BY Bill Ramseyer The four most widely used passes of the Air Raid Spread Offense are the Shallow Cross, Mesh, 4 Verticals, and the Wide Receiver Screen. In addition to…
The Quick Game
by Dan KratzerRetired Coach and Consultant for Missouri Valley College Effective use of the quick game will spread the defense and make them adjust to last second match-ups. After spending…
Maximizing the 3 x 1 Formation
by Doug Heslip The trips formation has multiple combinations of plays that can give a defensive coordinator coverage nightmares. The 3 x 1 formation is an offensive set that puts…
Shallow Cross
by Sean LucasQuarterback Coach, Providence Catholic High School (IL) The “Shallow Cross” is a concept that can help your offense remain simple to your players, keep defensive coordinators scratching their…
PACKAGE PLAYS part 2
by Rich HargittAssistant Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator • Ashbrook High School (NC) A run play can be packaged with a quick screen or pass play which can disrupt the…
How To PACKAGE PLAYS
Packaging Plays Part I Introduction to Packaging by Rich HargittAssistant Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator • Ashbrook High School (NC) Packaging plays can not only ignite an offense but also…
Gain The Numbers Advantage.
Using the over formations with all 5 eligible receivers to gain the numbers advantage. Part 2: The Passing Game. By: Andrew C. Brown In this article I want to discuss…
Post- Season Priorities –
Wrapping up one season and transitioning to the next are critical times for successful programs by: JohnAllen SnyderHead Coach, Indiana High School (PA) (Reprinted from the AFM Vault) When your…
Maybe Your Best Offensive Coordinator is a Girl
Football lessons from a world champion gambler by Jay Stolfi Your best offensive coordinator is a girl. More correctly, your best play‐calling analyzer is a girl. She is Annie Duke, author of the book Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts If you’ve ever been the play-caller in a football game, you know that making smart decisions without all the facts is the essence of the job. Duke is a Columbia University graduate and pursued a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite the Ivy League education, she is most known for her poker playing abilities. Duke accumulated over $4 million of tournament poker winnings including several World Series of Poker championships. Life, she explains, is a lot like poker. As I see it, so is football In Thinking in Bets, Duke makes the case that the thought process that leads to success in poker is the same thought process that leads to success in business, relationships and other important life situations. In poker, she says, you have to make critical decisions with very limited information…and you have to make them in real‐time. She goes on to give about 250 pages of detailed explanations, scientific data and tells plenty of amusing anecdotes regarding how the mind works and how to correctly analyze the outcomes of your decisions. All of the chapters have relevance to a football coach, particularly regarding offensive play calling, but I will focus on just a few key topics here. John Von Neumann, the noted mathematician, physicist (and poker player) is considered the father of “game theory”. His game theory revolutionized the fields of mathematics and economics. It is the study of how mathematical models can be used to understand seemingly unrelated things such as the likely interactions between opponents, how to account for hidden information, and how …