Football Articles
How Paul Johnson came up with his offense
Posted by HenryJames on August 7th, 2008 under Football
It may be possible to divide offensive coaching into two camps. The first one camp says you should devise your scheme and then focus on finding the right players to fit into what you’re trying to do. The other says you should devise a scheme to fit around your talent at hand. Each system obviously has its merits.
Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson has twice told the story of how he came up with his offense in recent weeks. The most recent retelling was at Georgia Tech’s media day last Saturday. It’s a good read.
I like this story, especially the part involving Erk Russell. The longtime defensive coordinator at Georgia wants to run the I because that’s what they ran at Georgia. Johnson obeys, and then quickly realizes you can’t run the I without a fullback and tight end who are worth a shit. So Johnson changes it and then assures Russell that they’re still going to run the ball. Russell thinks about it for all of fifteen minutes and then gives the go ahead.
Proving once again that necessity is the mother of all invention.
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Trips Right commented on the blog post Did Rick Barnes use a plant last night to distract KU players? ago
Wholesome goodness. Thanks for posting.
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Ag_in_TX wrote a new blog post: Did Rick Barnes use a plant last night to distract KU players? 6 minutes ago
If you watched the game, and if you have one drop of testosterone in your bloodstream, you couldn’t have missed her. The redhead with huge tracts of land – right behind the KU bench – who stood for every time out and stared at the KU players.
She stuck out like a sore thumb. Never
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Darius Pourceau commented on the blog post Recruiting the Trenches 8 minutes ago
Welcome to the site guys! Aaron Rodgers is the man.
http://bornhogwild.fantake.com/
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Art Vandelay commented on the blog post Texas Hoops vs. Kansas: Post-Mortem 10 minutes ago
Bob, essentially what you are saying is that we are not a well coached basketball team. I agree.
Jordan Hamilton is a selfish and lazy player. He is a terrible fit to play for Barnes. Not sure if either one will be around next season at this rate.
We went scoreless for 10:54 during
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Trips Right commented on the blog post 2011 Texas Football Recruiting 20 minutes ago
Well done. The Barney Frank line blindsided me like a strain of juarez clap. Funny stuff.
I’d like for us to go out of state for a QB and at least 1 maybe two CB’s. Is Quandre tall enough to play corner or angry enough to play safety?
Rumor around the campfire is
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skymonkeyhorn commented on the blog post Texas Hoops vs. Kansas: Post-Mortem 33 minutes ago
I feel our pain…
Was Barnes wearing a helmet last night. I did not notice as I was in awe of the blood being spilled
on the floor for almost 11 minutes without a point.
Coach Knight was reading this blogs out loud for TV.
The most insightful was that Barnes needs to go to the 7-8 -
James commented on the blog post 2011 Texas Football Recruiting 35 minutes ago
Barney Frank and Mormon quips in the same post. My Tuesday is complete.
Texas HS football is going through a phase (era?) where the best athlete talent is being put on offense. DBs aren’t being developed in vast quantities. Why wouldn’t you go after a couple OOS DBs?
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Trips Right commented on the blog post Texas Hoops vs. Kansas: Post-Mortem 38 minutes ago
ponderos, shouldn’t you be supersizing something somewhere?
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Trips Right commented on the blog post Texas Hoops vs. Kansas: Post-Mortem 39 minutes ago
Gillispie’s a mid-major clown because of his off the court indiscretions. Seriously, The University of Texas is much too high profile to risk its brand and image with this moron. And anyone that mentions Augie Garrido should be permabanned the intertubes. The situations aren’t remotely similar.
If you want to go down the
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Trips Right commented on the blog post Texas Hoops vs. Kansas: Post-Mortem 46 minutes ago
Leonidas, none of those points came against Dex. Boxscores aren’t reality, they’re like porn movies. If porn was real everyone would be a plummer.
As for Pittman on offense, Aldrich wasn’t playing him straight up, he was getting a double virtually everytime down. That’s not Aldrich’s fault but it’s reality.
Pittman rarely
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Mister Mike commented on the blog post Nebraska Fits the Profile of the 2010 National Champion 52 minutes ago
Good line. What is the thinking on his ability vs. the injury?
It’s funny you should ask. I’m working on putting something together right now that will be discussing this very topic. I know you’re waiting with bated breath for it too. Admit it.
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Bob in Houston commented on the blog post Texas Hoops vs. Kansas: Post-Mortem 1 hour, 14 minutes ago
Should be “complementary” scorers. Oh well.
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Bob in Houston commented on the blog post Texas Hoops vs. Kansas: Post-Mortem 1 hour, 17 minutes ago
OK, I was there. Not the best seat in the house, but not a bad one either.
Trips hit part of what struck me over and over. KU had offensive options/outlets when Texas forced them into trouble (which happened quite a bit, as the stats showed that Texas did bring defense last night), and the
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Mister Mike wrote a new blog post: ”Bo Made Me Cry.” 1 hour, 56 minutes ago
At least, that’s the line I would expect to hear from Rivals or Scouts if they were in a relationship with Bo Pelini and ended up going to Dr. Phil to try and work out their differences. Of course, that would never happen because Bo would’ve just laughed, packed her shit up, and thrown it
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HenryJames commented on the blog post Scholarship Numbers & Junior Days 2 hours, 9 minutes ago
CTJ,
Rivals doesn’t think there are any elite players in Texas this year. Do you think we’ll have to go out of state to compensate?
Thanks!
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D W commented on the blog post Another night, another would-be hero 3 hours, 1 minute ago
Hamilton is so stupid on the court it makes my teeth hurt.
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Sailor Ripley commented on the blog post Top 8 Teams in College Hoops 5 hours, 52 minutes ago
Yeah, I think we can scratch Texas out of there. Who takes place 8?
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Sailor Ripley commented on the blog post Looking at Texas 6 hours, 5 minutes ago
You guys have a basketball team. Is it Indianapolis this year?
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Scipio Tex wrote a new blog post: 2011 Texas Football Recruiting 6 hours, 12 minutes ago
Junior Days are right around the corner, so I thought we’d break down needs, talk recruits, and find a ray of gridiron sunshine in the long and cursed offseason.
CTJ gives us his thoughts too. Had I realized, I might have saved myself the typing.
Unlike last year where DFW held an
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admin commented on the blog post Making a Case for a 1 Seed: Villanova Tops the ’Neers 6 hours, 25 minutes ago
Enjoyed watching these guys tonight. I was blown away to see Huggy was 5X coach of the year. He seems like a tourney flame out more often than not. That Kenyon Marting leg break didn’t do him any favors.
How do you see them progresing in the tourney?
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admin commented on the blog post Making a Case for a 1 Seed: Villanova Tops the ’Neers 6 hours, 25 minutes ago
Enjoyed watching these guys tonight. I was blown away to see Huggy was 5X coach of the year. He seems like a tourney flame out more often than not. That Kenyon Martin leg break didn’t do him any favors.
How do you see them progresing in the tourney?
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admin commented on the blog post Duke Basketball: The Devil You Know? 6 hours, 27 minutes ago
Avery Bradley, who shot 77% from the foul line in high school and is now shooting 47% at Texas would probably be shooting closer to his high school average if he played at Duke.
Sweet Jesus that’s ridonkulous.
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admin commented on the blog post Duke Basketball: The Devil You Know? 6 hours, 27 minutes ago
Avery Bradley, who shot 77% from the foul line in high school and is now shooting 47% at Texas would probably be shooting closer to his high school average if he played at Duke.
Sweet Jesus that’s ridonkulous.
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Jeff Julian wrote a new blog post: Recruiting the Trenches 7 hours, 3 minutes ago
Importance of Recruiting Rankings by Position.
Now that the recruiting season is over and most Cal fans are waxing poetic (along with some Texas fans) about how great these 17-18 year olds will be, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at recruiting rankings as a potential measurement for future success.
For the purposes
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admin wrote a new blog post: Welcome 7 hours, 7 minutes ago
HenryJames will soon be here to captivate you with his wit and extensive knowledge of the most storied franchise in professional sports history, the New York Yankees.
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admin commented on the blog post Nebraska Fits the Profile of the 2010 National Champion 7 hours, 20 minutes ago
Interesting but call me skeptical now. We’ve got experience at QB but not positive experience.
Good line. What is the thinking on his ability vs. the injury?
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admin commented on the blog post Nebraska Fits the Profile of the 2010 National Champion 7 hours, 20 minutes ago
Interesting but call me skeptical now. We’ve got experience at QB but not positive experience.
Good line. What is the thinking on his ability vs. the injury?
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: ””, url: ”” });
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bigdukesix commented on the blog post Scholarship Numbers & Junior Days 7 hours, 32 minutes ago
I really don’t want to repeat the horrid situation of the past few years where we starved for depth and talent at DT. It’s critical not to let defensive line recruiting slip. That said, if we bring in two tackles and two ends this year that would be 21 scholarships used on the
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Arthur Goddamn Fenstemaker commented on the blog post Weekly Stats Update 7 hours, 34 minutes ago
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bigdukesix commented on the blog post Scholarship Numbers & Junior Days 7 hours, 40 minutes ago
It appears as though the dude is committed to raiding the SEC and ignoring the West Coast.
It’s understandable, with the way that recruiting is generally territory based. Isaiah Crowell, the RB we’ve been linked to, goes to Columbus Carver. That’s an Auburn pipeline school. Still, I can’t imagine that recruitment lasting much
Beergut said:
August 8th, 2008 at 5:26 am
I remember watching some of Johnson’s offense at Hawai’i.
They were running triple option with a motion back from 4 wide sets, something I hadn’t seen anyone else do. They weren’t winning every game, but they were fun to watch.
dedfischer said:
August 8th, 2008 at 8:23 am
I guess we’re about to find out, if Johnson’s offense can move the ball against the Russians.
Ag_in_TX said:
August 8th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I love that flexbone offense – it’s so hard to defend and it controls the pace of the game.
My son’s high school ran that flexbone (Tim Beck, now RB coach at Nebraska, was the head coach at Summit and a flexbone lover) until Chiles showed up and, to their credit, the coaches said to themselves: “Hmmm, we gotta do somethin’ with that!”
ChrisApplewhite said:
August 8th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Urban Meyer did a lot of that spread flexbone motion stuff at Utah. He’s done it less at Florida because he hasn’t found a true double threat yet.
His Utah offense was a beautiful thing to watch.
Scipio Tex said:
August 8th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Anyone remember Syracuse and the freeze option? Of course, that has Veer roots, but Syracuse ran it out of pro-sets and did at an execution level far beyond anyone else. Those yankees were once actually good.
Made Don McPherson a Heisman runner-up in ‘87.
How about Ronald Veal, the QB at Arizona? They ran a balanced wishbone that you could throw pretty effectively out of – if someone other than Ronald Veal was your QB.
The set up was two WRs with no TE, FB, two HBs. Forced the defense to declare strength based on the hash marks or go balanced themselves. They ran true wishbone reads in the running game paired with a deep passing game to the ends. You could do a lot of deceptive stuff. Very interesting conceptually though they didn’t have the skill position talent you need to make it really effective.
There was a lot of this stuff being tinkered with in the 80’s. It’s funny that it took a bunch of high school coaches to hone the different versions of the spread we see today.
In terms of Spreadology, Urban Meyer is a relative latecomer. He just invented his own little brilliant version and has shown the greatest adaptability to personnel of any coach I’ve seen.
Beergut said:
August 8th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
“Urban Meyer did a lot of that spread flexbone motion stuff at Utah.”
Meyer’s running game is based on the single wing, not the flexbone. He studied the shotgun option game at Notre Dame, and used the motion series from the SW to give him an outside threat on the option.
” He’s done it less at Florida because he hasn’t found a true double threat yet.”
Tebow is more of a power-runner than a finesse guy, so Meyer uses a buck lateral SW series with him as his base running game. Alex Smith was a little more finesse than Tebow.
He does do some fun things by motioning Percy Harvin around.
ChrisApplewhite said:
August 8th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
“Meyer’s running game is based on the single wing, not the flexbone. He studied the shotgun option game at Notre Dame, and used the motion series from the SW to give him an outside threat on the option.”
One, no it’s not. Two, he didn’t study the shotgun option at Notre Dame, he create his version there and immediately took it to Bowling Green. Three, he used the motion guy for a lot of things, but mostly as the pitch man in a similar fashion to the flexbone.
Four, just to make sure we both look like jackasses here, saying the option came from the flexbone rather than the single wing is like saying humans came from homo erectus rather than apes.
ChrisApplewhite said:
August 8th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Actually, I was unclear in what you meant when you say he studied the offense at ND. He did look at Randy Walker and RichRod’s offenses while at ND, but I thought you meant studied it as in learned it from Kevin Rodgers at ND.
Regardless, all he did at BGSU and Utah was take the zone read, add a flexbone wing motion to it, and ran the veer. I don’t really care where those elements came from.
Beergut said:
August 9th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
CA,
Yes, it is.
“Q. At some points last season, did you run double team blocks at both sides of the point of attack for Tebow? Do you have any single wing in your background anywhere, way back?
COACH MEYER: Single wing? No, I don’t believe I have seen single wing. I studied it as we just developed it when we were at Bowling Green. ”
http://blog.al.com/keepingscore/2008/07/full_transcript_florida_coach.html
If you can’t look at Florida offense, especially their short yardage packages for Tebow, and see the single wing, I don’t know what to tell you.
Beergut said:
August 9th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
There are several coaches who added orbit motion to the zone read to add an extra option threat; I’m not sure if Meyer was the originator of that.
ChrisApplewhite said:
August 9th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Sometimes I wonder if you actually read what anyone says before you pull out your 1921 football almanac and start listing terms.
Urban Meyer has single wing packages in his offense. Single wing turned into the T. the T into the wishbone. The bone into the split veer. The veer into the flexbone, etc.
His “running game” is not based on any one of those anymore than the other. It’s all option, baby.
When he has a more complete team, he runs different things. When he has one guy, he sticks him at QB and pretty much runs a modern single wing. However:
“Urban Meyer did a lot of that spread flexbone motion stuff at Utah.”
Please describe, in your best 50’s noir gumshoe dialect, where this statement contradicts anything regarding the presence of any old single wing stuff.