"The heartbeat of a football team is the quarterback position and I think everyone who has any intelligence about the game understands you must have consistency at that position to be a championship team."
-Ron Jaworski
Football is a team sport. It takes 11 men executing on the field to enjoy success. But most coordinators will agree: the offense often lives and dies with quarterback play.
Any QB in any offensive system needs to perform fundamentally to succeed: improving throwing mechanics, increasing arm strength, proper footwork and timing, defensive pre-snap reads, and learning offensive plays, concepts and systems. All are integral in becoming a great quarterback. However, in the Veer/Option offense, the QB must become a duality: a throwing QB can make us good, but a dual threat at the quarterback position can make us dynamic.
But before any quarterback can succeed in our offense, he must first understand our philosophy, and that begins with the Option concept. My playing days in Madison were strongly rooted in Veer football, and throughout my years of competition and coaching, I've fielded numerous questions and concerns regarding option football.
So why do we make Veer the focal point of our offense? First, the option is the best way to get the ball on the perimeter. Not only can we attack sideline to sideline, spread the defense and force them to play assignment football, but when the defense spreads to contain the option, the inside running game (Iso, Power) now becomes explosive. The option also neutralizes dominant defensive players, forcing them to defend the option with every play and remain disciplined. Even more, option football controls random blitzing: one wrong stunt by the defense could lead to an easy six points for our offense. And option offense helps the passing game dramatically. The option often dictates defense and makes secondary coverage predictable.
You can see why an Option/Veer approach to offense is an attractive system for coaching winning football. But just "running the option" sometimes isn't good enough; it also involves designing successful systems from option football and how you run it. Coach Friedman has well explained our philosophy on Pistol Spread Option offense. Now let me tell you why the Pistol Spread optimizes option football and exactly why QB play is what truly drives this offense.
The Pistol set puts the quarterback four yards deep. This lets the QB see the defense better. He is now more easily capable of reading secondary coverage and flat defenders, and most importantly in our system, it allows him to better read the EMLOS, the primary Veer/Option read. Instead of reading close to the line of scrimmage through traffic, we put our offense at an immediate advantage by allowing the QB to see the defense better.
The Pistol puts the H back six yards deep. This allows two things to happen: the QB now "meshes" with the H back almost instantaneously, and the mesh happens deep in the backfield and away from the LOS. The QB now has more time and depth to read the EMLOS, and the H back has more depth and time to read the running lanes. This also puts our backfield at a distinct advantage over the defense.
The Spread formation puts the slots (F/Z) "in space." Instead of a traditional Split Veer backfield--where the pitch back must sprint through the backfield, to the perimeter and into pitch relationship--the Spread allows the slot backs free release into space and spreads out our option attack. The more field we cover as an offense, the more field the defense must now defend.
The Pistol gives us better attack angles to "Option Alley." The following diagrams show traditional Split Veer v. Pistol Spread Veer:
As the diagrams show, the Pistol Spread not only helps make option football successful.....it gives it the full potential to become truly dynamic.
Most important to running this successful and explosive offense: We must commit to option philosophy and commit practice time to it--not only in-season, but during the offseason as well. And that is where our quarterbacks really enter into the equation.
The following diagram outlines some teaching points and highlights of our option mentality:
You can see where our QB play, more importantly than any other position, really drives this offense. Our QBs must not only possess the mechanics and physical skills needed at the position, but they must also make the proper reads and sound decisions needed to make this offense run. They must commit to becoming a true "dual threat" in order to make the triple option veer successful.
"Sure, luck means a lot in football. Not having a good quarterback is bad luck."-Don Shula
Coach Shula makes a good point in his tongue-in-cheek way. But in our offense here at Madison, luck means little.....and execution means everything. Every quarterback at every level needs to firmly root themselves in Veer philosophy and learn what we expect at the position. They need to be working hard in the offseason not only on strength and speed conditioning, but learning the offense cold and how we use the Veer as our "bread-and-butter" play. They need to turn themselves into fundamentally-sound passers as well as ultimate weapons in our run game by learning their reads and how to attack the defense from multiple option angles. They need to be smart, sound and dedicated to improvement in order to help develop the offense into an explosive system.
With this type of committed approach to option football, we'll be able to make our own luck.
