potential problem
situations and perfect our execution.
Here is exactly what we do during the week. We
play most of our home games Saturday night. We
do play a few games on Friday night. When I was
a student at Mt. Carmel, our league played all of
our games on Sunday afternoon. The Chicago
Catholic High Schools started playing football in
the 1920's and 1930's. There were no NFL games
on TV to compete with. There was a college game
on Saturday to contend with. High school football
was big in Chicago and the games were played on
Sundays
Here is a good football trivia question. The largest
crowd in the history of American football was in
the 1930's when over 130,000 people saw a game
at old Soldiers Field between a Chicago Public
School and a Chicago Catholic School for the City
Championship.
Here is our practice schedule for the week. 36 OUTSIDE VEER - 4 CALL
Monday is a light day for us. We go out in
helmets and shorts. Tuesday is our first weekday
in pads. We work ten minutes on goal-line offense
against any unusual defensive fronts you may
show us in our next game, or what we think you
may show us based on your package.

On Wednesday, we go live on the goal line. We

get after it. It is our ones vs. defensive ones. Our
defense will simulate the opponent's goal-line
defense. We use minimal contact once we get into
the season. We try to stay off the ground as much
as possible. We get after it for ten minutes. We
have fun with it. We feel there is less chance in 36 OUTSIDE VEER - 5 CALL
getting someone hurt on the goal line. You can go
full speed on the goal line because you do not
have someone coming from 15 yards away trying
to knock the teeth out of the backs or receivers.

Our additional point about our goal-line practice

is this. We do not allow the team to tackle below
the waist. When we teach tackling in the
preseason, we have that same rule. You can never
tackle anyone on your own team below the waist.
That does two things for us. First, it saves on
ankle and knee injuries. Secondly, it makes our
defensive players better tacklers. They have to run
to be in position to make tackles. 36 OUTSIDE VEER - 40 CALL

We never allow anyone to tackle below the waist

in practice. When we get into the game, I do not
care how they make the tackles as long as they get
them down. You may want to think about this.

On Thursday, our goal-line offense works against

any defensive stunts and combinations of fronts
we may see. We go over all the possible blitz
situations. If we play on Saturday, we will go out
in light gear on Friday. We have our helmets on
and thigh boards in our pants. Our team period is
Those were finesse plays. If we want to run a
about 30 minutes for that day. We do a little of
power play, we can run the same play with zing
everything. We may be on the goal line 10
motion.
minutes or 15 minutes, depending on what we feel
we need to work on.
We want to make sure we secure the linebacker or
the man in the B-Gap. We are still going to read
I want to talk about our 36 and 37 outside-veer
the same man, but this gives us power at the point
plays. We teach the quarterback to cut up
of attack.
underneath the linebacker if he scrapes outside.

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 36 OUTSIDE VEER - ZING MOTION Thank you for your attention.

If we want to hand the ball to the lead back, it

becomes an I-formation isolation play. Now, the
blocking back is up at the line of scrimmage and
the tailback is only 4½ yards deep. We can put the
Z back in motion, so we can pick up the
linebacker in the C- or B-Gap.

If we want to give the ball to the wing back, we

call it 08. It is our reverse play.

08 - FAKE DIVE - ZING MOTION

If the defense sees the wide out coming in motion,

they think it is the lead play again. This time we
fake the dive and give the ball to the wing back.
These are old Wing-T sweep principles.

We are only pulling one guard instead of two

because the front side guard has to block down or
he is covered on the goal line. We want to go
inside or outside. We are going to go where the
defense is not. We tell our down defender to read
the defense and replace him. Don't run away from
him, replace him.

I will be around until after my second lecture

tomorrow. I will be glad to spend time with you
on the goal line material if you are interested.