Building a championship football team

by Paul W. Bryant

If it is not a 3-deep secondary, then it is a 9-man front. All 9-man fronts are basically the same, as I have illustrated in [Figure 119].

The quarterback wants to run at the man who is isolated in the defense, and in most cases it is the defensive man over the offensive center’s area. The attack can go wide, too, but the offensive team must do an intelligent job of splitting in order to draw the defense in tight. If the offensive guards take wide splits and the defensive men move out with them, the defensive man over the center will be isolated and the quarterback can direct his attack toward the middle.

Figure 119

The corner passes versus a 9-man front, with the quarterback exercising his option of running or passing, are excellent because of the pressure exerted on the corner man. If he drops off to cover an area for the pass, the quarterback must run with the football. If he rushes to contain the passer, the short flat is open for a pass.

It is very important to teach your quarterbacks the different defenses, and the strength of each defensive alignment. As I mentioned previously, we teach the quarterbacks to run away from the strength of the various alignments. The quarterback must also be aware of the fact that he does not have to whip the entire defense, but only the weak area in the defense. If a defensive man is isolated or if there is not a defensive man on the line in a particular area, we consider this the weak part of a defensive alignment.

Playing the Game on a Blackboard

We have a number of meetings with our quarterbacks going over strategy and game situations and drilling them in the principles of quarterbacking and field generalship. It is difficult to expect a quarterback to make the correct decision at a critical time in a game unless he has been drilled to react to such a situation. With this in mind, for years I have used the procedure of having our quarterback coach and the quarterbacks play a game of football on the blackboard.

In order to explain our procedure more clearly, let’s assume it is early September and we are preparing for our opening game with the University of Georgia. We have been drilling our quarterbacks daily on the defenses we expect Georgia to use in various parts of the field. We have been drilling them on how to attack these particular defenses with our offense. With this basic information, we are now ready to work with the quarterbacks at the blackboard playing our football game.