Good morning and welcome to this week’s roundup.

A quick preview on two posts coming this week:

  • Teaching Defensive Structures: Space (Monday)

  • Learning to Teach Shallow Cross (Friday)

Be sure to subscribe to get them in your inbox when they come out.

Article of the Week:

Teaching conceptual football is a tool for being able to teach one thing and getting more than one thing out of it. If you can teach a concept that you can present schematically in multiple ways, then you can create complexity in your scheme without teaching complexity.

The coaches over at recently have been discussing the Ohio Bobcat’s defensive scheme and they released a good post on an “X” blitz path from the inside LBs that the Bobcat’s use over and over. They use it in a simulated pressure to a 6 man pressure and play multiple coverages behind it. But for their inside LBs, it’s the same path every time.

This is the definition of getting the most bang for your buck schematically, and can be applied in any defense or offense.

Here’s the article:

[

The Board Drill

Building Pressures with the Bobcats

We’ve all discussed the challenge of creating complex pressures while keeping the teaching simple for our players. However, achieving this balance effectively as coaches is not often straightforward. There's a constant struggle between volume and execution, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. The Ohio Bobcats excel at repeating pressure path…

Read more

2 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · The Board Drill

](https://www.boarddrill.com/p/building-pressures-with-the-bobcats?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web)

Video of the Week:

Time is limited. So, studying how other people use their time to install and teach their scheme is always valuable. Football is a game about the fundamentals but there are so many other things your players need to be minimally viably competent at — so the study of how coaches get those competencies covered throughout a practice, week, or season is a never ending one.

Note: Coach Mitch Johnson’s Shallow concept will be the “feature” of the week this upcoming Friday. We’ll go over what makes the play work, what doesn’t, and the key coaching points. Make sure you are subscribed to get it in your inbox Friday morning:

Check out the video here:

Book Recommendation

I wrote about this book many moons ago, but want to bring it to your attention again because it is such a delight.

Beyond the book going into tremendous detail, Rice delivers an interesting argument about “balance” in an offense. Is balance about your run/pass ratio, ball carrier distribution, or something else? Rice’s argument is that it’s more about the threat of the run or pass before each play. It’s an interesting perspective, and honestly, seems a little ahead of his time. Great read if you can find the book online to purchase, or you can read my summary here.

Posts from This Week:

Tomorrow’s post will be part two on Teaching Defensive Structures and will go over the last frontier: SPACE.

Until tomorrow,

Emory Wilhite

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