Chapter 1: The Evolution

The game of football has changed an awful lot over its 125 years. Offenses have been

evolving and constantly becoming more sophisticated year after year, season after season. As

offensive coaches, we are doing everything we can to stay one step ahead of defensive

coordinators by creating schemes that have answers to multitude of defensive coverages and blitz

packages that we see on a weekly basis. This book will focus primarily on the fastest growing

trend in offensive football, the Run Pass Option, or ‘RPO.’

I have had many conversations with college and high school coaches on the validity of

RPO’s over the course of the past few years. You hear many different opinions on the subject,

that marry many different coaching philosophies. I understand that there are many ways for

offenses to move the football, and many coaches have core beliefs which they have established

over many years of coaching football. I realize that there are many ways to score points and win

football games. My intent is not necessarily to convert every coach into utilizing RPO’s, but I

want to make sure that you understand how valuable they can be as a part of your offensive

system. It is important that you understand the pro’s and con’s to what we are doing.

The first argument against “RPO’s”, is that they can take away from your down-hill

running game. I agree that there are times that your football team must be able to line up in

heavy personnel sets and run the ball effectively over the course of a championship season.

Many teams that are championship contenders every year at all levels have the ability to

implement what commonly referred to as “Smash Mouth” football schemes when their offense

needs them the most.

effectively vs. 8 man defensive boxes, I can understand why you would be hesitant to explore

any different schemes for your offense. Handing the ball to the running back is one of the most

effective ways to not only gain positive yardage, but to minimize the probability of negative

plays over the course of a football game.

The problem that many coaches at the high school and college level encounter is that they

lack size, or skill in their offensive line and tight ends to consistently make 7 blocks in order to

get their tailbacks in 1 on 1 match-ups vs. the free hitter. When you are not properly equipped to

displace defenders from their gaps with your personnel, you have to come up with creative ways

to put your team in successful play calls that allow you to move the football.

The next argument that I have heard against RPO’s is “we do not have a quarterback that

can make the proper reads.” I urge you to sit back and think about what you do on offense right

now before you jump to this conclusion about your starting quarterback. Most offenses employ

passing attacks with multiple reads regardless of whether or not you are a coverage or

progression based system. With that being said, you allow your quarterbacks to make multiple

post snap reads constantly throughout the course of a football game. Why do you believe your

quarterback can not handle 1 pre-snap, and 1 post-snap read on each run play? If your

quarterback can handle universal concepts such as smash, and 4 verticals, we would argue that

he should be able to handle your rules for your RPO schemes.

The third and final problem that some coaches argue on this topic has to do with

protections and coverages. As offenses evolve, defenses are forced to adapt. The most popular

adaptation by defensive coordinators has been to load the box and play man coverage. The

second most popular answer has been to blitz more heavily verses RPO teams. With that being
said, we have developed ways to have an answer for man coverage and/or blitz in all of our RPO

schemes. This is as simple as allowing your quarterback to take a pre-snap picture of the defense

and go through his checklist of options. There is always a blitz beater, always a man beater,

always an answer to whatever the defense gives you.

What I would like to clear up in this chapter is that we are not an RPO offense. As far as

I understand there is not an offense in the country that is an RPO offense. Run Pass Options are

now a fundament part of our offensive scheme, and our offensive philosophy. We are still a 2

back, spread football team. The reason this is important to denote is that even the negatives that

coaches find in the idea of these plays are not negatives to us. Not every play in our playbook

has a pass and a run option. If we want to make sure that our quarterback hands the ball off, we

have the ability to do so. If we want to call a drop back passing play, we can go to our drop back

menu as well. These plays are not all that we will use throughout the course of a game or a

season, but they have given us more answers without sacrificing added reps in practice.

Adding RPO’s to our playbook has given us a lot more answers to problems that defenses

give us on a weekly basis. Every defensive coach that I have ever faced has been set on finding

answers to stop our rushing attack. When defensive coaches sell out against the run, that can

make them very vulnerable on the perimeter. Our philosophy is that there is always a weakness

to exploit. Every front, every coverage, every matchup has a weakness. In order to exploit those

weaknesses, we have to be able to have answers within our base scheme.

Some coaches feel comfortable calling the game around the opposing team’s weaknesses.

These coaches are generally big on checking plays after the defense is lined up. If that is your

philosophy, that is great. Our philosophy has always been centered around playing fast. The last

thing that we want to do as an offensive coaching staff is to slow our players down by constantly
checking in and out of plays at the line of scrimmage. We preach our tempo, we work at a fast

tempo all week at practice, our players thrive under the conditions of that fast tempo during the

game. In order for us to exploit a defenses weak spots, we have to create a base scheme that has

answers for any defensive alignment and coverage scheme.

This has forced us to do something that we did not feel comfortable doing with our

offense two years ago. We now are putting the bulk of the decision making into our

quarterback’s hands. Rather than telling our quarterback where the ball needed to go, or what

play to check to pre-snap, we have to teach him what his options are, and when to turn to them.

All of our RPO’s have a pre-snap, and a post snap read attached to them. It is our job as coaches

to make sure that we have come up with rules that work verses multiple coverages, and multiple

fronts in order to keep our offense running at the pace we demand from our players.

We also have to make sure that we keep our read keys fairly simple. Keeping your read

keys simple serves two very important purposes. The first purpose is to ensure that you are not

overwhelming your quarterback with too many “what-if” scenarios. If we try to get too

complicated with his reads or ask him to look at too many pre-snap alignments, there is a much

higher probability that he will make a mistake. Just because it seems simple, does not mean it

cannot be effective. The second purpose of keeping your reads simple is to allow your offense to

move at a fast pace. At the end of the day many of these concepts are universal verses any and

all defenses. We would like to be able to call these at any time throughout the football game and

move as fast as we can to stop defenses from putting in fresh substitutes or run complicated

schemes. Our quarterback has to be able to scan the field quickly and make the correct decision

based on what the defense is giving us.

player that is willing to play quarterback on your football team understands that title comes with

a little more responsibility. For the same reason fans and broadcasters count the number of

Super Bowl victories that Tom Brady or Joe Montana has and do not do the same for other

position players. Your quarterback is the leader of your offense, and often times the leader of

your team. For any offense to be successful, it must find ways to highlight the strengths of your

quarterback. For any quarterback to be successful, he must take ownership of his responsibility

in that offense. We have found throughout our coaching careers that players generally rise and

fall to the level of their coach’s expectations for them. We set the bar high for what we expect

our quarterbacks to know, and they have risen to that bar.

At the end of the day, as offensive coaches, we enjoy finding creative ways to score

points on defenses week after week. The problem with updating our playbook during our game

plan meetings on Sunday or Monday nights is the valuable time and physical repetitions it takes

for our players to master the new schemes we are trying to implement. As coaches, we will learn

them and know them. We can not always say the same for our players. Rather than constantly

creating new schemes, we can take parts of different schemes we already have and add them

together. I like to think of it as a value meal. When you walk into McDonald’s you don’t order

a Big Mac, fries, and a drink, you order a #1. That is how I think of Run Pass Options. Rather

than calling inside zone, double slants, and a glance post, I can create a name to get everything I

want in the same play. The best part is that we already have all of these things in our playbook

already. We do not have to have 5 full speed reps at this play as long as we are running other

plays throughout the week where each player is working their part. As long as my quarterback
understands his options, we can still go into the game feeling confident in what we have

practiced.

This is why Run Pass Options are great for the other 10 players on the field in your

offense. These are new plays that are merely filled with parts of what they already do. Our

receivers understand how to run the routes that we have attached to each play. Our offensive line

knows these blocking schemes well because they have worked those same 4 schemes by some

name every day. Our backs maintain the same footwork and their reads do not change. This

allows us to expand the playbook without slowing our players down. We want to continue to

move fast and play aggressive. We do not want to compromise those ideals in order to put fresh

pages in the playbook.