One Play Many Ways: Teaching Conceptual Football

The premise of this book is that an offensive system built from conceptual plays will be versatile, yet simple for the players. Teaching the coach and players to learn to see the game as fluid, instead of a rigid set of plays.

For example, in many systems an offense will run "36 lead" as a play. If the defense aligns perfectly to stop this run, they have a few rules to help, but are pretty much tied to running the "3" back through the "6" hole. If they want to run the ball with another back or run it a hole tighter, they will simply change the play. If they were teaching this as a concept it could be called "Iso" or "Blast" or whatever the coach chooses for the concept. The rules of the concept would dictate the hole the offense wanted to attack based on the alignment of the defense. The runner could be tagged to anyone in the backfield. This allows for an offense to have a more fluid streamlined look that takes advantage of what is presented by the defense instead of a rigid system that can become wordy or difficult to understand.