WONDERING WHY the other team has snuffed out your screen pass for the fourth time in 3 quarters? Maybe your play calling tendencies are showing.
Hank Schrader, Defensive Coordinator at Bellevue High School in Bellevue, Wash., says that it’s a good idea to have one of your defensive coaches perform an extensive scouting report on your own offense. If he can spot play-calling tendencies in certain situations or formations, then it’s a pretty safe bet that opposing teams have them figured out too.
“The first time I became aware of our own tendencies was on a wide receiver screen where we noticed our opponents jumping on the WR since it was an easy read,” Schrader says. “We changed the play slightly by setting up two quick screens with the motion back clearly blocking. The corner covering always came forward. So we called the same play, except this time we sent the motion back long and the WR on a quick slant route. We scored an easy touchdown! After this, I was hooked on studying my own tendencies.”
Dead Give Aways
The personnel that you have on the field can expose the kind of play that you’re going to run. Use these defensive assumptions to your advantage.
“I would often use a specific player at fullback for a FB screen and my opponents clearly recognized it,” Schrader says “We used this against them by putting a different player in the game and then ran the same play for big yardage.
“On the negative side, I found that I was calling the same play in that situation almost every time. You want to have at least three calls for every situation to avoid exposing tendencies.”
He advocates cutting out extremes in certain situations because defenses will play you differently in obvious run or pass situations. He says the worst scenario for a defensive coordinator is a 50 percent run/pass situation.
“Scout yourself twice a year by putting the plays into a computer,” Schrader says. “A team that knows its own patterns may want to break them.”