101 Concepts for Effective Offense
By: Steve Axman
Steve Axman is a coaches’ coach. He has had more stops than the Dyer Avenue Subway in the Bronx and has been successful at all of them. I consider Axman a true offensive mastermind. I have known “Ax†for over thirty years and he’s always coming up with interesting concepts to move the ball and cause a defense heartache.
Steve was with Homer Smith (another offensive wizard for whom I have great respect) in the seventies at Army and I was always amazed at how The Cadets moved the ball against vastly superior talent. They always mixed in some option and dropback pass sprinkled in some sprint and draws and before you knew were moving the ball effectively. I see a lot of Homer’s influence on Steve over the years.
Axman has written many books for Coaches Choice and you can’t go wrong with any of them. They are all well organized, easy to read no-nonsense coaching texts. I picked 101 Concepts for Effective Offense to review because every summer I always gave it a quick once over to possibly get one idea that would help our team. It has a ton of great ideas (actually 101).
Here are some of my personal favorites from the book:
1. Multiplicity cuts down on defensive volume – the more you do as far as formations; the less the defense can do. It locks them down.
2. The defense doesn’t like to see unbalanced formations – I have always made unbalanced formations a staple of the Triple Gun Offense.
3. The defense also doesn’t like to see Empty or Bunch formations – I call this the accordion attack compress sets and widen them. When you tighten or compress a set the defense compresses as well and when you spread out the defense will spread out.
4. QB draws are very effective – we incorporate a QB draw into our entire dropback pass game. Quarterback draw destroys man/under defense.
5. Defenses hate Option Football – Amen Brother.
6. Shotgun Option explosively ties together the Triple Option with the Shotgun Pass Game – hence The Triple Gun Offense.
7. Use double moves to throw deep and complement the quick game – use “max†protection and throw the hitch and go, out and up or the Slant and go.
8. The Quick Game is one of the best of all passing concepts. It’s the simplest pass protection. The Quick Game is another key component in the Triple Gun Offense but we boot off it if the initial route is covered.
9. Move the quarterback’s launch points. It’s harder to blitz a quarterback when you don’t know where his launch point is. We move the quarterbacks launch point within the same play when we boot off the Quick Game.
10. Have maximum seven and eight man protection schemes. This allows you to pick up blitzes without throwing “hot†and getting your QB hit. We use both seven and eight man check release schemes in our dropback pass game.
11. Use a cleanup blocker in the Gun. The cleanup blocker is not releasing your running back but instead keeping him in the backfield and scanning the protection for any leaks.
12. Misdirection passes, boots and nakeds are tough to stop. We always have some misdirection passing in all our game plans. Of course the boot off the Quick game is very effective.
There are 89 more concepts in the book complete with diagrams and detailed explanation; these are just a dozen that I selected to give you an example of some of the concepts in the book. Regardless of the type of offense you run; you’ll find 101 Concepts for Effective Offense very helpful. I would recommend any of Steve Axman’s books.
