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Stick To Your Guns: Part 3 of 0-8, How a Losing Season Made Me A Better Coach

By
Darrin Sheffer
7/10/2017

Image result for pistol diamond formation
https://gtswarm.com/threads/diamond-formation.826/

As a young coach I will admit that it was difficult for me to choose an offensive scheme to focus on. When I was given the opportunity to coach my schools' freshman squad (not enough players for all three freshman, JV and Varsity last year) I at first figured that the Varsity coach would want me to run a watered down version of the Spread Offense that Varsity was running.  However, after having meetings with the HC it became apparent that he did not truly care if we ran one offense or the other.  The only thing he was worried about was that we used the same terminology as the varsity (route names, etc.)  

So over that summer I spent a lot of time doing research trying to figure out what "I" wanted to do.  I have had experience playing in a Traditional Wing-T in high school and a no huddle Pro offense in college.  I have some experience coaching under a Flexbone Triple Option HC and a Spread Offense coach.  So I guess what I wanted to do was try to combine many different concepts that I did have experience with.  One way or another (I honestly don't know why I finally stuck with this) I came up with an offense based on the Pistol Diamond formation (see below).  I did take the liberty of switching the FB and TB positions in my Diamond. 

Image result for pistol diamond formation
https://www.xandolabs.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=343:53diamond-formation-misdirection-and-option-concepts&catid=99:offense&Itemid=163

I went with about 3 run plays (Outside TB sweep similar to a Jet Sweep, FB Dive off Fake Sweep and a Power Read play).  I only had 2 passing plays in the beginning (Slants and a PA Flood off of the Sweep play).  Not only was I a brand new Freshman HC who had never had to install an offense by himself, but I was trying to install an offense I had NO EXPERIENCE running (not that smart).  

As you can probably see from the losing record, it did not go so well.  As I look back on the season and try to see what went wrong there is one thing that really sticks out: the shotgun snap.  I don't know if it was because many of my kids had never played football, just didn't have the skill or I really sucked at coaching it (probably the last one) but we NEVER were able to get a consistent snap.  Maybe one out of three snaps was decent, the rest were over the QB's head or at his feet or elsewhere.  We tried the traditional shotgun snap and also the "dead snap", neither worked.  Then on the rare occasion we had a good snap, my O-Line kept getting blown up (inexperience and poor coaching).  

Then, just when you guys think that I couldn't do anything dumber I went ahead and committed a cardinal offensive sin: I completely changed the offense.  I was so frustrated that nothing was working and we were getting killed that I was looking for a scapegoat to blame and I blamed the scheme.  We changed from a pistol formation to a strong I formation and just tried to run up the middle.  Guess what, trying to teach a new offense in a week didn't work either.  We got blown out the next game and threw 6 Interceptions.  

Image result for pistol triple option formation
http://pistoltripleoptionfootball.com/structure-pistol-triple-option/

The next week one of my two assistants (we only had three coaches for freshmen) sent me a link to this website: http://pistoltripleoptionfootball.com/ .  We tried to teach the kids the triple option and guess what happened next, we got blown up again (that dang pistol/gun snap got us again too).  We ditched the option and went back under center, BUT we didn't give up on the Double Wing formation.  We ran a simple offense (WB Toss with a Counter play, FB Dive, WB Jet Sweep and some simple passing plays).  So we finally stuck with an offense halfway through the season and something miraculous happened:we got better each week.

 Image result for pistol triple option rocket toss
https://flexboneassociationacademy.com/2013/11/26/rocket-toss/


We still didn't win any games though.  Most of the teams we played were just plain better than us talent wise.  The last two games though were hard fought games and we only lost each by a small margin (in fact we should have one those games except for some special teams and defensive mistakes late in the games).  

So what lesson did I learn from these mistakes?  The biggest one is to pick an offensive scheme, stick with it and get better at it every day.  DO NOT change offenses because you are frustrated, just run your stuff better.  I don't think that it truly matters what offense you run be it Wing-T or Air Raid, be who you are and be good at it.  If you are good or great at your offense you will win games, Period.  I will say that I am a little hesitant to run a spread scheme in HS, partly because the shotgun snap scares the hell out of me still (it gave me nightmares).  

If you have any comments or stories related to what has been said here please comment below.  Follow me on Twitter at @DarrinSheffer https://twitter.com/DarrinSheffer

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