Alright, let’s talk about this pro style offense playbook I’ve been tinkering with forever. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and decided, “Yep, gonna run the I-formation like it’s 1985.” Nah, it kinda happened outta necessity, really.
I started coaching way back, just helping out, you know? And everything was super simple. Wedge plays, runnin’ sweeps. It worked okay for little kids, but then you get older players, smarter defenses, and that basic stuff just gets blown up. I got tired of seein’ us stall out. So, I started digging.
First thing, I just watched a ton of football. Not just the highlights, but the real grind, play after play. Paid attention to formations, blocking, how they set up the pass with the run. Grabbed a bunch of old coaching books too, the dusty ones from guys who actually ran this stuff successfully. Didn’t care about fancy graphics, just the nuts and bolts.
Then came the drawing part. Man, I filled up notebooks. Just sketching basic plays:
- Iso runs
- Power O
- Simple play-action passes off those runs
- Basic drop-back stuff, like slants and curls
Getting it on paper was the easy part. Teaching it? Whole different story. You gotta understand, pro style asks a lot. Linemen gotta know assignments, backs gotta hit the right hole, QB gotta make reads under pressure. It’s not just “run over there.”
The First Attempts Were Rough
Honestly? My first versions of the playbook were a disaster. Too complicated. Too many plays. We tried installing like 20 run plays and 30 passes in the first week. Guys’ heads were spinning. Practice looked awful. Timing was off, blocking was a mess. We looked slower, more confused than before.
I remember one particularly bad game early on. We couldn’t run, couldn’t pass. Fumbled snaps, sacks, the works. Got blown out. Afterwards, I seriously thought about just scrapping the whole thing. Go back to something simpler, maybe some spread stuff everyone else was doing.
Stripping it Down and Building Back Up
But I didn’t. I’m kinda stubborn. I believed the idea was sound, just my execution sucked. So, I went back to the drawing board. Threw out probably 70% of the plays I’d drawn up. Simplicity became the key.
We focused hard on just a handful of core run plays. Maybe 3 or 4. But we learned to run them out of different formations. Same play, different look. Kept the defense guessing a bit. Then we built the pass game directly off that. Play action looked exactly like our best run plays. That held the linebackers, gave the QB that extra half-second.
It took time. Lots of reps. Lots of walkthroughs. Lots of whiteboard sessions just hammering the details. It wasn’t glamorous. Just grinding out the fundamentals. We spent way more time on blocking assignments and footwork than on drawing fancy routes.
Slowly, it started to click. You’d see a back hit the hole clean. You’d see a play-action pass go for a big gain because the safety bit hard on the run fake. That’s when you know you’re onto something.
Now, my playbook isn’t some glossy PDF. It’s a beat-up binder with scribbled notes in the margins. Pages are ripped, some might have coffee stains. But it’s our playbook. Built through trial and error, based on what our guys could actually execute. It’s still evolving, we tweak it every season. But the core ideas remain: run the ball effectively, use play-action, be physical. It ain’t always pretty, but when it works, man, it feels good. It’s about building something solid, brick by brick.
