Texas O going to be faster than you thought
[caption id="attachment_30113" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Sterlin Gilbert. (Texas athletics)[/caption]
I talked with a visiting high school coach at Thursday’s Texas Longhorns football practice. He estimated the offense ran 150 plays against the defense the day before. Just to give you some context, you will roughly see that many plays in an entire game of college football — a game that usually takes three and a half hours to finish.
The Horns’ new offense managed that many reps in the last segment of their workout.
(The coach didn’t actually say 150 plays. He said 200 plays. But I heard as low as 120 from others so I decided to be reasonable and lower his guess. Whatever it was, it was a lot.)
Squeezing in that many plays is insane. I cannot imagine replicating the feat against air, much less against able-bodied defenders trying to impede offensive progress. I can still put myself back in my 300 pound man frame of mind: I would have angrily desired to stop the madness after the second drive, then wondered when the nightmare would be over.
HOW THEY DO IT
In any case, I could not imagine how it was possible to manage so many reps until someone explained it to me. The offense would line up on the goal line and move the ball five yards up the field every play, regardless of the play’s outcome. That means each drive was twenty plays long for the offense. Also, a new ball would be spotted for the next play almost as soon as the current play began.
The first and second team defense would rotate every four plays, while the first and second team offense would rotate every other series. As you can imagine, there is lots of sprinting going on the entire time. It is one thing to be a big boy continually moving at a high rate of speed. It is another thing to be a wide receiver literally running all over the field just to get lined up.
Doing the math, it would only take six series to reach 120 plays. That leaves every position group with more than enough film to evaluate before next practice.
Lots of guys getting lots of reps is a big positive. How many second team players take sixty live snaps against their defense in any given practice? Not many. Simply getting a high volume of reps is going to help a lot of guys who would not get them otherwise.
However, I do have two questions in my mind about this radically different approach:
1. What is the overall quality of the high volume of plays?
2. How do the coaches adjust technique amidst the rapid-fire reps?
To answer my first question, the quality of those reps cannot be spectacular, at least not at this point. But to be fair, I do not think 120 perfect reps is the point of that particular football exercise. As Texas’ offense is transitioning from the Watson/Wickline/Norvell era, the players will first need to be able to handle operating at a much faster “Sterlin Gilbert” speed. Period.
The point of a session like that is to recondition how the offense operates. The players have to learn a new normal. They have to learn how to think, act, make calls and execute differently within this new scheme. It is obvious that Texas’ new offensive coordinator is not just bringing a playbook with him. He wants to fundamentally change the Longhorn offense at its core. The players will have to learn how to function in overdrive, continually.
I do not expect every practice to end with 120 plays at the speed of reckless abandon, although it may. But I could see a few sessions like this early on helping reform Texas’ offensive identity.
As far as my second question, I cannot see coaches adjusting technique during a rapid-fire session like that. I doubt much is possible, beyond shouting a phrase or two as the players are sprinting back to the ball for the next play. That does not mean it won’t ever be corrected; “the eye in the sky don’t lie.” Every snap of practice is filmed and reviewed — it is one of the best ways for players to hone their craft.
In these 20 play sprints, it could be a player does something wrong 10 times before his coach has a chance to correct him. That is a problem.
To counter potential bad technique habits reinforced by the sheer speed (i.e. steps, hand placement, etc.), it is obvious offensive line coach Matt Mattox in particular slows the practice down in individual drills. What I noticed in practice on Thursday was a lot of talking and walking through technique drills with the linemen. Not “walking through” as in slow and lazy, but taking the time to draw their attention to the detail he wanted.
At one point, he even split the tackles and guards/centers into two groups. A graduate assistant put the tackles through a pass protection punching drill, while Mattox worked combo blocks with the centers and guards. The effect was that he was able to watch and critique each individual player on every rep.
I think Mattox’s decided approach to slow things down in individual work, necessarily complements the speed the offense operates at when together as a whole.
Overall, I do not see much changing for the offensive line in terms of technique until they are first in adequate shape. They need to be able to think and intensely focus on precise movements to adjust their play. This early on they are probably just trying to keep up, beat the guy in front of them, and not have a missed assignment amidst the chaos. It may be that way for every offensive player.
At the very least, it is exciting that radical change has come.
Sterlin Gilbert. (Texas athletics)[/caption]
I talked with a visiting high school coach at Thursday’s Texas Longhorns football practice. He estimated the offense ran 150 plays against the defense the day before. Just to give you some context, you will roughly see that many plays in an entire game of college football — a game that usually takes three and a half hours to finish.
The Horns’ new offense managed that many reps in the last segment of their workout.
(The coach didn’t actually say 150 plays. He said 200 plays. But I heard as low as 120 from others so I decided to be reasonable and lower his guess. Whatever it was, it was a lot.)
Squeezing in that many plays is insane. I cannot imagine replicating the feat against air, much less against able-bodied defenders trying to impede offensive progress. I can still put myself back in my 300 pound man frame of mind: I would have angrily desired to stop the madness after the second drive, then wondered when the nightmare would be over.
HOW THEY DO IT
In any case, I could not imagine how it was possible to manage so many reps until someone explained it to me. The offense would line up on the goal line and move the ball five yards up the field every play, regardless of the play’s outcome. That means each drive was twenty plays long for the offense. Also, a new ball would be spotted for the next play almost as soon as the current play began.
The first and second team defense would rotate every four plays, while the first and second team offense would rotate every other series. As you can imagine, there is lots of sprinting going on the entire time. It is one thing to be a big boy continually moving at a high rate of speed. It is another thing to be a wide receiver literally running all over the field just to get lined up.
Doing the math, it would only take six series to reach 120 plays. That leaves every position group with more than enough film to evaluate before next practice.
Lots of guys getting lots of reps is a big positive. How many second team players take sixty live snaps against their defense in any given practice? Not many. Simply getting a high volume of reps is going to help a lot of guys who would not get them otherwise.
However, I do have two questions in my mind about this radically different approach:
1. What is the overall quality of the high volume of plays?
2. How do the coaches adjust technique amidst the rapid-fire reps?
To answer my first question, the quality of those reps cannot be spectacular, at least not at this point. But to be fair, I do not think 120 perfect reps is the point of that particular football exercise. As Texas’ offense is transitioning from the Watson/Wickline/Norvell era, the players will first need to be able to handle operating at a much faster “Sterlin Gilbert” speed. Period.
The point of a session like that is to recondition how the offense operates. The players have to learn a new normal. They have to learn how to think, act, make calls and execute differently within this new scheme. It is obvious that Texas’ new offensive coordinator is not just bringing a playbook with him. He wants to fundamentally change the Longhorn offense at its core. The players will have to learn how to function in overdrive, continually.
I do not expect every practice to end with 120 plays at the speed of reckless abandon, although it may. But I could see a few sessions like this early on helping reform Texas’ offensive identity.
As far as my second question, I cannot see coaches adjusting technique during a rapid-fire session like that. I doubt much is possible, beyond shouting a phrase or two as the players are sprinting back to the ball for the next play. That does not mean it won’t ever be corrected; “the eye in the sky don’t lie.” Every snap of practice is filmed and reviewed — it is one of the best ways for players to hone their craft.
In these 20 play sprints, it could be a player does something wrong 10 times before his coach has a chance to correct him. That is a problem.
To counter potential bad technique habits reinforced by the sheer speed (i.e. steps, hand placement, etc.), it is obvious offensive line coach Matt Mattox in particular slows the practice down in individual drills. What I noticed in practice on Thursday was a lot of talking and walking through technique drills with the linemen. Not “walking through” as in slow and lazy, but taking the time to draw their attention to the detail he wanted.
At one point, he even split the tackles and guards/centers into two groups. A graduate assistant put the tackles through a pass protection punching drill, while Mattox worked combo blocks with the centers and guards. The effect was that he was able to watch and critique each individual player on every rep.
I think Mattox’s decided approach to slow things down in individual work, necessarily complements the speed the offense operates at when together as a whole.
Overall, I do not see much changing for the offensive line in terms of technique until they are first in adequate shape. They need to be able to think and intensely focus on precise movements to adjust their play. This early on they are probably just trying to keep up, beat the guy in front of them, and not have a missed assignment amidst the chaos. It may be that way for every offensive player.
At the very least, it is exciting that radical change has come. 
