Hit the line running

As the new football season gets rolling, I came up with a few ideas during the Saturday afternoon workout in the warm August air.

I hit the street at about 5pm on Saturday and while I was putting in my training with the weekly sprints of 20, 30, 40 and fifty yard distances, a light went off in my head or maybe I was feeling lighheaded from the 90 degree temperatures.

The idea or thought is this. Why don’t we line the runningback (probably a tailback), up about five yards deep behind the quarterback and give him the ball as he has a running start toward the line of scrimmage.

This is all about “hitting the line running”. I said, “Hit the line running.”

Hit the hole full speed and you’ll get 5-10 yards per carry. The key is not to come up into the line juking around trying trying to read holes, it is hit the hole at full throttle and come through there running like a son a gun. Don’t worry about pausing to read blocks and stopping and starting, then trying to break away and gain the extra yard.

“Hit the line running.” Have your backs work on 20, 30, and 40 yard sprints in practice. When’s the last time you saw a back break off a 80, 90, or 100 yard run. Am I making sense here?????

Hit the line running, and hit the hole and get through the hole and get on up the field. Save your body and don’t run over the man unless you have to. We need solid one-on-one blocking up front to pull this off.

Can you imagine how well this could work if we could get the backs clicking. It is all about run, run, run…….Give me a 10-15 yard carry. There should be plenty of blocking to open up these holes. Five linemen, a fullback, double tight ends, a slot back. That’s nine men coming at 4-5 up front and then cut off a couple of linebackers and your’e still talking 9 on 7…….

We need to have four fresh tailbacks ready and waiting and rotate them evenly as the game begins and then by halftime you should be able to settle in with your top-two backs by the time the second half rolls around.

Let’s put this theory to work. I think we can blow some people away with this offensive approach. It should be good for a 2-3 run on the high school level before we take this game plan on to the college ranks.

Run the sprints with 20’s, 30’s and 40’s and get those backs fast and have the linemen and other blockers move quick off the line on the snap count. We are now ready to fly and the four backs we go with will look to gain right at 400 yards per night as a unit.

Give me a yell at durhamandy@live.com if want me to come over to your practice and install this offense or try it on your own and let me know how it works for you. This might be a great one to put in at mid-season when you are 0-6 and you are ready to scarp everything you are doing and you’re set to take off in a different direction.

So many teams and coaches sit around wondering and they never get moving. It’s time to “hit the line running”.

Another thought I had was to make the backs faster, drop the shoulder pads and the pads in your pants that are slowing your runningbacks down. Less pads and you will be moving quicker and if have to have pads, go with the smallest and lightest ones you can find.

No need to be carrying around all that excess weight that the pads pose and I haven’t seen a rule anywhere that says you have to have the pads. We will be using four runningbacks and with the speed we will have from these kids, they won’t be getting hit much anyway.

If you have to have something choose the lightest shoulder pads you can find, the ones like the wide receivers wear and dump the wasteful knee pads and maybe use some super-light thigh pads and even maybe go back to my original idea and don’t use any pads at all.

We are talking speed here brother. Hit the line running, and get through that hole and get up the field. The goal line is only 20 yards away and who wants to be the first back to touch paydirt????

The E-mail again is durhamandy@live.com if you want me to come over and help you install this program. I can teach your backs to run like LT coming down Bryan Blvd.