American Football Monthly introduced the “Point-Counterpoint” series in 2006. Each month two coaches went head-to-head on a specific or unique situation. An offensive coach would give his strategy and a defensive coach countered. Some of the topics included:
• Defending the Two-Minute Offense
• Third and Five in the Red Zone
• Goal Line Offense vs. Defense
• The Rocket Sweep vs. the 4-4 Defense
• The Spread Offense vs. the 3-3 Stack Defense
Gridiron Strategies, beginning with this issue, will be continuing the “Point-Counterpoint” series. Free-lance writer David Purdum, who wrote this series of articles for AFM, will now continue to do so with GS. The first subject is the zone read play – how
Offensively, David spoke to Brian Scott, the assistant head coach at Old Dominion University. The Monarchs averaged 44 points per game last fall and led all Football Championship Subdivision teams with 548.23 yards per game in total offense. Defensively, the priority of how to stop the play fell to Rick Scheidt, the defensive coordinator at Fresno City College. Coach Scheidt recently wrote a clinic article for AFM entitled, “Defending the Zone Read.” His main point is that defenses can be successful against the play if they understand the rules for each position and their gap responsibilities.
Last year, GS improved the quality of the magazine by going from a two-color to a four-color publication. With the last issue, we changed the design and format. Now, with this issue, GS expands from 24 pages to 32 pages. The eight additional pages corresponds to four more articles. We hope you enjoy them and the new look of Gridiron Strategies.
As always, we welcome your feedback and hope you enjoy this issue of GS.
Sincerely,
Rex Lardner
Managing Editor