1. 2009 Coach of the Year Clinic Manual. Nothing revolutionary, but some good stuff. Chip Kelly of Oregon has a good article (which is actually available
here), as does Monte Kiffin, now of Tennessee (about his famous "Tampa Two," of course). Paul Johnson of Georgia Tech has a good one too, which includes this gem:
We give teams that play that kind of front [i.e. try to read the A-back's block to give them cues on what kind of blocking scheme Georgia Tech is using to block the various defenders "assigned" to the different possible ballcarriers in the option] something a little funky. When they play the eight-man front on defense, they tie the safety and outside linebacker to the release of the playside slot. They tell the linebacker if the slot runs straight up the field, the strong safety takes the quarterback and the free safety runs for the pitch. If the slot arcs, the linebacker stays outside on the slot and the safety runs the alley for the quarterback. That is not a bad way to play and is probably smart. If we find them doing that, we automatic with a safety call. We run the slot on the inside release, but he passes the linebacker and blocks the safety. [In other words he basically fakes blocking one guy and blocks a different guy, though it is subtle and designed to defeat what the defenders were taught all week to look for as a blocking tendency.] The defense has two defenders on the quarterback and no one on the pitch. We did that a bunch against Georgia in our last regular season game.
Yup. The insight here is that it's not necessarily that Georgia didn't know the option, it's that they maybe overthought the whole thing, trying to guess and calculate what was coming when. Sometimes the answer is just to keep it simple, read and react, and play football.
