New coach, BIG PROBLEMS

Coach your situation sounds familiar to what I was dealing with last year.

I am at a 4A school and my average lineman weighs about 220. We are also a 1 back team and like to pass about 65% of the time. We have been working on feet quickness a lot this summer. You probably don’t have much time. We start practice in 1 week. Ladder drills, and jump rope are some of the generic drills that you can use that can help you. The good thing about a spread offense is that you do not have to the biggest line. I played for a new Division 1A school. Our first year in 1999 we were not so hot on offensive. In 2000 we had the number 4 offense in the country, and we had an average line of 270 pounds. If you don’t already have it in your playbook; I would really consider running the zone. You said you are a new coach to the OL, but you still may be familiar with it. You can also use your sprint out protection the same way you run the zone. A 3-step passing game is an aggressive run block to pass block; so there is not much scheming up there.
The 5 man pro will be the hardest. We brought our splits in and had a Big on Big philosophy.


We tried to run some down the throat plays last year and it just did not work because we were undersized. I think that is ok. If you can’t do it you can’t do it. We had a lot of success at weak side running plays. Iso weak, zone weak, counter weak, and so on.

As far as DL, good luck.

I know this is not much, but to explain it all is impossible over a message board.
Leave you e-mail address if interested and I can send some things.

Also (I feel like I am working for Jerry Campbell) but Coach Campbell has a good book called Offensive Line Play. It is well worth the money.

Good Luck

Be patient. It takes some time to develop a good OL.