“A system should never reduce the game to the point where it simply blames the players for failure because they did not physically overwhelm the opponent.” Bill Walsh
Special Plays
Special Plays are plays that are used in situations that can catch the defense unprepared
because they have not seen these plays before
or have seen them but disregarded being prepared for them.
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I am not a believer in tricking a defense to consistently win games.
Games are won by outexecuting your opponent.
But I always believed in having a special play available if I needed to change momentum,
keep an offensive drive going, or, to mentally affect a defenses rhythm.
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Here are the plays I routinely practiced for such situations.
Phat boy sweep
You will see 2 plays in this clip. The first one is the 7-route fade to the X that gets us down inside the 5-yard line. The second is the Phat Boy Sweep.
I had an automatic call this game that the first time we got inside the 5-yard line we would run this for our first play. In fact, I never called this play. They immediately lined up and ran the play! I had saved this play for a critical game and this game was for the conference championship.
The offensive linemen were begging me every week to run the Phat Boy Sweep.
We practiced it as the last play in our inside run game period every week, 3 times a week.
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Since this was game week 9 and I hadn't called it, they didn't think I would every run it. When I told them just before the game that we would run it the first time
the ball was inside the 5-yard line, they were fired up
and determined to get down there and make it happen.
And as you can see in the video, the QB and WR make a great throw and catch,
to get us inside the 5-yard line to set-up the play. This all happened in the
1st quarter and we noticed it affected the mindset of our opponent,
seeing an offensive lineman scoring a touchdown. We went on to win handily.
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Coaching Note about the Phat Boy Sweep play:
As long as the offensive lineman turns his back to the LOS to take the ball,
he can legally carry the ball. Watch the left guard make this turn around,
take the handoff, and then run into the end zone untouched.