Coaching Concepts and Points of Emphasis

By: Mark Helfrich - Univ. of OR

Speaking at this clinic bring back memories from 16 or 17 years ago. I was sitting right where you are tonight. This
was always a big deal for my dad. I played at Marshfield High School here in Oregon and he was a voluntary coach
there, He enjoyed coming to the clinic. However, he was into the eating part of the clinic instead of attending the
lectures. Good or bad, I am a product of Oregon High School football.

I want to talk about a couple of different things. I am going to talk about our offense and some other things in
general. The things in general I want to talk about are some coaching points of special emphasis. I will explain about
that as we go.

GENERAL POINTS OF EMPHASIS

• Coaching with "Do"
• Coaching with questions
• Get into their minds

When I talk about coaching with "Do", I am talking about coaching with a positive approach. It is the coach saying,
"Step with the right foot. at the proper angle at this landmark,' Instead of saying, "Do not step with the wrong foot.
Do not key the wrong player,- I know there are many things that confuse players. The thing that builds confidence in
players is talking about how to do the right thing. When you teach them how to do something, it gives them a
different air of confidence. We want to teach using positives instead of negatives.

The second thing we want to do is coach with questions. Doing this is threefold. The first part deals with
understanding. In coaching, it is not what the coach knows that is important: it is what the players know. We try to
define what is going on in the player's mind. The second part is the thought that it is okay to ask questions. They
have to know they can ask questions in the meeting room and on the field. If they have questions about the scheme
or game plan, they need to ask them. We want the meetings to begin and end with questions. The last thing it does
is it gets you in their minds.

If you have a meeting with your quarterbacks. you will find out that there will be three to four different ways to do the
same thing. An example would be how you throw the curl/flat pattern. One quarterback may say, When I throw the
curl/flat, I key the curl/flat defender." Another quarterback may have something different he does. If you find out
what they are thinking, you can coach to their different ways of thinking. Not all players are the same and the more
you know about them the more you can get them to do.

"What you do hear you forget. what you see you remember and what you do you understand." Confucius

If you believe that is true, I will stop talking in a minute and show you some things. When we coach, we want to
demonstrate and show rather than try to tell them what to do. If there is any talking, we want them to do it. After we
do the talking, we want to get as many repetitions as we can.

The three things I am going to talk about now is what we think are the most important parts of football. That applies
to the offense, defense, and special teams. I am going to talk mainly about our defense rather than the other parts.
Steve Greatwood our offensive line coach and running games coordinator was here earlier. We have the greatest
staff of coaches in America. I am lucky they stuck with me personally through all the turmoil we have just gone
through. Every one of the coaches on our staff are quality coaches that genuinely cares about the players. That is
huge in our program.

The first thing we constantly harp on is "run." That means we give great effort, play physically, and play as a team.
Every player on our team runs. They run onto the field and off the field. We run to the ball and run to finish.
Everyone on our team runs from the snap of the ball through the blowing of the whistle.

We get to the ball and "create turnovers." Last year, we created more turnovers than anyone in the country. We
lead the country in turnover margin and I think that has to do with primarily playing hard. Of course, it had a lot to do
with our defensive scheme. On offense and special teams, we want to secure and protect the ball. In a defense
mood, we want to attack the ball.

The last thing we harp on is "finish." Every drill has a finish. We talk about finishing off the field. We talk about
finishing academically. We have a finish off the field. Everything we do has a finish. Every drill has a predetermined
finish. We have a catch phrase on defense that says. "Attack and finish." We want the attitude of a track runner
attacking the finish line to set a world record. We do not want to be the runner who wins the race but pulls up just
before the finish. We demand they finish and when they do, we celebrate it.

Every person in the stadium knows who scores the touchdowns, but every single player on our team celebrates as if
they did. When we show the films to the team, we want to show the celebration by the team. We want passion within
the team and everyone celebrates together. The people in the stands do not celebrate a good block on the play but
we do. We have passion for one another and celebrate everyone's success.

Two things in football go hand-in-hand. First is ball secure on offense and second is turnovers on defense. We have
a great scheme but the thing that makes us good is the way we run to the ball. If you watch our defensive players,
you will see they all have their eyes on the ball. The first defender secures the tackle and the second and third
defenders attack the ball.

This is something that does not happen if you do not emphasize it and practice it. We emphasize in our film
sessions to get nine defenders to the ball in every frame. It is important when you watch tape of the games, you
point out the things you want to emphasize. We want our defense to swarm to the ball, with an attacking nature.
That leads to a take-away.

On the offensive side of the ball, we must work on securing the ball. We talk about our defense playing fast and
attacking the ball. We use the meeting as a ball security seminary Two years ago, on 90-percent of our fumbles the
defense never touched the ball. It was an exchange issue with the center and quarterback or a hand-off problem
with the quarterback and running back. In some cases, the player simply dropped the ball without a defender hitting
him. We make an issue of carrying the football. We want it carried high and tight to the chest. We do not tolerate
backs or receivers that do not carry the ball with the proper technique.

If you watch our tapes of defense or offense, you will see what I am talking about. Every player is running from the
start of the play until the whistle. That is on offense and defense. The fact that everyone on the defense runs well
leads to great pursue. The offense knocks everyone down at some time or another: however, we do not stay down.
That is the secret to great pursuit. Get up and pursue the ball. If you look at a player like Dion Jordan, who played
for us, he made a lot of money because he learned how to run and pursue the football. It takes great passion for the
game to run the way we do.

The reason we lead the nation in turnover margin last year was running to the ball. When the ball came out, we had
defenders around it. We stood a good chance to recover the ball.

On the offensive side of the ball, it is just as important for everyone to run to the ball. Our offensive linemen must
block, but that is only part of their job. They must get down field and run to the ball. We have offensive linemen
score touchdowns because they run to the ball. We have had backs fumble the ball and the offensive linemen scoop
and score with it. We want them to block downfield. However, we do not want them to block behind the ball.

Some people like the no-huddle offense and some people do not like it because they do not run it. I hope you can
get something from this even if you are not a no-huddle team. We use it and believe in it. The defense believes in it
and the strength coach believes in it. The philosophy of being a no-huddle team has to be program wide. The idea
of going fast has to be in every phase of the program. It starts with the offensive scheme, our conditioning, it
continues in the weight room, and includes the defense.

We probably played more personnel than anyone else in the country. Against California, we played three true
freshmen at the same time. They had the confidence to play because they had a ton of reps in practice. They
played for us all year long and rotated into the defense constantly. That is part of our defensive philosophy and we
build it into our scheme. It also helps us with our special team personnel.

Everything we do from a conditioning standpoint and the weight room is about playing fast. In the weight room. we
go fast, go fast, go fast, and pause. That activity assimilates a series on offense. In our practice schedule, we never
go more than 12 minutes in a row in the team setting. If we had a 20 minute team drill, the players would die. We try
to go as fast as we possibly can for a maximum of 12 minutes.

The issue for a no-huddle offense is how to communicate. There are a number of ways to do that. We are constantly
looking for better ways to communicate with the team on the field. We have to get the call from the sidelines to the
field in the fastest possible way.

The first way to get the call into the game is the "wristband."

Positives:
• There is no doubt on the call
• The coach controls the call

Negatives
• Speed
• Flexibility

There are positives to using the wristband. If you use the wristband, there is no doubt, what the play is. If the coach
calls A-2, the quarterback looks at the wristband and calls A-2. There is no confusion as to the call of the play. If you
use the wristband, the coach controls the call. There is no intermediary. The quarterback does not check to A-3
unless the coach tells him he can. The thing you must do when you hurry up is to condense the verbiage. If the
huddle call is "bingo, white-delta X-post." that call now becomes X-post.

The negatives about the wristband are speed and flexibility. You must get the signal from the sideline, look at the
wristband, locate the call, and finally run the play. The other negative is flexibility. It is harder to adjust during a
game. If the X-receiver runs a post on a particular play, it is harder to adjust the pattern to a post/corner using a
wristband. At halftime, it is hard to adjust what you are doing in reference to the wristband.

A second way to communicate to the field is "boards or flip charts.- When you use this type of system, it is "a picture
is worth a thousand words." The system can be as simple as you want it to be. You may see a picture on a red
background. The red background may be the formation and the picture the play. The pros and cons of using this
kind of system are similar to the wristband. It is difficult to run the entire offense using boards and flip charts unless
you have time to prefect what you do. The teams that do use it, do a good job at finding the right things on the
boards. The big problem with the boards is they are awkward to use.

Another method is for every position coach to signal to their players. It is very specific as to assignment. The
offensive line does not need to know some particulars that deal with the running back. They do not need to know
what the kind of motion the receiver uses on a particular route. They need to know the protection scheme and not
the patterns the receivers run. The negative part is it keeps the position coach from working with other players when
they are not in the game. It also requires more players on the team to know different signals.

The most conventional way is to hand signal everything to the quarterback. The positive is the speed it gets in the
game. You must practice the signal system and use it daily in practice. It helps to have the same people do the
signaling in practice that do it in the games. That leads to more consistency and accuracy. When you use this type
of system, it puts an intermediary between the coach and the quarterback. The additional problem is you must find a
way to disguise what you are doing.

What we try to do from a game plan standpoint is to line up and have answers. We want to have something that is
all-purpose from all formations. In a 3 X 1 formation, we want to be able to run the ball to the strong side and weak
side. We want to have a play action pass off each of those plays and get the ball snapped quickly.

Through our formations and adjustment, we want the defense to show us how they are adjusting and playing us. We
may go unbalanced or use motion, to make the defense adjust. We want to make the defense show their hand by
forcing the tempo of the game. Early in a game, we want to show things we saw on a film and watch the defensive
adjustments. Defenses do not have time to disguise too much when you push the tempo. What the quarterback
sees is what he generally gets.

The offensive system used does not prevent the use of the no-huddle, hurry-up tempo. You can use any
communication system that makes the most sense to your players. The only thing you must do is process the
information quickly.
In the calls you use, make sure you are using only what the players have to know. If you run a "24-Power", the
running back does not need to know where he aligns. He knows that from practice. His position does not need to be
in the call. Condense the motion calls used in an offense into a few calls. If you have an injury, you need a constant
set of terms so it is not confusing to the substitute.

On offense, we want to be in an attack mood. We do not get into an attack mood to see what they are doing. We get
into an attack mood to see where we can attack. We want to train our players to play with a forward lean.

We try to strain the defense from an alignment standpoint. We want to know if they are trying to get additional
personnel on the field? Are they using a nickel or dime package in particular downs? We hope we can limit their
answers to a scheme we may be using. If they cannot get their nickel package into the game, does it hurt what they
are doing? The variations and total number of plays are unlimited. You decide what type of formation you want to
use.

We do not have a set time between plays to snap the ball. We are not trying to run a play every 7.3 seconds. The
only thing we do is go as fast as possible. The coaches decide the tempo we use in the games. That gives us the
ability to control the pace of the game and manage the clock if we need to. We can slow the pace at the end of a
game or slow it if we want to use an audible. That gives the coaches a chance to see the defense alignment before
we call the play.

You can always control the tempo of the game. If we play a team that blitzes out of a certain formation, we may
want to look at it and change the play before we snap the ball. If a team lines up two ways, you can let the
quarterback audible to the game planned play. There are many variations in the way to control the tempo. You have
to decide how you want to do it and what advantage you can gain from slowing or speeding up the tempo.

When we go to "green light" mood, we are going as fast as we can. The thing you must consider when you start
going this fast is the play call. You limit the number of different plays you run and the personnel group you have in
the game. When you get into this tempo, your play selection becomes more of a gap mentality. When we snap the
ball, the defense may not be set. The offense wants to have an area-blocking scheme because the defense is not
set. The offensive linemen block gaps instead of defenders. By using this tempo, it keeps the defense from
substituting. If they try, we can catch them with 12 players on the field.

When you run with this tempo, the play action pass is always a good call. If the defense has to scramble to align,
their communication may suffer. When we go at this speed, we tend to see more base-defense instead of
movement and blitzes. However, in our play selections we want to keep the risk at a minimum. We want to be safe
with the ball.

The quarterback has to understand where everyone is and when to snap the ball. We give him a rule. The rule is he
has is to look at the feet of the wide receivers. If they are not in a stable stance, he cannot snap the ball. He has to
make sure everyone is set. In this situation, we must do two things. We must get set, stay still, and we must align
correctly.

The penalties we get are the false start, not enough men on the line of scrimmage, or an illegal formation. However,
we have discipline and do not have many penalties.

Sometimes the speed catches the defense with 12 men on the field. Sometimes it catches us in motion. The
quarterback has to snap the ball quickly but he has to make sure we are set. The biggest problems occur with wide
receivers.

When we talk about ball security for our running backs, we coach them to carry it high and tight. If you look at the
ball carrier from behind, you should never see the ball. If you can see the ball, he has it in the wrong position. We
tell them, if they get in traffic to get the ball over their heart.

When we get into the green light" offense, it screws up some of our line blocking rules. That is why we limit what we
do in this mood of offense. It becomes more of a track-blocking situation, but we run the inside and outside zone
plays. We run some power off-tackle and counter with a gap scheme. The trap blocking schemes are not affected as
much. The man-blocking schemes are where you can have trouble.
The transition from a yellow light" to a "green light' is all on the quarterback. We may run the "green light" mood for a
series. However, if we have an explosive play, the quarterback will probably try to "green light" on the next play.
Changing the tempo comes from the bench. When we run the "yellow light", it comes from the coaches in the box.
They want to see where the defense aligns. If we want to run the inside zone play to the 3-technique we may have
to check the call. If we play a blitzing team, this gives us a chance to see where they are coming from.

We teach the running back how to fall. We drill it in practice and it helps us in the game. We practice how to fall
down. We do it the old fashion way. We do the monkey roll. We want to make it natural to get off the ground. When
the running back is going down, he cannot let the ball come away from his body.

That position is a vulnerable situation for the ball carrier. Someone takes his feet out and he is airborne before he
hits the ground. If the ball comes away from the body, it is exposed. With instant replay, they can tell if it is moving
before he hits the ground. We drill falling to the ground to keep those airborne fumbles from occurring. The general
rule we have is to land on the feet. We do not want him going down on his elbow or his shoulder.