Urban Meyer's Shovel Option

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Originally posted by: longtigercat
As a side note. We did install the shovel this past year. The timing is difficult and needs a lot of reps. It doesn't seem to me to be something that you just throw into your offense. We had a lot of injuries this year and changes in personnel so we had to dummy things down (we were down to our fourth QB about 2/3rds into the season - it was unbelievable). We'll keep it and expand on it next year (we need to package it - we didn't use it within a series). But for how often we ran it this year and how much we practiced it - it didn't play out like we thought it would.

For us we found that the QB needs to be patient as he goes flat - he can't bolt out (which can put the defender upfield between the QB and shovel still being able to make the play on the QB) and the QB should keep his shoulders relatively square to the LOS to 45 so that he can pitch either way. The QB needs to get a handle on the ball as quick as possible, stressing the shovel hand first, because the window to the shovel may be short (if we missed opportunties, it was usually because we weren't able to shovel underneath quick enough).

Add a drill for the QB against air during individual with the coach pointing to a stationary pitch or shovel after the snap so that the QB gets used to finding the read and handling the pitch either way - with quick and slow reads (stress the quick often). Remember that the read may not always be who he thinks if they are stunting (gap exchange) - this makes it even more difficult. Then add the backs to the drill in a two back set (have them line up and rotate in on both sides, rotate the QB's and get a lot of quick reps). As a change-up for the drill and to develop quicker hands, we have the QB shovel autoumatically, the read coach flashes up a number of fingers which the QB calls out in order to make sure the QB is reading the key. The read coach then tosses a ball to the QB right after the shovel and the QB continues on to pitch the speed (the idea came from an option drill from under center we got from Navy a few years back which we moidified). We told our shovel backs to lean shoulder down into the LOS after receiving the shovel to get them upfield (we call it knife), run the outside hip of the pulling guard, then adjust as necessary (secure-knife-hip-adjust). We install the speed prior to the shovel as part of the progression.

The shovel man also has to time things up; the line scheme has timing in it with the guard pulling (you try to fit/time up the shovel in behind the pulling guard); and of course you have the pitch relationship with the speed. Add the gun snap, the motion (unless you want to just run it out of a two back gun set) and preparing different backs for either the speed pitch or shovel and you have a lot of variables - a lot of timing issues to run it effectively on a consistent basis.

It did work well for us at times and I don't want to discourage anyone from running it. We eventually added some drills as we went through our progression such as the QB shovel drill above, but it was after the fact so I hope to smooth the initial installation out next year. Just my experience with it during a very bad year due mainly to injuries. If anyone has some additional coaching points or advise, I'd love to hear it.

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