This is something we touched on this past offseason, but heading into the 2026 season, I want to send a reminder — football is an 11-on-11 game. It’s easy to want it to look like Saturday, except we’re handing the ball into boxes we can’t block.

Not being able to block the box isn’t the problem in and of itself. What I’m seeing is spread-to-run offenses calling what’s technically an RPO on the perimeter — except the RPO is never being thrown. I’m seeing four-wide against seven-man fronts, and the ball still gets handed off. Unless your five offensive linemen are significantly better than the seven defenders in the box, that’s not a consistently winning offensive business model. I’ve seen eight-man fronts against four-wide, 10-personnel formations, and the ball still handed off. I’ve seen two defenders over trips with the bubble never thrown — instead handed off into seven- and eight-man boxes.

Personally, I don’t like to read grass or read space. I like to read numbers. Where can the ball go that carries a numerical advantage? And if the numbers are even, can a talent advantage be manufactured instead? My eleven may not be better than your eleven, but can my second-best player get isolated on your eighth-best player in a head-to-head matchup?

Say there are two receivers to the field and a single receiver to the boundary, with a Y-off tight end or a fullback in 20 personnel. If the defense goes two-over-two and one-over-one with an eight-man box in Cover Zero, one of the pre-snap RPOs — a bubble or a hitch — has to be thrown. If the defense is pressed across the board, though, throwing the fade to the single receiver just to say it was thrown isn’t the answer, and throwing a bubble to a receiver being pressed is a recipe for six points — the other way. The better option is to stack the receivers, motion them, do something to lift one of the DBs — creating a matchup where the DB on the ball can be blocked, the bubble goes to the other receiver, and he has a chance to make the last man miss. If none of that is available, the offense can’t stay spread, because there’s no other way to match numbers in the box. In that case, it may mean living in condensed formations, using receivers to block safeties and making the play-side corner the only unblocked player on the front-side.

There’s nothing wrong with the spread — whether the goal is spreading to run or spreading to pass. Specific to spread-to-run, the problem shows up when the defense doesn’t spread along with it, and the offense either can’t or won’t attack where it actually has a numerical advantage. Because football is ultimately 11-on-11, having a numerical advantage somewhere on the field always means a numerical disadvantage somewhere else — often in the box. Don’t be the coach calling for 4 wide formations and running the ball into 7 man boxes just to say you run the spread!

With that, I’m excited to announce our theme of study for the season. In past years we’ve looked at explosive plays, and last year we looked at “one play, many ways” — the same scheme tagged differently, run from multiple personnel groupings, or presented from a different formation. This year we’re looking at how offenses package plays together, in alignment with what Sean McVay calls the illusion of complexity. Specifically, we’re looking for when an offense uses the same formation-and-motion combination to run complementary plays off of it. “One play, many ways” is a great framework for keeping scheme limited, but a real offense still needs multiple plays that complement each other within that structure.

Even in the very first preseason game, we saw an example of that in Mike LaFleur’s offense last week.

Before we get into it, I want to invite you to join me on Tuesday nights throughout the season. I’m always tagging plays on film for these studies, and this year I’ve decided to livestream while I do it — talking through what I’m seeing, why I’m calling something one thing versus another, key notes on scheme, and getting to interact with you. Those will run on Tuesday nights, starting somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00 PM Central most weeks, streaming to X and YouTube. I actually started this past Tuesday while tagging the Cardinals’ offense from this game. If you want to see the replay, you can find it here!

Watch All-22 Breakdown of ARI Offense

Here’s why the illusion of complexity matters: good offenses have complementary plays. Great offenses never let you know which one is coming. That distinction means more to me now that I have a year of defensive coordinator experience under my belt. I’m calling defense again this year and am more and more applying things I used to think about defenses from the offensive side.

The number one thing I look for when scouting is what plays get run out of what formation. I love pairing Wide Zone with GT Counter, especially with a mobile quarterback. The counter can turn into BASH Counter, where the defense still sees the Wide Zone action from the running back, but the quarterback comes back the other way behind the pulling linemen.

I believed this when I was calling offense and am even more firm in that belief having experienced the other side of the ball: I can pair Wide Zone with GT Counter all I want, but if it doesn’t look the same to the defense, I can’t expect the same response. If the stimulus isn’t the same, the response won’t be the same.

If the defense is flowing hard and fast to stop Wide Zone, and I want to run GT Counter off of it, getting into a different formation to do so can tip them off that Wide Zone isn’t coming. Once that happens, their run reads stop flowing fast — even on a BASH Counter — because they already know it isn’t wide zone.

This, to me, is Sean McVay’s true genius. The goal is to make as many plays look as similar as possible for as long as possible, hence the illusion that the offense is complex. Even though it was only a preseason game, we saw an example of exactly that in Mike LaFleur’s offense in the Hall of Fame Game last week.

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AFC East: Bobby Slowik (MIA)

AFC North: Zac Taylor (CIN)

AFC South: Liam Coen (JAX), Nick Caley (HOU)

AFC West: Mike McDaniel (LAC), Klint Kubiak (LVR)

NFC East: Sean Mannion (PHI)

NFC North: Matt LaFleur (GB), Drew Petzing* (DET), Kevin O’Connell (MIN)

NFC South: Zac Robinson (TB), Kevin Stefanski* (ATL)

NFC West: Kyle Shanahan (SF), Sean McVay (LAR), Mike LaFleur (ARI), Brian Fleury (SEA)

*denotes connection only through the Gary Kubiak side of Mike Shanahan’s tree. Others run through Kyle.

I would be hard-pressed to believe football has ever seen an offense take over quite like this. What is so special about this offense? In high school, we often talk about defense being easier when you see the same type of offense most of the season. 6A teams in Texas might see 11P Y-Off 10 times a year while a 1A team might see one and have a schedule with every wing and bone offense too. Which DC has a harder job? I would argue the 1A DC. If NFL DCs see this scheme this often, why do most of them seem to have no answer? I believe this article from Ted Nguyen (The Athletic) contains some insight.

The article is ranking the top 10 playcallers in the NFL. Spoiler - Shanahan & McVay are 1 & 2, respectively, and the tree makes up 4 of the top 5 and 6 of the top 10. Two quotes about Sean and Kyle stood out to me.

On Sean McVay: “McVay runs his core concepts, but his system has answers for whatever defenses throw at him.”

On Kyle Shanahan: “He has enough answers within the play design.”

A common thread between the leading faces of offense in the sport: answers.

That’s really what we hammer here at Wide Zone Warriors. The season iss coming around, and if you’re new here, we break down how one of the offenses in the tree runs one play many ways over the course of a football game.

The effectiveness of “one play, many ways” is compounded when it’s a play with built-in answers. It makes play calling a lot easier when the call doesn’t have to be perfect. There’s no need to call a Cover 4 beater and hope the defense runs Cover 4, or maybe add a Cover 3 beater on the other side of the formation and hope they don’t roll into man. A play like wide zone, power, or counter has ways to get good angles against any front. A pass concept like sail or cross has someone who should come open regardless of coverage. Instead of teaching a large volume of plays, the goal becomes getting elite at a small number of them — teaching the decision-makers within the play what tool they have inside the structure of the scheme, whether that’s an offensive lineman executing a different block against a different front or a quarterback throwing to a different receiver because it’s a different coverage.

That level of answers isn’t possible with a large playbook. A large playbook can work, but it relies on making the right call at the right time against the right look. A run concept built to attack a 3-technique, like trap, can turn into a bad play fast if there’s no 3-technique on the trap side on that down. The goal is to build answers and outlets into each scheme so the offense is never sitting in a bad play call. That’s the real value of the Shanahan-McVay system.

If you want to learn more about the system, you’re in the right place. You can get three months of the paid tier for under $3 by ordering a copy of The Shanahan-McVay Zone Run Manual and leaving a review. That gets you access to the book — 37 run concepts diagrammed against six fronts and explained in depth — along with the paid tier of Wide Zone Warriors, where we discuss the offense itself and how to apply its lessons to the high school level, even for those who don’t want to run the system.

The Shanahan-McVay Zone Run Manual

For coaches who do want to run it, the Wide Zone Warriors Offensive System tier includes nearly six hours of video installs, formatted so an assistant could use them to teach my version of this offense at the high school level.

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Regardless of subscription level, thank you for reading Wide Zone Warriors. It’s fitting that we just crossed 4,000 subscribers as we finish year four on Substack. Looking forward to year five, and to studying all those offenses with you.

Every game plan we build starts from the same question: what are the best formations to run wide zone from against this specific opponent? Everything else in the plan gets layered on top of that answer.

We get there through scouting. The goal isn’t just to identify a defensive front or a coverage shell. It’s to decipher the alignment rules the defense is playing by. What do they do to a single receiver extended from the formation? What do they do to a tight end and single receiver side? What do they do to our common formations, or to looks close enough to ours that we can reasonably extrapolate? I prefer to stack my receivers, but if a defense hasn’t seen a stack specifically, I can generally assume how they’ll align against a stack based on how they play twins regularly spaced. The rules the defense is following matter more than the exact picture we’ve seen on film, because the picture changes and the rule doesn’t.

From there, personnel drives the next decision. Based on our primary personnel grouping, we’re identifying the best three or four ways that grouping can run wide zone against what we now know about their rules. That process starts with static formations.

Then we layer in motion. We’ve talked before about using motion to recreate formations rather than just lining up in them. If we can get from a 2x2 look to a 3x1 look by motioning instead of setting up there statically, that becomes its own package. The defense has to answer both the static picture and the picture created by the motion, and if their rules for handling motion differ from their rules for a set formation, that gap is exactly where we want to live.

By the end of this process, we’re not walking into a game with an open-ended list of formations we can run wide zone from. We’re walking in with a handful of packages — specific formations and formation-to-motion combinations — that we’ve built specifically because of how this opponent’s rules react to them.

The rest of this article breaks down what goes into building out the remainder of a package once the formation and motion piece is set, with a few clips from my last stint as an offensive coordinator to show how it played out.

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What an RPO Is Actually For

There are two schools of thought on RPO design. One treats the pass as the primary concept and the run as the protection — you’re going to throw it, and if the box empties out, hand off instead. The other treats the run as the primary concept and the pass as the protection — you’re going to run it, and if a defender vacates to take away the run, you punish him for it.

My philosophy is more in line with the second approach. The underlying belief is that a well-schemed run play can reliably gain four yards, and the RPO exists to keep a specific defender honest so that four yards stays available. I want to get the ball where we have a hat-for-a-hat. Maybe we have an 11 Personnel formation against a 4-2 box. That’s 6 vs 6. I need to identify who the 7th defender is that the defense wants to bring that we can’t block. Let’s say it’s an outside linebacker apexed to a Twins set. If we’re 6 for 6 inside and our two WRs are accompanied by a CB and a Safety, that’s 2 for 2 on the perimeter. The OLB is the adjuster that can either be the extra defender to the Twins or the extra defender to the run. I want the ball to go whichever way he didn’t choose. That’s a real and legitimate use of the RPO. Wide receiver perimeter blocking, especially from a wide split, rarely produces a good angle on the primary defender that needs to be accounted for. That RPO mentality also produces an element that if the ball gets to the WR where we are 2 for 2, I have one WR blocking one of the DBs. In theory, if the pass catcher makes the other one miss, it should be an explosive play, if not a touchdown.

The Problem With “Just Don’t Throw It”

A coaching point that comes up frequently in RPO-heavy systems is telling the quarterback to know the situation — essentially, “we have this RPO, but don’t throw it right now.” That’s a reasonable in-game adjustment, but it isn’t is a schematic answer.

If the playcaller doesn’t want the ball thrown, the routes shouldn’t be run. Not because of what the quarterback might do, but because of what the defense can do. A corner who recognizes a down-and-distance situation where you’re unlikely to throw may not honor a speed out to the boundary. A Curl-Flat OLB may not widen with a bubble. If the RPO route is running but the offense has no intention of throwing it, the defense gets to make that bet at no cost. The defender who would have been the read key now has a free run at the ball carrier, and the play that was supposed to be protected isn’t.

The cleaner answer is to take the RPO off the field entirely in those situations. My primary answer as such is to condense the formation so receivers become blockers. Another option would be to use motion to reassign the defender in question before the snap. In my system, motion alone doesn’t take away an RPO, but changing the defender’s assignment at the snap, likely coinciding with a different defender in a less advantageous alignment becoming the force defender, would still slow the fit for the defense or create an RPO worth throwing based on something like having 3 eligibles for 2 defenders. Block both defenders and throw the ball to our extra man.

Either way, the force defender is still accounted for, the quarterback still has a clean read, and nobody is running routes that the offense has already decided not to throw. The red zone against a loaded box is one obvious example. Fourth and one is another. The element of the offense knowing the snap count should be enough to get a quick-hitting run through the chains — so should the quarterback just know not to throw it, or should the playcaller have already removed the decision from the equation?

First Play of a Drive

Analytically, scoring rate roughly triples when an offense gains four or more yards on the first play of a drive. That’s a meaningful number, and it’s worth building a philosophy around. On first and ten, the question isn’t whether the RPO is open — it’s whether it’s the most reliable path to staying on schedule.

Beyond that, if a quarterback just ended the previous drive with an interception, the first play of the next drive probably isn’t the moment to ask him to make a high-pressure decision. The value of a clean handoff and a positive run there goes beyond the yardage — it gets the ball moving, settles the offense, and creates a foundation for the rest of the drive before asking him to throw again.

What Happens When the QB Isn’t the Strength of the Roster

One of the quieter arguments against building an offense entirely around RPOs and quarterback decision-making is the same argument against building it entirely around any one position group. Every offensive system has to have a plan for what happens when a key position is below average.

What if the offensive line is undersized? You scheme around it, adjust protection, lean into concepts that create easy angles. You don’t cancel the run game. The same logic applies at quarterback. If the best available option at that position is a below-average decision-maker, an offense that relies on him processing and reading the field on the majority of snaps is an offense without a contingency. A complete system should be able to live without the RPO in a given season — leaning into a heavier run game, a few screens, and wide-open play action shots where the quarterback isn’t reading coverage so much as finding the open window he already identified pre-snap. Three to five pass concepts a game with clear decisions beats twelve pass concepts that require a quarterback the offense doesn’t have.

When do I like RPOs?

Most of this article has been about when I don’t like to have RPOs. Outside of this list, I don’t mind RPOs on almost any “pass and run” (PAR) down. Most often, that’s first downs outside of the first play of the drive and red zone, any second down between 1 and 10, and some third downs where I know we’re going on fourth down if necessary.

Essentially, I like them when I don’t have a specific preference as to calling a run play or a pass play. The Offensive Line coach in me never complains about running the ball, so I might should say where I have a less than 75% preference (as opposed to a 99.9% preference to run on 4th & inches).

The RPO is a tool. Like any tool, its value depends on the conditions under which it’s being used, the people using it, and whether the playcaller has an honest answer for what happens when those conditions aren’t met. Paid subscribers will have access to the end of the article, where I break down one of my RPOs from my last stint as an offensive coordinator.

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Obviously we believe in his system as Wide Zone Warriors, but there’s more to it than just that. One of the ways he has been able to connect with players is by being able to coach them. This is not a “meet them where they are” discussion. The Why is Everything revealed discussions with former players that Kyle Shanahan is able to coach all 11 players on his offense.

I believe this is a vital skill for any coach that wants to have a leadership role on the team, particularly in high school football. The best coaching staffs I have been a part of have had fantastic chemistry and camaraderie amongst the coaches.

Here’s a scenario. You’re a head coach, and you have an opening on your staff to fill. You call the plays and have coached the quarterback the last few seasons, and your opening is for an Offensive Line coach. You get two applicants. Applicant A is positive, motivated, and easygoing. Applicant B comes off negative and abrasive. Which one do you want to hire? What if Applicant A’s only experience comes with quarterbacks, but Applicant B, according to his references, knows the Offensive Line. As the head coach, can you get the better coach on staff and plug the gap yourself, or are you forced to hire a worse staff fit because all you know about blocking is putting the T in front of the circle on the diagram?

Another scenario. Now you’re an assistant coach looking to get to a different school. What if their opening is a position you have no experience coaching? In that interview, can you prove to the coach that even though the resume doesn’t show it, you know how to coach the position, you just haven’t had the chance before? An assistant that can coach all 11 (or all 22) has many more options for employment.

My first time as an Offensive Coordinator, I coached the Offensive Line. When we would join the skill players for group periods, I realized they weren’t where I wanted them to be. I pitched a new practice plan to the Head Coach, who called the defense. I would take the linemen for offense while he did defense with the skills, then we would switch. He would come work with the linemen on defensive line play while I went to then work with the skill players. Then we would come together for offensive and defensive team periods to finish practice. I had some help with Wide Receivers, but I was basically the position coach for the OL, QB, RB, and TE once we switched like that. It was only possible because I could coach all 11.

Having coaches that just want to be a position coach for their position and don’t care to climb any higher than that is extremely valuable, but if you are a position coach that wants to become a coordinator, one of the best things to do is to learn other positions. That doesn’t always mean bouncing around position groups on the same team or taking different jobs. Sometimes, it just means studying on your own such that you’ve been a WR coach for a few years and a head coach interviews you for an OC position and maybe the only thing they need to offer you the job is to see that you understand the run game in addition to the pass game, or vice versa for OL coaches. Coordinators and Head Coaches that are able to coach all 11/22 allow for getting the best coaches on staff and filling the gap wherever it presents.

If you don’t currently have the capacity to coach outside your position group, my hope is that you can get what you need to do so by following Wide Zone Warriors!

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They all thought they were about to be thrown a lifeline in the form of already future first-ballot Hall of Famer Peyton Manning hitting the open market after an injured season led the Colts to the number one pick in a draft with a quarterback said to be the best in the draft since Manning himself, Andrew Luck. There might not have been anyone on the planet more suited to operate the offense, and Manning was interested in the prospect of running it while being protected by a young Trent Williams and reuniting with one of his Indianapolis receivers, Pierre Garcon. However, as Manning was coming to interview, notoriously impulsive Dan Snyder traded for the second overall pick in the draft, for the electric, Heisman-winning quarterback from Baylor, Robert Griffin III.

Instead of adding Manning to the list of Hall of Fame quarterbacks the system had seen (Elway and Young), Kyle Shanahan and his offensive staff of Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, and Chris Foerster were again tasked with a quarterback not known for his precise throwing abilities, but for his legs. They could have just plugged him in and ran the system as it was intended to be run. Football itself would probably look much different today if they had, because they probably would have had another abysmal year and all been fired, never to be heard from again.

Instead, they adapted their scheme to fit their best players and their skillsets. They learned the zone read game. Not only that, but how defenses played it. They discovered that defenses played off the location of the running back in the gun and had the realization that not only could they prevent defenses from keying that by going in the Pistol, they could also threaten to stretch the defense horizontally by running their entire under center Wide Zone package as well. On any given snap, a defense would have to be able to account for a strong or weak side Wide Zone and a potential option play to either side as well, not to mention the threat of play action.

RGIII’s legs were a large factor, but there were other players and skillsets in play as well. Even though Manning didn’t come with him, Pierre Garcon still came to Washington as a well-rounded Wide Receiver who was great with the ball in his hands, even as the “pitch phase” of some adapted zone triple option schemes. 6th round rookie running back/fullback hybrid Alfred Morris also found his way into the lineup by being an absolute bowling ball downhill, punishing defenses inside for worrying about the threat of RGIII’s legs on the perimeter. Another 6th round rookie, WR Aldrick Robinson, threatened to take the top off of any defense, keeping the intermediate windows open for Garcon and the veteran, versatile Tight End group.

This combination led to Robert Griffin III winning Rookie of the Year honors (over Andrew Luck, the QB the Colts let Manning walk for), and Alfred Morris rushing for over 1,600 yards, second only to MVP Adrian Peterson rushing for over 2,000 yards, nearly breaking the all-time record. All this en route to a 10-6 season, enough to win the division after two straight years of dead last finishes in the NFC East.

A playoff injury to RGIII and massive organizational dysfunction led to 2012 being the peak of Washington football until another mobile, electric, Heisman-winning, #2 overall draft pick rookie Quarterback, Jayden Daniels, would roll into town over a decade later, but the takeaways to us today remain the same. Paid subscribers will have access to those down below.

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In case you aren’t familiar, the book is essentially how the Shanahan-McVay offense came to revolutionize offenses throughout the NFL, going all the way back to Mike Shanahan’s beginnings.

My first big takeaway came early in the book. It started with Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense, Mike Shanahan with his self-dubbed “East Coast” offense added another layer, then the next generation pioneered by Kyle really put an exclamation point on showing how an offense needs to be constructed. It goes back to the old idea of “paying your dues.” Coordinators tended to be in their 50s. They would work for a coordinator for years, master how to coach each play in the system, go coordinate one themselves, send their own assistants to be coordinators, and so on. What got lost in that cycle, as the book’s title calls out, is the why behind each play. Football in the late 20th century was primarily ran with plays that everyone knew worked - you just had to execute them. Everyone knew the play worked, so there was never a question as to why.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a time and place, particularly in high school, where I need the player to just execute the play call, but that’s probably the first level of not knowing why. The end of the road is the coach not knowing when he should call the play or why he should call it. After decades of learning a system, implement that system, other assistants leave to implement the system, you get 4, 5, 6 branches off the tree, and now the coach is just calling plays - until Bill Walsh came along.

It wasn’t just that Walsh knew the intent of every play. His plays and philosophies were fundamentally different than anything football had ever seen. He wasn’t a branch of a branch of a branch like almost every other playcaller of the time. He was the trunk of a new tree. Mike Shanahan then paired some of the West Coast philosophies with Alex Gibbs and the Outside Zone run game, along with a few Keepers and Play Passes, giving Kyle his foundation that he took with him to Tampa Bay, where he learned “every football play known to man” through Jon Gruden. As Kyle Shanahan made his way to Houston to be the Offensive Coordinator in the late 2000s, he kept his father’s foundation and filtered through Gruden’s playbook, keeping only the plays that he could tie together with the Outside Zone system.

There may not be a better way to identify the “why” behind every play than trying to filter/cut plays out of a playbook. I spent years doing that to create my high school version of the Shanahan-McVay system. You learn what you want in certain situations and where there is overlap. Some overlap is good, especially when it comes to cutting down a route tree or blocking techniques. Most overlap is bad, such as having 4 different interior run concepts that you’ll never be able to rep enough to succeed at or have difficulty deciding which interior run concept you want when you need one.

If you’re like us in Tennessee, you have some type of dead period where you can’t practice, workout, or even contact players for a set duration of time. Ours is two weeks, and we’re right in the middle of it - one week down, one week to go. This is a perfect time to evaluate your plan for the coming season’s offense. I would challenge you to go through every run scheme and pass concept you plan to run next season and ask yourself when you plan on running it (perhaps even listing out every situation it could theoretically fill on a call sheet) and why you plan on running it there. If you can’t answer it, the play should be cut immediately, no questions asked. I would even suggest that in high school specifically, if a certain scheme isn’t applicable in some form or fashion to the majority of sections on a call sheet, it needs to be cut. I don’t think I have ever thought to myself, “If only we had installed this play this week…” but I know I have thought, “If only we had just made this one block…” Now is the time to fix that mistake. Don’t bloat preseason installs and precious practice reps with plays that only get called 1-2x a game. Find a way to tag or tweak an existing concept and get back the 15-20 reps that probably got spent throughout individual, group, and team practice throughout the week on that one call in order to boost the execution of others.

Plenty of coaches have success running a large volume of plays, each designed to win a specific matchup or exploit a specific tendency. I don’t doubt the results. What I question is what’s actually producing them — scheme, talent, or an expectation that the defense across from you isn’t going to be disciplined enough to stop it.

The Question I Keep Coming Back To

Anytime I watch an offense built around volume — a long menu of plays where each one wins on its own terms — I find myself asking the same question: is this winning because of the scheme, or is it winning because the players executing it are simply better than the players defending it?

That’s not a rhetorical jab. It’s a real distinction, because the two produce very different outcomes against different competition. A scheme that requires elite talent to function is not a bad scheme, but it’s not a transferable one either. It’s a strategy that works because of who’s running it, not because of how it’s designed. A lot of offenses get credit for being “multiple” or “explosive” when really what’s happening is that good players are bailing out a system that would look very different with an average roster.

Last year, local media said we would be lucky to win two games. Those same writers ended up voting us as high as 6th in the state in our classification en route to a 9-3 record. My starting offensive line last season weighed less than 1,000 pounds combined, our running back was a senior in his first year at the position, and our FB/TE was a freshman thrown in after an injury to a senior early in the season. We ran wide zone, power, counter, and duo — four concepts — against every front we expected to see, and we hit 2,000 yards on the ground because every one of those players knew exactly what to do, every time, regardless of what the defense showed us. That was my fifth year in a row rushing for 2,000 yards, and it has been done at three different schools in that span.

Execution is the one variable that holds up against anyone.

Why Volume Hides the Real Answer

The issue with a large volume of plays is that it makes it very difficult to know which variable is actually responsible for success. If you’re running 20 different concepts and winning, is it because all 20 are well-designed? Or is it because your skill players are good enough to make 12 of them work despite mediocre design,?

Another factor is the assumption or expectation of a defensive deficiency. If the gameplan depends on the other side not lining up correctly, not being physical enough to hold up, or not having seen enough of what you’re doing to recognize it quickly, that’s not a scheme advantage. That’s a bet on the opponent’s weakness. And bets like that work right up until you play someone who is actually disciplined, typically in big moments and season-defining games.

What Execution-First Football Looks Like

I’d rather build a season around a small number of concepts that I can verify work regardless of the variable in front of us — talent level, scheme familiarity, or discipline. Over the last 6 weeks since the start of spring ball, we drilled our core run game against every front we are likely to see this season: even fronts shaded both directions, 3-4 Tite front, and 3-3 stack. This past week, I position-swapped my offensive linemen on the whiteboard — tackles to guard, guards to tackle — and every starter could still tell me the assignment at a spot that wasn’t even his.

That’s the kind of preparation that doesn’t rely on hoping the defense makes a mistake. It relies on making sure my players are right regardless of what the defense does. This past season was my first as a defensive coordinator. We were the smaller team on the field in all 12 of our games and still pitched four shutouts. Two teams accounted for over half the points scored against us on the season. With them, we gave up 18 points per game. Without them, that number drops below 10. The deciding factor wasn’t scheme exotic enough to confuse anyone — it was that our players executed their rules in all three phases at a higher rate than the opponent executed theirs.

That’s the whole case for fewer plays, run more ways. When you strip volume out of the equation, you remove the variable that’s hardest to verify and hardest to repeat — talent, or a defense’s unpreparedness — and you’re left with the one variable that’s actually yours to control every single week: whether your players know exactly what to do, and whether they can do it against anyone.

That’s what I’m all about here at Wide Zone Warriors — on Substack, YouTube, and X. I know content has been slower than usual since releasing The Shanahan-McVay Zone Run Manual. My one-month-old was diagnosed this week with a milk allergy and bad reflux. We didn’t realize it at first, but over the last month of feeding him, he’s been so uncomfortable that it’s tied his neck and back up in knots too. Combined with an extremely active 4-year-old and summer football workouts, there hasn’t been much time for anything beyond getting this weekly article out.

Hopefully having those answers now, along with two weeks off for dead period, helps us get him into a routine and gets me back to creating more regularly. In the meantime, there’s still a large backlog worth digging into — more breakdowns of running one play many ways here on Substack, the offensive system video install series for founding members, and a full library of videos covering just about every offensive football topic on YouTube.

The start of dead period here in Tennessee means the season is right around the corner. I hope you’re as excited as I am! Thanks for reading and being here for it.

Coach Davidson

Generally, those are good things being listed. But if you’re like me, there isn’t time to do seven to ten things during individual period. For the vast majority of my career, we have never spent more than an hour on one side of the ball in practice — and for almost all of that time, it’s been only 45 minutes. An average practice during my career has been about 45 minutes on offense, 45 minutes on defense, 10-15 minutes of water, and 15-20 minutes of special teams. In a 45-minute offensive practice, I might have 45 minutes of individual time across the entire week. Ten different drills across 45 minutes means never getting deep enough into anything to make the learning stick.

Throughout the rest of the article, where I’m going to break down my nonnegotiables for individual period from the lens of not having much time. I believe these principles apply regardless of position, but since becoming a position coach I have always coached the offensive line — and these principles have led to 2,000-plus rushing yards every season I’ve been in that role. Most of the places I’ve been a position coach, we’ve emphasized efficiency: finding the balance between practicing enough to feel confident heading into Friday, but not so much that players are overworked.

One more thing worth addressing: another thing I see on social media is coaches discussing a drill on the whiteboard, showing film of it, and then going out and running it. I’ve never had time to do all of those things in sequence. So if you’re a position coach, coordinator, or head coach looking for ways to be more efficient and get good results in less time, I think you’ll find value in what comes next.

The First Nonnegotiable: Intro the Opponent

For the offensive line, that means introducing the defensive front we’re going to see that week. It doesn’t take long into the season for players to recognize a 3-4 or a 4-2, but I’ll also use this time to add context — this inside linebacker is their best player, this is their better defensive end — to give some shape to the period. The very first thing we do when we get to practice on Monday is identify the front and jog through our run concepts against it.

The purpose of the period matters here. When we’re in this phase, I’m not asking linemen to block at full speed. The goal is for me to stand back and confirm that every player along the blocking surface knows who to block based on the concept being called — nothing more than that.

We just jog through the play. It keeps the players fresher and saves them from the collisions — the “car crashes” that every full-speed snap becomes in team periods, inside run periods, and on Friday night. I’m trying to reduce the amount of contact during this period, because the period isn’t, “Can you mash the guy in front of you?” The period is: I call outside zone — do you know who to block? Do you know how to combo? Do you know who we’re comboing to?

That might sound counterintuitive — that the first thing we’re doing is introing the defensive front when we also need to clean up mistakes from last Friday night. There are only a few mistakes I worry about during the season; the summer is for dialing in technique. Since I don’t have a lot of individual time during the week, I only emphasize correcting mistakes that I believe our next opponent can actually capitalize on. Say we didn’t block an odd front correctly last week — if the next team we play runs an even front, I’m not going to spend time during the week harping on the odd front mistake, because it’s not going to show up this Friday. I’ll address it the next time we face an odd front team, and I’ll reinforce that we didn’t handle it correctly last time. But I don’t have enough time during the week to worry about last Friday if it isn’t going to impact this Friday. Effort issues are different — those impact every week, so we’ll talk about those and see them on film and coach from there, but a technique or targeting issue only gets addressed if it’s relevant to this week’s opponent.

So, nonnegotiable number one: the first thing we’re doing on Monday is introing the defensive front we’re expecting this week.

How Monday Breaks Down

When we’re introing that front, we’re discussing the run plays we have primarily, and a little pass protection — getting our base pass pro in and seeing how it works against their front. That’s the majority of Monday’s individual time — this is just the base front. How are we protecting it? How do our run concepts work against it? I typically get about 20 minutes for individual on a Monday: maybe 5 minutes for corrections, 10 minutes for run game, 5 minutes for base pass protection.

The other 25 minutes, depending on where I’ve been, could be a mix of an inside run period (introing our runs for the week at a full speed with the entire blocking surface and backfield present) and/or a team period.

If that doesn’t sound like much time — it’s not. This isn’t a college program with an hour of individual O-line time. It’s not a lot, so we have to be efficient. One of the ways we stay efficient is through scheme. If we’re trying to run wide zone, power, veer, duo, and midline, I’m not getting through all of that in 10-15 minutes. It’s too much. So we have to be efficient with our time and also lean on carryover — reusing blocking schemes as much as possible, in our “one play, many ways” mentality.

That’s nonnegotiable number one for the offensive line: introing the defense.

For receivers, we’re talking through our concepts for the week. We might line up the shell of the defense — a 7-on-7 type period — where, from this formation, this is where we expect the safeties and linebackers to be, this is the coverage we expect, and these are the routes we’re running against it. These are the motions we’re running, and these are the motion-to-concept packages we’re putting together. We’re also showing which defender we expect to be in conflict as a result of the motion — are they running with it, rotating to it, bumping the linebackers, or not adjusting at all? Those are the things we’re introing with skill players on Monday.

I prefer to let the running backs go with the offensive line during this period — while the O-line is working run blocking, the running backs can see what run concepts we’re working and where we’re designing things to be open. It’s also helpful for tight ends and fullbacks to be there. A lot of times we’ll split those groups: the running backs stay with the offensive line for the entire period, while tight ends and fullbacks split their time — half with the O-line, half with the skill players.

That’s the majority of Monday. If you’re trying to fit eight things into one individual period and you’re like me — like most programs, pressed for time — that’s a long list to get through.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Monday is more about who to block, or where to align/run for receivers and backs. Tuesday is more about the how to. You could term it “Technique Tuesday.” On Tuesday, we might work a combo drill, or work cover-and-gallop. If we know the defense has a secondary front on film — say they’re primarily odd but can shift to even — that’s something we’d throw at them on Tuesday.

Tuesday is also when we show any blitzes we’ve seen. There might be a standard look we’re used to — a 3-4 rushing the backside outside linebacker away from trips, for example, which we’d expect and are used to, probably briefly glossing over on Monday’s intro. But if they do anything exotic — twisting, a specific blitz path they’ve shown a few times — we’d show that on Tuesday as well.

For the skill players, this is when I like to run our skill read drill where WRs are practicing perimeter RPOs and stalk blocking, QB is reading his option defender, and RB is running his track and cutting off of his own read key.

That sounds like a lot for one day — technique, a secondary front, and blitz packages. But what I’ve noticed is that most teams don’t give you all of those things at once. If they have a secondary front, they probably don’t also have an exotic blitz. If they have an exotic blitz, they probably don’t also have a secondary front. And if they have both, are they good enough at executing both that it’s actually worth our practice time? That all factors into the decision.

By the time Wednesday comes around, we’ve introduced the base defensive front and discussed whatever change-up the defense can give — blitz or secondary front. Wednesday might only be 10 minutes of individual time, just to clean up mistakes from Monday or Tuesday. If they had both a secondary front and a blitz, Tuesday might cover the secondary front technique, and the 10 minutes on Wednesday would cover the blitz.

My main focus on Wednesday is team offense through situational periods: 3rd/4th downs, 2 minute offense, and Red Zone offense. Monday introduces the Normal D&D offense for the week, Tuesday reps it, and Wednesday is for when we get out of Normal D&D, i.e. a situation.

Thursday is walkthrough, no individual time. Any mistakes from Wednesday need to be corrected outside of practice time, but practice is much shorter on a walkthrough anyway. I like 4 offensive drives on Thursday.

• Drive 1: the opening script

• Drive 2: 2 minute offense (score before halftime)

• Drive 3: calling the offense as normal - no opening script, activating situations as they arise throughout the drive

• Drive 4: 4 minute offense - end walkthrough in the Victory formation, just like we want to end it Friday night.

There has been a lot of conversation about practice planning recently, but if you aren’t able to do 5-10 things during indy time every day, you are not alone, and you can still be successful. The name of the game is efficiency and finding the line between doing enough and not doing too much. That line is different for every program every year. These are the principles that have worked for me in alignment with that process, and if you feel short on time throughout a practice week, hopefully they can help you too.

Thanks for reading Wide Zone Warriors!

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The first thing I look for more than anything is sound scheme. Defense is a bit more simple to identify that. For me, I’m just looking to see if every gap and every vertical is accounted for. Offensively, the starting line is a bit farther to me, especially because there are so many different types of offenses. I think philosophies can transcend offensive system, such as adding option principles to non-Veer offenses, but by and large, I’m looking to listen to Zone and common Gap runs, Power and Counter. That’s what gets me in the room or clicking on the video. From there, absolute ground zero is that every defender in the front is accounted for.

The biggest point I try and decipher is, “Are they successful because of this play/blitz/coverage or with it?” Keep in mind, success is relative. I would rather learn from the coach that takes a team with 4 win talent and leads them to 8 wins than the coach that wins a state title with better players in every game. Oftentimes, those are the coaches we hear the most from. The issue to me is that in most of those cases, I hear a coach that seems to have the mindset that a certain scheme is responsible for their success when in reality, they probably just have better players and would be successful in most any offense or defense as a result. That’s how I came to love the Shanahan-McVay system in the first place.

Being a lifelong Rams fan, I hadn’t seen any type of success since The Greatest Show on Turf. Then we traded the farm to move up to get Jared Goff, who was on massive bust-watch within one season, turn into an MVP candidate and the starting QB in the Super Bowl in two years once Sean McVay came to town, so I started studying it. As I learned McVay’s offense, it naturally led me to Kyle Shanahan, who led multiple QBs to their statistical heights, including an MVP season for Matt Ryan, then lead the 49ers that had fallen off hard since Jim Harbaugh left back to winning playoff games every year. I figured, “If they’re doing more with less talent in the NFL, including what became known as a pretty ‘quarterback-proof system,’ I bet there are parts of it that could work in high school too.” The studying that would become Wide Zone Warriors started then.

It’s my goal to provide content and context on this system such that you never get the feeling that it requires better players or that “making a man miss” to have a decent scheme. Sure, having better players is great, making a man miss is necessary for explosive plays, but an offensive scheme that falls apart without better players or without a ballcarrier that frequently makes men miss behind the line of scrimmage isn’t one I want to learn. Great players should amplify a great scheme, but a scheme shouldn’t rely on great players to make it functional.

“A system should never reduce the game to the point where it simply blames the players for failure because they did not physically overwhelm the opponent.” — Bill Walsh

That standard led me to studying the Shanahan-McVay offense and ultimately producing the Zone Run Manual, breaking down the many different zone run concepts they have designed over the years. The goal of the book isn’t to convince you to run the offense - it’s to show each concept’s individuality while how it simultaneously all fits together to teach the system. If you run a zone-based offense, it also serves as an encyclopedia of different tags you can use to get more out of your zone run game. Join the hundreds of coaches that have already picked one up! Based on the feedback so far, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, and if you enjoy it, there is information inside on how to get three free months of paid access to Wide Zone Warriors.

The Shanahan-McVay Zone Run Manual

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In case you missed yesterday’s teaser on X, I am in the final stages of releasing my first book: The Shanahan-McVay Zone Run Manual! Inside, it is going to include a description page and a diagram page with “simplest form” breakdowns of each run concept against 6 common defensive fronts to help explain and demonstrate the actual differences in each concept in a clearer way than tends to be found inside the leaked playbooks. This is my section on the WAG Bear concept.

Be on the lookout here and on X over the next few weeks for more information on the book! Paid subscribers will have access below to the nearly 8 minute cutup of this concept from RGIII’s rookie season, tagged and compiled by my new All-22 Review desktop film study app.

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Last April, I spent four weeks writing about how I approach spring install — what plays to put in, how to find the right positions for your players, how to think about formations, and how to build a pre-snap movement identity. These four articles follow the same sequence you’d use to actually build an offense from scratch — what you’re running, who’s running it, how you’re presenting it, and how you’re moving into it. The philosophy applies regardless of what offensive system you’re running.

Spring Ball Part 1: What to Install

Spring Ball Part 2: Finding Players’ Positions

Spring Ball Part 3: Formations and Motions to Install in Spring

Spring Ball Part 4: Installing Pre-Snap Movements in Spring

First, we’re going to look at their most common read option call throughout that season: WAG. WAG is one of the ways they got to old school Load Option - having a lead blocker for the QB pull/keep phase of the option. In this case, the load blocker (Y) came from across the formation on a “Grizz” block. “Grizz” is when the load block crosses the formation; “Bear” is when it stays on the same side.

I’m under the assumption that WAG = Wanda + Grizz as the 5 OL are blocking close to Wanda rules with the Y on the Grizz. The 49ers diagrams from the Trey Lance era add a little more context to the count.

The Redskins playbook pictures have more of a Jon Gruden West Coast language than Shanahan, so they may have blocked straight Wanda rules, but the true Shanahan diagrams from the 49ers show it as “#3 declared.” They’re looking for the third non-CB and non-DL from the sideline. The first box of the 49ers diagram gives us a picture perfect look against a defense every high school offense will see at some point, a defense that amounts to a 4-4. The weak-side overhang, the FS in that diagram, is the first non-CB/non-DL from the sideline, so he is 1. The Will is the second, and the Mike is third. That would make the Mike the ID, allowing the OL to block what amounts to Wanda on the 4-2 box, read the sixth, and Grizz to the overhang. The twins on the other side pull the strong side overhang out of the box, meaning that all 8 men in the front are accounted for.

The second diagram in the 49ers page shows why the count and its variation from regular Wanda is important. The 4-2 front rotates strong over the bunch. The Will is now the first non-CB/DL from the sideline, Mike second, and SS third; therefore the SS is the ID and the Will is the recipient of the Grizz block.

Below is a cutup of all the Inside Zone WAG runs from the 2012 Redskins. I tagged all of these within my new film study app, All-22 Review. If you have access to film outside of Hudl, it’s the best way to watch it! Visit all22review.com to learn more and start a free, all-inclusive 7 day trial.

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As you’ll see throughout the cutup, one of the defensive adjustments that really hurts the WAG Load Option is a scrape exchange. Paid subscribers will have access to how the Redskins countered scrape exchanges, including a bonus cutup of the concept.

54-55 WAG

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