7 Weeks to go and Stack Formations

Today marks 7 weeks before our first league game.  Unlike in the U.S. where you get at most 3 weeks before you start the season, we have been practicing since November.  The majority of our workouts from November until February were all inside.  This is where we focused on conditioning and agility.  I was pleased with both the participation and the results.  We really pushed them this off-season and they accepted the challenge.  A sign of progress of the work we have done was when we had a player from last season come in late to our sessions.  This player had told me that he had worked out on his home and felt that he was in good shape.  He didn’t last more then 5 minutes, while the rest of our team completed the workout without a problem. 

Usually the conditioning is the first hour of practice and then we work on technique the second hour.  This seemed to be a new concept to our team as coaches in the past had not done this.  I personally think the time we put in the 2^nd hour is invaluable.  We have a new defensive coordinator this season and I felt it was important that our defensive players got as much exposure as possible to the new defense we would be running.  Offensively, we were able to add in a few wrinkles to our already established offense.  Unfortunately the gym we used wasn’t huge so getting 7 on 7 and 11 on 11 drills done were tough.  Now that we are outside we have more focus on the 7 on 7 and 11 on 11.  This is always interesting as the defense will win most battles.  Our timing on offense was not very crisp and we have been breaking in a new QB with some new receivers.  We also have a smart defense that recognizes the majority of our plays from last season.  These can make practices frustrating from a offensive point of view, but at the same time will only make us better as we prepare for our league schedule.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a colleague contact me about a topic we were discussing on Coach Huey.  By the way if you haven’t been on Coach Huey I highly recommend you do so.  It is a great coaching resource where coaches from across the world discuss various football topics.  We give each other suggestions, thoughts on everything related football. 

Anyways, we were talking about Stack formations.  Stack formations have been becoming more prevalent in the game, this season I saw the University of Michigan used them a lot in 3x1 and 2x2 sets.  I used stack formations a lot last season.  Now there are various reasons to use these type of formations, for me it was a way to try to get guys out of the box.  Eventually, we ended up getting one on one to the outside which opened up our pass game.  Unfortunately we never fully took advantaged of the one on one coverage as much as we should have.

When we run a stack formation we are looking at getting numbers to run the ball.  Last year it started with teams placing 3 players over our stack and leaving us with a 5 man box.  Obviously we had great success running the ball, which then had teams putting two guys over the stack and placing the FS into the box giving us a 7 man box.  Naturally we want to throw the ball with this defensive alignment and have a few routes that we like to throw against it.  My favorite one to run is 4 Verticals, with the top receiver in the stack running almost a slant/seam to the hash marks with the back receiver running his usually sideline vertical.  We can also run what I call shallow/follow where #1 runs a 6 yard shallow and #2 “follows” behind at about 8-10 yards.  You can also run the same concept with a slant by #2. I just feel that if we get the Cover 0 look or even Cover 1 we have more open spots on the field to throw the ball. Below is a couple diagrams with what we will see and the two main routes we like to throw.

Ultimately we will be a run first team, but we have to find ways to throw the ball.  I like to make the throws/reads as easy as possible and try to put our receivers in as much open space as possible.  I think stack formations gives us that opportunity.  Of course it all boils down to execution which comes to coaching and teaching our players how to properly execute these plays.  Only time will tell if us coaches are dong our job.