By Mike Kuchar
Senior Research Manager
X&O Labs
Twitter: @MikekKuchar

Introduction

Before continuing any further, we should address the entire foundation in which Sam Houston State’s offense is centered around: Finding space and exploiting it.

This philosophy comes in two-fold: Chasing space in zone coverages and creating separation in man coverages. That’s the crux if how this system works. Just as numbers are equated in the run game, space is created in the pass game and much of the onus of taking space falls on the wide receiver corps. One of the first things wide receivers coach Terence Archer told us was “our receivers will always be right. The quarterback has the responsibility to see what the receivers are doing. Our receivers get a lot of freedom here.”

It’s an up tempo, no huddle operation that just set the Southland Conference record for plays in a season, by amassing 1,275 snaps in 2015. Offensive coordinator Phil Longo rotates through a half dozen receivers each contest and each is ingrained with the mantra, “the receiver is always right.” This means that the responsibility is on the receiver, not the quarterback, to find the necessary voids in zones and the mismatches in man that are necessary to be successful. Sounds challenging? Maybe. But the roots of the Bearkats Air Raid system are grounded more on the ideals of big play potential through the air than a ground and pound, move the chains philosophy. According to Coach Longo, it’s a more sensible risk. “We are an Air Raid offense and when you think about Air Raid you think about passing the ball,” he asserts. “People that know me, know I love to pass the football. If you give me an opportunity to run a four-yard power concept or a 15-yard dig, I’m going to throw the 15-yard dig. It’s a higher return.”

According to Coach Longo, the success of its run game, the Bearkats ran the ball for 3,817 yards this season, came because of defenses being over prepared to defend throwing lanes. “We run the ball because defenses are spreading out,” he said. “We haven’t played a team all year with more than a six man box. We ran the ball for almost 8,000 yards the last two seasons. We also threw the ball for more than 8,000 yards. We run the ball more, but throw the ball less. Yet they equate the same amount of yards.”

Sam Houston State Offensive System

Sam Houston State is a tempo team that averaged 85 plays and averaged 16.2 seconds between plays and Coach Longo credits the speed of his offense to the simple line of communication he uses to get his players in the right situation.“We don’t use boards, wristbands, hats, etc. because when interns are doing that they are not doing the things they need to be doing such as coaching our guys each week,” Coach Longo told us. “We go too fast to worry about defenses getting our signal. They still have to get it fast enough and you need to still defend it.”

Editor’s Note: For more information on No Huddle communications, go here to read our No Huddle Study. 

In many situations, Coach Longo is providing the correct play call based off game plan tendencies by formation, which are detailed in case two.

The Bearkats by design are a 10, 11 and 20 personnel team and label their skill players as the following:

Z: Flanker

X: Split End

W: Slot

H: Slot

S: Super back

While much of their terminology is devised by the offensive staff, teh approach to personnel is rooted into the Air Raid system. According to Coach Longo, they only have three types of formations. The “R/L” signify the strength of the formation and concept side.

River/Lake: 2×2 (Diagram 1)

Ray/Lay: 3×1 to the right (Diagram 2) and to the left (Diagram 3)

Ron/Lon: 2×1 to the right (Diagram 4) and to the left (Diagram 5)

By Mike Kuchar
Senior Research Manager
X&O Labs
Twitter: @MikekKuchar

Introduction

In most spread offensive systems a lot of responsibility is placed on the quarterback. He’ll often have to identify the Mike, read the coverage structure, check the protection, align the offset running back and communicate the play call to the offensive line. That’s before the ball is even snapped. It was a daunting process and a world that Coach Longo doesn’t want his quarterback living in. So when he started crafting the system, his plan was to streamline the pre-snap thought process as much as possible. “Our quarterbacks don’t talk to the offensive line at all,” he told us. “They don’t signal anything to the receivers. It’s not his job. We don’t even call or check protection. We don’t want them doing anything but completing balls. We don’t want them to read defenders and know coverages. That’s why our sacks are low.” The Bearkats surrendered 1.4 sacks per game last season.

The premium is set on getting the ball out quickly to receivers who heave learned the value of exploiting space.  Coach Longo will reference the term “screaming” often, which means that the route has to be clearly open for the quarterback to throw the ball. “We have incompletes because of bad throws, incomplete passes and poor quarterback decisions or by pressure,” said Coach Longo. “It’s usually not because we are covered. The route progression is usually there.” But make no mistake. Even then, Coach Longo and his staff continue to alleviate the signal caller’s responsibilities, it does take a dynamic leader to run this offensive system. The last quarterback to run it was the 2015 Southland Conference Offensive Player of the Year. “We need a quarterback who can think and throw,” said Coach Longo. “He is a distributor of the ball to our talent base. Anything more is icing for us. We will take advantage of a quarterback who can also run, but we don’t want an athletic quarterback who cannot think and throw.”

According to Sam Houston State head coach KC Keeler, having variety at the quarterback position, the Bearkats rotated between two signal callers last season, just adds to malleability of the offensive system. “You can win in a whole different variety of quarterback play here,” said Coach Keeler. “We can win with a dynamic quarterback that runs the ball because they have to crowd the box and he’s a run threat because it opens up throwing lanes. But we have used another quarterback that if you crowd the box against him, he will kill you on the routes on the perimeter. You don’t need a particular quarterback to be successful here. We are not stuck in one mantra where we have to have a (Joe) Flacco (Coach Keeler coached Flacco the University of Delaware).”

Pre-Snap Understanding

Now as far as what the quarterback is expected to know pre-snap, much of it relies around two coverage types: Nickel (one-high) and Dime (two-high). That’s it. Really.  Many of his decisions are made pre-snap based on those two coverage structures. There are no “coverage beaters” in this system. Each route is designed to attack any coverage. The ball just might end up in a different place. And as far as rotations are concerned, that is usually game planned as well. “We evaluate the safeties in all our games to tell us which one is our indicator,” said Coach Longo. “Many times it’s the boundary safety. One of those safeties will be identified as to whether or not he is going to spin. Each team is different. Most defenses tip it off. Pre-snap we see where the space is and we take it. If the QB sees more space, he knows where he is going. We only work a third of the field.”

QB Progressions

There is a major difference in Sam Houston State’s Air Raid system as it pertains to quarterback progressions, there are not reads, just “looks.” In its clearest sense, the quarterback doesn’t read defenders. He looks for open receivers. These looks are classified as first look, second look and third look. If the third look is not there, the quarterback tucks the ball and finds space in the front (like a receiver would) to gain yards. The quarterback should already have a pre-snap understanding of where he is going with the ball based on the where the space is in the defense pre-snap. “Which route is coming open first is the first look,” said Coach Longo. “Which route will come open second is what I throw next. We look at the vertical routes first then go from there.” It’s important to note that even though the quarterback might know where he is going, it’s that imperative that to look off defenders, he must use his facemask, not his eyes. “We work to get our facemasks in that direction, not the eyes,” he said. “We decide on the first look in our drop if the ball is going there. To do that, we need to have our eyes over there. My facemask needs to be down the middle of the field. When a quarterback reads a defender my eyes have to go to the defender then to receiver then to second receiver. That takes more time. Some teams will not even plan pressures because there is no way they are getting to the quarterback or getting a free run on him,” said Coach Longo. “They just planned on using man coverage and getting underneath throwing lanes. When you don’t put pressure on the QB and he can get through all three looks and it’s very difficult for us to get stopped if we can get through all three looks.” Coach Longo reaffirms this with a story from when Patrick Toney, a former assistant from rival Southeastern Louisiana came on board at Sam Houston State. “He told me they didn’t gameplan a lot of pressures against us in our playoff matchup the previous year,” Coach Longo recalls. “They didn’t feel they could get to the quarterback because we triggered the ball so quickly. That’s the world we want to live in.”

To study drill work on how Coach Longo teaches the facemask look off, click on the video below:

By Mike Kuchar
Senior Research Manager
X&O Labs
Twitter: @MikekKuchar

Introduction

In this case, we delve into the specifics of the pass game at Sam Houston State University. The pass game is centered on quick game concepts with even quicker release points by the quarterback. All of the fundamentals and techniques emphasized in case one and two are tied into each of the pass concepts described in this section. Coach Longo and his offensive staff break their pass game down into the following components:

• Quick Game Tags: These are pass concepts tied into the run game. Receivers are running the called pass tag while the offensive line is blocking for the run. The quarterback makes the decision based on pre-snap leverage of the secondary whether to throw or hand the ball off.

• Twins Pass Concepts: These are two-man pass concepts that are designed as half-field read concepts.

• Trips Pass Concepts: These are three-man pass concepts that are designed mainly out of detached trips formations. These are mainly half-field read concepts.

• Full Field Concepts: These are concepts like mesh where the quarterback is asked to read the entire field.

• X Games: These are concepts that are relevant to only the single receiver side of trips formations. Many of these routes are backside routes that tie in the super back (offset back) to run a route. They are five man protection schemes.

Editor’s note: Before detailing these pass concepts, it’s important to note that the concept side of the route is always tagged to the formation strength. If it is a balanced formation such as 2×2, the call side is predicated based on the formation call. River would mean the right side is the play side and left side is the backside.

Quick Game Tags

These quick game tags are the crux of the Sam Houston State’s quick passing game and according to Coach Longo the main reason why the Bearkats rushed for nearly 4,000 yards in 2015. In fact, wide receivers coach Terence Archer told us that “it’s so ingrained in our system, it would be weird for our players if we weren’t using them.” There are 18 tags (including pass tags) in the Bearkats system, but they will use a steady diet of eight during most game. According to Coach Longo, the reasoning is simple, some slots are better runners than backs and why have them block if they don’t have to. “We don’t’ have to beat our slots by telling them they have to block a 235-pound outside linebacker,” he told us.

According to Coach Longo every year it gets harder and harder to throw RPOs, particularly third level reads, because the emphasis is now on linemen down the field. “Defenses are taking those concepts away by playing man free coverage,” said Coach Longo. “RPOs are being relegated to the shorter throws because the longer throws are being affected by linemen downfield. We answer with our quick game tags. It may seem like we’re running RPOs, but they are just tags. The bottom line is you’re either playing corners off or corners hard, and as long as that is the case, I’m going to use tags. Most people will say that offensive coordinators are not patient enough to throw 30 hitches down the field. That’s when defenses will play the deep ball and allow us to take things underneath. I don’t care how boring it is. If that’s what you are going to give us than that’s what I’m going to take. We’ve done all this with lesser talent in years and we’ve been successful.”

In Coach Longo’s system the quarterback is expected to make a decision pre-snap based off leveraged defenders. He will always instruct them to take the numbers advantage and when all the numbers are equal, go with the lesser number. Two-on-two is better than three-on-three and one-on-one is better than two-on-two. He’ll often prefer a hitch between a quarterback and wide out before running the football. “We will break the defense down into thirds,” he said. “We will see if we have numbers to either side of the formation. If we have numbers to either side, we throw the corresponding route. If all numbers are even, we know we have six in the box and we can run the ball in the read game. We like running the ball against a six-box. The quarterback makes the decision based off advantage.”

These tags are built off every run concept in the Bearkats offensive system, but there is a protocol for mixing and matching them. Perimeter concepts. If an outside scheme is called like speed option or outside zone, the receivers to the side of the play concept are expected to block on the perimeter. But if an inside run is called like inside zone, dart or power, the tag talks to whole receiver picture. It usually becomes a mirrored route to both sides of the formation depending on what looks good that week against the defensive structure. “We run slant, hitch, out, pivot, etc.,” he told us. “We will tag all our run schemes with whatever I think looks good that week. We just focus on how to beat Nickel, Dime and cover zero.”

The quarterback simply looks to the perimeter to see if he has numbers. “Whatever we do, our quarterback will ghost throw everything,” said Coach Longo. “If he hands off the zone, he fakes the fade route. We try to hold somebody’s eyes. Our running backs will carry out fakes for 10 yards. If you watch those safeties you will see them hanging their eyes on the back that doesn’t have the ball rather than tracking the bubble screen. You’re creating more space when you hold their eyes. He might be the touchdown saver, but if hold him for a minute it affects the play. Sometimes the back could actually spring loose and block a homerun corner down the field.”