Minggu, 16 Januari 2011

Controlling OLB's without the bubble -- Charlie Means

     The stock answer for controlling outside linebackers in the spread offense is having the ability to run the bubble.  The purpose of this article is to give alternatives to a spread offense that doesn’t want to run the bubble.  For starters I will discuss why our offense chooses not to major in bubbles as our “hanger/flat area defender” controller.  It comes down to a what-do-you-want-to-do argument.  Our base philosophy is to be multiple with 4 wide sets with a mix of  T.E. sets using the same personnel grouping.  To make it as easy as possible for our full-time receivers, we keep the on/off the L.O.S. alignments the same. It doesn’t matter if it is a T.E. set or not, all they need to know to get properly aligned is how many eligible receivers are on their side of the ball. 
     We are shotgun 100% of the time. It doesn’t matter whether we are on the 1 yard line coming out or going in, or taking a knee.  We do not want to spend practice time with a center/QB exchange.  With our base alignments of our slots, you can see that one of them will be on the L.O.S. and one will be off.  We tried to have them run the bubble route the same (from on/off the L.O.S.) but the throwing angle was different for the QB.  Doesn’t seem that drastic, but you try it.  We then had the slots off the L.O.S. run a typical J-step, crossover run route.  The guys on the L.O.S. did the “crawfish” route backing away from the QB towards the sideline angling slightly away from the ball.  These changes were not what we were looking for either.
Bottom line……
We could dabble with the bubble and have some moderate success, or control the hangers with other things in our offense that we already practice and run more efficiently.  That was an easy choice. Bye-bye bubble.

Option 1 Outside Zone
This has been covered many times by many zone gurus.  Rule it up and run it. With or without a T.E., strong or weak, 1 back 2 back no back, fly no fly.