Copyright 2010 by John T. Reed All rights reversed
Navy defeated Army by 31-17 on 12/11/10. It was the ninth straight loss to Navy—a record. Although Army won 6 games this season and is going to the Armed Forces bowl (which I will attend), and that is a much better record than recent years, the Army-Navy Game was pretty much same old, same old.
I watched the whole 2010 game at a classmate’s house. I have not watched the whole Army-Navy Game in years. Too depressing. I did not tape it or review it as I would as a coach, but I watched it live and saw the TV replays as a former coach.
Laymen tend to make sweeping generalizations about why a game was won or lost. They do not know what they are talking about. Plays fail because of a player here or there not doing his job.
Defensive backs
On a number of occasions, Army’s defensive backs (corner backs and safeties) did a lousy job. Cornerbacks are among the most talented, fastest, best athletes in football. So I would expect Army would be especially weak at that position because of their systemic (Afghan and Iraq war and inability to go on to the NFL) and self-inflicted (lousy recent record and ordeal cadet lifestyle) recruiting disadvantages.
But there is a saying in coaching that,
You don’t need talent to hustle.
The problem Army supporters can complain about in the 2010 Army-Navy Game is lack of hustle by Army DBs. Hustle means doing what the coaches told you to do—alignment, eye focus, reaction to the play unfolding, using proper technique—and going 100% until the whistle. Because of where the TV cameras focus, I cannot comment much on alignment and eye focus and reaction, but on a number of occasions, I saw two or more DBs around a Navy ball carrier and they used lousy tackling technique, including failure to wrap up with their arms, and one or more of them went off duty before the play ended apparently assuming his teammates would finish off the ball carrier. Meanwhile, the Navy ball carrier is fighting every nanosecond for more yards until the whistle. Navy got some first downs that way and one pass that was completed to about the Army seven-yard line resulted in a touchdown on that play because one Army DB did not wrap up and the other—who was between the receiver and the goal line—completely missed.
The player who missed—probably a safety—put his head down. That is improper technique. It is dangerous in terms of getting your neck broken and it often causes you to miss because you lose sight of the player. He also appeared to be throwing a block tackle. That is, he was going to bring the Navy receiver down entirely by hitting him really hard with his shoulder rather than doing that AND wrapping up the receiver’s legs—the so-called sure tackle.
Do you see successful block tackles in the NFL and NCAA every weekend?
Yes.
Does that mean I should not criticize this failed one? No. Block tackles are unacceptable from a coaching standpoint. They reflect the coach failing to teach proper technique or failing to insist that it be used every time.
There are three pertinent sayings in football coaching:
What you emphasize, you achieve.
What you tolerate, you encourage.
What you demand, you get.
I do not know who Army’s DB coach is. Don’t need to know or want to know. But is virtually certain that he did not put enough emphasis on correct tackling technique and “flying to the ball” and gang tackling. It is also virtually certain that he tolerates too much sloppy technique and fails to demand correct technique.
It is the job of head coach Ellerson to recruit, train, and retain good position coaches and to monitor, counsel, fire, and replace bad ones. It would appear to me that Ellerson failed to do that with regard to his DBs coach.
I can understand that the Army DB coach probably has some of the weakest talent in the NCAA FBS, but that is no excuse for lousy technique or failing to play at a 100% effort level until the whistle.
Linebackers
On a number of fourth downs in the game, the announcers said that Navy was probably trying to draw Army offsides. Apparently they had scouted Army’s #50 who did indeed fall for the hard count that everyone in the stadium knew was coming.
Actually, he was blitzing. Now I am not informed as to the details of Army’s defensive playbook, but I have discussed the option on the phone with “Father of the Veer Option” Bill Yeoman, a Hall of Fame college coach and, as it happens, a West Point graduate who played in Army’s glory days for Coach Red Blaik. If I understood Yeoman correctly, you cannot blitz against an option team.
True, you might get lucky and run right into the play, but blitzing—rushing more than five—requires switching to man pass coverage and man pass coverage is unsound against an option team. That’s because there are five eligible receivers (actually six if an interior lineman throws the pass—see my book The Contrarian Edge for Football Offense).
Blitzing against an option
Stopping the option run requires six guys: a dive stopper, QB stopper, and a pitch stopper on each side of the center. Once the play gets started, the backside pitch stopper can rotate into cover-three zone pass defense ( one deep safety and two deep cornerbacks). That means you have five guys stopping the run.
If you also blitz a linebacker, you are left with five pass defenders to stop the probably five pass receivers, but the guy who started out at backside corner has a lot more difficulty belatedly getting into man pass coverage than he does rotating into cover-three zone pass defense.
His man ran away at full speed on the snap while the was reading the play and recognizing that he was on the back side of an option—and that it was not a counter option which starts out going away then comes back to the side in question. In other words, by the time the backside corner diagnoses the option direction, and stays home briefly to check for a counter option coming his way, it is too late to get into man pass coverage on the receiver who was lined up in front of him at the snap.
Is it possible that #50 was part of a zone blitz where a lineman drops off into zone pass coverage to replace #50 in that role—which would be sound?
Yes. I did not try to see if that’s what they were doing.
‘If I only had a brain…’
But the fact is #50 gave Navy two first downs and when they tried it a third time, they faked the snap about six times, apparently unable to believe that # 50—like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz—had somehow gotten a brain. In the culminating scene of Wizard of Oz, the scarecrow proves he has received his brain by reciting the Pythagorean Theorem. I imagine that, during Navy’s third attempt to draw #50 offsides, he was reciting NCAA Rule 18-2-a out loud. Like the scarecrow, he holds one index finger up and pronounces,
Section 18. Encroachment and Offside Article 2. a. After the ball is ready for play, offside occurs when…
During Navy’s third attempt to draw #50 offside, the TV announcers commented that Coach Ellerson probably ordered him not to move a muscle. While watching that play, I suggested that he ordered two of #50’s teammates to physically hold him back.
I once coached with a guy who would have screamed at him,
Did you eat a lot of paint chips when you were a kid?!
Once again, Ellerson recruited the linebackers coach who thought #50 was the best person in the 3,500 strong male portion of the West Point student body to be at middle linebacker in the Army-Navy Game. From a national defense standpoint, that is a scary thought.
#50 should have been issued a new asshole the first time he did that and the Army team should have received a new middle linebacker the second time. I have no idea what that guy was doing out there for the third time.
Memo to #50’s parents: Don’t even THINK about complaining to me or any other coach about what I just said. There is NO EXCUSE for jumping offside in those two situations—especially at West Point where the first words spoken to me and all those of my era were,
Mister, from now on you have three answers: Yes, Sir. No, Sir. and No excuse, Sir.
#50 is going to Afghanistan—To LEAD OTHER PEOPLE’S SONS IN COMBAT. The Taliban do not give an E for effort or half credit for being a nice boy who wasn’t thinking at a key moment IIN FRONT AN INTERNATIONAL TV AUDIENCE OF MILLIONS IN THE BIGGEST GAME OF HIS LIFE!
‘Catching’ blockers
On another occasion, I commented to my classmate/host for the telecast that Army defenders, mainly linebackers, were doing what coaches call “catching” the Navy blockers. That is, when the Navy blockers arrived on a lead, iso, or blast play (one or two blockers lead blocking in front of the ball carrier on an inside running play), the Army linebackers were still where they were at the start of the play.
Linebackers are supposed to read the initial steps of the offense when the play starts. Generally, on offensive backfield flow on their side of the center, they are supposed to mirror the flow. That is, if the Navy offensive back on their side of the center runs at the Army linebacker, the linebacker is supposed to mirror that by running at the Navy offensive back. They should collide at the line of scrimmage and thereby fill the gap the ball carrier is trying to run through.
If, instead, the collision happens a few yards into the Army backfield, which it did on occasion in the game, the Navy ball carrier has room to run to either side of the blocker-linebacker collision.
I also commented during the game that time and again the Navy blockers blocked their assigned Army guy and the Navy ball carrier gained big yards. That is the way it’s supposed to happen from an offensive coordinator standpoint and did in the Army-Navy Game for Navy. But it is the job of the Army defenders to shed those blocks. They did not on many occasions. That could be an athletic-ability advantage. Navy’s players always look a bit bigger, stronger, more athletic, and faster to me in recent decades.
I also commented during the game that the army blockers often left their feet before making contact with the Navy defenders. In other words, they dove at their ankles from afar. That is incorrect technique. It does not work. You could use the 2010 Army-Navy Game film as a training film for how not to block pointing out the Army blockers often throwing themselves at the ankles of the Navy defenders from far away and missing.
Block until the whistle
A blocker, like a tackler, is supposed to ram into the enemy at full speed then keep his legs churning during the block.
One year, I coached a team of 11-year olds (including my youngest son). Because of a nuance of the combine where we coaches made notes and drafted our team, I was able to draft only kids who did what they were told. It was a unique pleasure to coach that team.
Given the nature of West Point, you would think they have the same kind of players. Nope. I saw the 2010 Army-Navy Game. Army does NOT have all players who do what they are told. Their coaches were not dumb enough to tell them to do much of what their players did in that game.
Anyway, my 11-year-old players once asked me how far I wanted them to block a defender on one double-team block. “All the way to the sideline” I answered. It was kind of a flip answer that really meant, “Block him until you hear the whistle just like you do everything else.” I should have been less flip.
In the next game, first time I called that play, my two blockers stood the defender up perfectly then literally ran him from the right hash, where the play started, into his own team’s bench 40 yards across the field. I got yelled at by the officials and opposing parents.
This did not happen to the Army coaches at the 2010 Army-Navy Game.
Keep your guy off the ball carrier
Almost all my teams were known for that maniacal blocking until the whistle. I originally told my kickoff teams to “Block somebody!” Bad idea. Later, I figured out to assign each kickoff team player an opponent to keep away from the ball carrier.
In kickoff practice, the kick returner would get tackled. I would figure out who tackled him and who was supposed to block that guy. Then we would rerun the same play with the ball carrier running to the same general area, only we would remove from the field all players but the ball carrier, blocker, and tackler.
With the entire team and coaching staff watching, I would throw, not kick, the ball to the returner and off the three of them would go. We would do that one or two times. If the blocker did not keep that guy off the ball carrier, I would give him one more chance, then replace him on the spot.
Subsequently, in our game films, you would see ten kickoff team blockers chasing their guy—L-2 or R3 or whomever—all over the field for the entire duration of the kickoff play. You could see in the body language of the defenders astonishment at these crazy loons chasing them all over. They had never experienced such a thing in other games.
In 2004 when I coached at Monte Vista High School, my wide receivers were into catching passes, but not blocking. I explained there are about 80 offensive plays for us in a game (we ran the warp-speed no-huddle so that’s twice as many as normal). I also pointed out that it was unusual for a receiver to catch even three passes a game, so their main job was blocking not catching. I pointed out that Terrell Owens, then playing for our local 49ers, had the same role and if you focused on him, you would see that he blocked most of the time.
My receivers did not find this persuasive. So I benched their asses, told the rest of the team why, and put backup fullbacks at wide receiver. They blocked like maniacs. One of the former wide receivers, a very small guy, got religion and made it back to first-string receiver, where he caught the game-winning, come-from-behind pass in a great two-minute drill later in the season.
But his greater accomplishment was whacking the hell out of cornerbacks all play every play in games like a rabid bulldog who had hold of their pant leg. Those enemy corners forgot about the game. They were in their own personal war to get that damned little receiver to stop pounding them. After the game, opposing coaches used to ask me what I did to my receivers to get them to block so diligently.
What you emphasize , you achieve.
What you tolerate, you encourage.
What you demand, you get.
The importance of a scoreboard to learning leadership
I learned more about leadership being a football coach than I did in four years of studying leadership at West Point. So much so that I think all cadets should have to be youth or intramural football coaches at West Point during their four years. The reason I learned more coaching is the games.
Leaders have all sorts of theories about the best way to lead. But the game separates the incorrect theories from the correct ones. The problem with West Point and the Army in they have no games. That is, there is no scoreboard. What about iraq and Afghanistan? Do you think a good football coach would tolerate the performance of the U.S. Army and Marines in those two countries? Afghanistan is now the nation’s longest-ever war with no victory in sight.
Army’s coach Ellerson is the brother of West Point graduates and himself an Annapolis dropout. Whatever. To an extent, he appears not yet to have learned the “emphasize, tolerate, demand” leadership lesson. If the Army coaching staff has not learned it, that suggests their players have not learned it. And these guys are, after all, Army officers to be. They need to learn it for being officers more than they need to learn it for football games.
Quarterbacks
Both QBs were very talented. The Navy QB threw his first two passes when he was not set or balanced. That’s incorrect. He completed both. But his technique was afwful. Like I said, great athletes. He later calmed down and threw generally from a set-and-balanced position.
Army’s guy always threw from a set-and-balanced position and had excellent throwing technique.
One of the QBs—I forget which—once stepped up into the pocket during a rush when there was no up to step into. He got sacked. That was probably inexperience from playing for a team that is in the top five in the nation in rushing and the bottom ten or whatever in passing.
Hold on to the damned football!
The box score in the San Francisco Chronicle said Army fumbled 3 time and lost 2. I thought the TV stats said that Army had fumbled 4. On one kick return, Army fumbled to Navy as we could see in the replay, but they had one of those ten-minute piles and the officials erroneously awarded the ball to Army.
The most disastrous was Army’s qb losing the ball at the two yard line of Navy whereupon it was taken by a Navy player for a 98-yard touchdown the other way. Had Army scored, the game would have been tied at 17 shortly thereafter.
That play caused a 14-point swing. We were about to score 7 points with a touchdown and extra point. Instead Navy scored 7 points. 14 points was the final margin of victory of Navy. In other words, it appears that fumble, all by itself, turned a tie in regulation into a big Navy victory.
What caused that fumble (which never hit the ground)? In the replay it looked like Army’s QB was carrying the ball improperly and that he ran into his own teammate in front of him and that teammate’s shoulder knocked the ball out.
I did not like how Army carried the ball on a number of plays.
Carrying the ball properly is one of the first two or three things we teach players when I coach. We teach it to the whole team, not just prospective ball carriers.
One season in the early nineties, our local daily paper the San Ramon Valley Times decided to cover youth football like high school complete with photographers. They decided to feature a ballcarrier from each local team per week. Each week, I would bring that paper to practice to show our players how the other team’s guy was carrying the ball. “What’s wrong with this picture, guys?” They would all yell, “No eagle claw! He’s carrying it around the fat part!”
The correct way to carry the ball is with an eagle claw (your hand with fingers spread and curled) over the front point and your forearm and bicep pressing the ball against your body. In traffic, you move it to the front of your body. In the open field; on the side for speed.
Finally, the local paper had a photo of one of our ball carriers. “What’s wrong with this picture?” I asked our kids. “Nothing!” they yelled. And so it was. Our guy was carrying it with training-film perfection and it was a game action photo, not posed. You can see a color, spring game photo of my son carrying the ball perfectly as a Columbia university tailback at
http://www.johntreed.com/springgame.html
C-QB exchange
There were two or more plays where the Army QB struggled to secure the snap. The TV announcers commented on that.
That is almost certainly caused by the Army coaches not giving the Army center-QB pairs enough repetitions of the snap. I have written 8 books on football coaching and I recommend that all center-QB pairs—there should be three strings of each on every football team—get 1,200 snaps per pair before the first game and get several hundred snaps per week throughout the season. Ditto the long snappers and holders.
My teams were famous for avoidance of poor snaps. In 1993, my long snapper Richie Chinn was featured (two-page article with color photos) in Sports Illustrated for Kids for snapping 402 long snaps without a bad one. And his streak was ended by the end of the season, not a bad snap. (How did we have occasion to do 402 long snaps in one season? Actually we probably did 500 but the 402nd before last was a bad one. We ran the single wing, an offense in which every snap is a long snap like those done for field goals.)
In 2004, I noticed that if my QB did not get the laces perfectly placed on the snap it would adversely affect the completion rate on the three-step-drop, timing passes. So I made the QB and center keep snapping hundreds of times until every lace placement was perfect.
There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the garbled snaps that occurred in the 2010 Army-Navy Game. This was the final regular season game. The season had ended for every other team in NCAA football. Army had weeks to prepare for the Navy game.
Whose fault are the poor exchange between the center and quarterback? Almost certainly the head coach, offensive coordinator and QB and O line coaches for not making sure the C-QB combinations all had enough snap repetitions. This is what I call a reps skill. That is, there is not a lot of technique. The two players simply have to do thousands of times and work out the details between themselves. It is not a coach-player activity. It is a player-player activity. But the coaches must make sure the necessary quantity of snaps takes place.
Is it possible that Ellerson and his staff did make sure there were enough reps of the snap and that one of the C-QB pair screwed up in the game? Yes. But that is unlikely. The most likely culprit is not enough reps.
QB-dive back exchange
I also did not like some of the QB-dive back exchanges. That is the hand off or fake hand off from the QB to the fullback. It looked to me like the Army QB was looking at the fullback instead at the dive key on many occasions. That is incorrect. The QB is supposed to look at the dive key—the defender who is assigned to tackle the fullback. If the dive key is in position to tackle the fullback, the QB is supposed to pull the ball back out of the fullback’s stomach and attack the inside shoulder of the pitch key. The pitch key is the defender assigned to tackle the QB. If the defender does come toward the QB to tackle him, the QB is supposed to turn and look at the pitch back and pitch it to him.
On a couple of occasions, the QB and fullback collided. That comes from the QB bending at the waist which is a no-no in the option or from either the QB or the fullback or both taking a slightly incorrect path. Since the QB and FB are both supposed to be looking at the dive key, the hand off or non-handoff is blind. It is done entirely by feel by both parties.
Because they are not looking where they are going and not looking at the ball or handoff, they must have precise body positions and precise paths. How do you achieve that precision? Same as the other blind handoff I just described: the C-QB exchange on the snap—thousands of reps.
Watching De La Salle practice the option
In the early 1990s, I wrote and asked De La Salle High School coach Bob Ladouceur if he was giving any coaching clinics. He said no but invited me to his spring practice. I went and introduced myself to him then walked about 20 yards away to get out of his way. He called me back and had me stand right next to him for days. He spent so much time talking to me explaining what he was doing that I felt bad for the players.
Ladouceur is the most successful football coach in the history of the universe at any level. Among other records, they have the longest win streak: 151 games. The second longest high school win streak is 52 games. DLS’s 150th victory was over Monte Vista. At the time, I was the head coach of the Monte Vista freshman team.
While army was losing to Navy on 12/11/10, De La Salle was beating California High School, which is coached by one of Ladouceur’s former players—49-21. It was DLS’s 20th North Coast Section Championship in a row. California is the only state in the union with no state high school football championship. That’s because we have 35 million people—comparable to the population of Canada. There is a sort of mini-BCS California state championship game based on polls, but no tournament like in all other states. So the NCS championship is the equivalent of the state championships in all other states.
In 1998, my son scored 26 points in his team’s 40-0 NCS championship victory over El Cerrito High School. That was the Division III level. DLS is at the Division I level. I also coached in the California High School youth program—the San Ramon Bears—for six years. My high school career coaching record against California High School as a head coach or offensive coordinator at the freshman level against Cal High is 3-0. I also was the defensive coordinator of a team that beat them at the J.V. level. So I am very familiar with NCS, California High School, and DLS.
The main activity Ladouceur let me observe was practicing the option. He had an alignment strip on the ground. That is a rubber strip that shows the precise locations of the offensive linemen. On offense, he had the first and second strings of the offensive backs: QB and two half backs. They run the Houston veer so the other back was a flanker wide receiver. There was also the centers.
On defense, he had players playing the role of dive key and pitch key. Before each play, he would signal from behind the offense to the defensive keys what he wanted them to do. Their behavior dictated the quarterback’s read and response. He also occasionally directed the pitch back to run the wrong way to test whether the QB was looking before he pitched to the pitchback.
First the first string would run a play, then the second. I thought the players reminded me of West Point cadets they were so disciplined. The whole drill seemed to operate by ESP. I guess they had the sequence down pat.
Ladouceur would intently watch each play and quietly comment after each. Most of the comments were corrections of the body position of the quarterback, Mike Bastianelli, who later played wide receiver and safety at USC. The San Francisco Chronicle said Bastianelli was DLS’s best-ever veer QB.
For example, once Bob told Bastianelli that he had bent about five degrees at the waist. He said that would cause a shoulder-pad collision with the dive back and that Bastianelli had to stay straight up so the dive back could pass close by without a collision. On another occasion, he corrected Bastianelli’s first step. I don’t remember the precise correction but it was something like, “Mike, you stepped at 4:30. It’s got to be 4:00 so you get more time to read the dive key.” 4:00 and 4:30 refer to an imaginary clock on the ground at the center of which the QB stands before the snap.
Anyway, you get the idea of the sort of precision that is required to run the triple option. I saw no such precision in the 2010 Army-Navy Game by Army. Instead, I saw the QB juggling the ball on a number of occasions and I saw he and the fullback colliding on a number of occasions. Once, it appeared that the QB decided to pull the ball from the fullback and keep it, but the fullback thought he was supposed to get it, causing a tug of war, so the QB was still juggling it as he tried to run with it. Neither the C-QB exchange nor the QB-FB exchange were right. This is all probably due to the coaching staff not giving them enough reps or not correcting imprecision when they do rep it.
Also, I did not get the impression that Army’s QB was making the right reads and decisions with regard to the dive key and pitch key in many cases. That may be caused by not enough practice reps. Or it may mean the wrong guy is playing QB. Certainly that QB needs to be in the offensive backfield somewhere. He was a good passer and great runner—aside from ball security. But he did not appear to be a good reader—perhaps because of lack of practice reps, but maybe because of DNA. Not every good athlete is a good option QB.
Defensive line
I thought Army’s defensive line generally played well against the run with good gang tackling, hustle, and technique. They have a different coach at the position coach level than the DBs. Keep him with regard to the run. But I saw almost no pressure on the Navy QB on pass plays.
I just read two books the Army defensive coordinator ought to read if he is not familiar with their contents: Seven Games That Changed the Game by Ron Jaworski and Blood, Sweat and Chalk by Tim Layden. Army cannot recruit blue chip D line men. So they need to scheme their pass pressure more. Those books cover the top offensive and defensive scheme innovations of the last century or so.
Army needs to confuse the enemy offensive line as to whom to block. You do that with stunts, games, and stuff like the zone blitz, tilted nose tackle, filling both A gaps with D linemen, etc. Army cannot just play opponents straight up on the line. Army needs to recruit the most innovative defensive coordinator in the nation to compensate for the fact that they cannot recruit the playing talent. They ought to be running every pass pressure trick in the book. If they were, I did not notice and whatever they did was not working.
Kickers
Neither team could kick. What’s that about? Kickers are unopposed by anything but their own lack of talent and mental demons. Kicking is zen. Don’t make it happen. Let it happen.
I tried to be a big-time pro kicker after West Point. Never kicked at West Point, but I did playing tackle football in the Army. We won the 1971 Fort Monmouth Super Bowl and I was the second-leading scorer on our team. But I was nowhere near talented enough to be a pro or even a college place kicker. Not enough fast-twitch leg muscles. I could kick 46-yard field goals all day long but I could not kick a 47-yard field goal to save my life. I also could not kickoff to the goal line.
I discussed the fact that some careers need talent, not just hard work, and cited my futile place-kicker quest as a cautionary tale of that principle, in my Succeeding book.
When he was unhappy with his kickers, Texas Tech coach Mike Leach held an open contest among the whole student body. He found a kicker he was satisfied with. To get into West Point, you have to pass an athletic ability test. Furthermore, you have to continue to pass athletic ability tests (obstacle course, mile runs, PE) throughout every year or they will flunk you out. I’m talking about the entire student body, not just the football team.
So they are the most athletic student body in the country along with the other service academies. You cannot tell me there are not a half dozen or more satisfactory NCAA kickers at West Point.
Big picture strategy
A football coach’s job is to win ethically, not to preserve his job. But I did not see the sort of contrarianism that Army needs to win against teams like Notre Dame and the other service academies. I am not sure what the motive for non-contrarianism is at Army, but I always suspect non-contrarian, also known as fashionable, coaches are following the rule expressed by legendary economist John Maynard Keynes,
World wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
That and a zillion other such quotes appear in my Contrarian Edge for Football Offense book, the second edition of which is just off the press.
Another is from Bill Walsh who said,
Combining creative tactics and strategy with skill and technique has been a very successful formula for the 49ers. There’s a remarkable difference between the more skilled “technique” approach and the simplistic style of football, where a coach might criticize players for not performing instead of concluding the fault lies with a limited style of play. Finesse can bring success with less than great players.
Bill Walsh, p. 41 Building a Champion
Bill is pussy footing around somewhat in that statement because football coaches are very political and diplomatic instinctively. Let me translate it to Jack Reed plain English:
It is a coach’s duty to give his team the scheme that optimizes their chances of winning, in part, by using the principles of contrarianism and ju jitsu.
Contrarianism means being sound, but different from anything the opposing defense ever sees, especially using high-reps skills that are hard for the opposing scout team to replicate. Ju jitsu means designing your offense to turn the opposing defense’s strengths into weaknesses and use their strengths against them.
Continuing with my translation:
Using fashionable, traditional coaching and schemes only works when the team in question has superior talent. In defeat, non-contrarian schemes at least let the coach deflect blame onto the players for the loss. If the coach had given his team the contrarian advantage, he would have increased his team’s chances of winning, but he may still have lost.
When you use an unusual approach and win, you’re a genius, But when an unusual approach is accompanied by a loss, the coach, not the players, gets blamed. Many coaches who know a contrarian approach would give their team a better chance of winning will deliberately not use it because they fear it may increase their chances of losing their job and they place more value on keeping their job than on winning.
Don’t expect a coach to admit that at a pep rally or in a job interview, but actions speak louder than words.
Football coaches typically demand “110%” from the players, then they hypocritically give only 83% or some such themselves in their approach to winning. The vast majority of coaches give “110%” to the politics of keeping their jobs, and part of that equation is avoiding responsibility for losses, but they do not exhibit such “coach hustle” when it comes to trying to win.
When Ellerson was hired, I applauded brining back the option to Army football. But I also said we needed something other than the option to beat the service academies because they know how to defend the option very well thank you. So what does Ellerson use to try to defeat Navy?—the exact same formation and motions and Oregon-style simulated snaps that Navy uses.
Folks, that ain’t contrarian and failure to be contrarian is coaching malpractice.
I do not know Ellerson’s motives for not using contrarianism or ju jitsu, but I can see that he used almost exactly the same offense as Navy and I can see the results. Navy has better personnel. So playing them straight up using the offense they are most familiar with is generally a doomed strategy.
My suggestions for Army football are at http://www.johntreed.com/Armyfootball.html I won’t repeat them here.
His résumé’s longer than mine
Often, when I criticize some big name coach, a reader says, “He forgot more football than you ever knew” or some such. Perhaps so. Rich Ellerson has been a full-time football coach for his whole adult life I believe. I have not. I was part time when I did it and I only coached 15 teams.
However, that is not dispositive as regards this article. I did not say “Army played poorly in the 201o Army-Navy Game. Take my word for it based on my coaching experience.”
Rather, I pointed to facts from the game, cited authorities like Bob Ladouceur, Bill Yeoman, Ron Jaworski, Tim Layden (Sports Illustrated writer), quoted coaching best practices that I did not invent, and offered logic that explains why some approaches are best practices for football coaching and the evidence that those best practices were not followed in this game.
I do not know everything there is to know about football coaching. Nor do I know as much as Ellerson in many respects. But I know enough to spot the poor performance and implied substandard coaching described above. Coaches whose games I analyze are probably glad I don’t know more because if I did I would have seen more.
