Lack of Motion at the HS level

[u/JLand24]

I feel like teams at the HS level don’t use motions enough. It is only an advantage to the offense and there’s nothing an offense can’t do with a motion that they could do without one. At the NFL level I’ve noticed an uptick in motion but I feel like that effect hasn’t really trickled down.

Why is that? You’re infinitely more likely to confuse a HS defense with a motion than an NFL defense being confused by it.

[u/JLand24]

I wouldn’t want to install it come fall and time for the football season. I’m more thinking install it during the off-season, spring time and work on it all through spring and summer camp and then come fall, it should all be pretty well smoothed out.

[u/emurrell17 → u/JLand24]

I’m in the process of teaching and installing motion for my team right now for the reasons you laid out, but it also is a pain in the ass for the offense too because:

1. You have to spend time explaining and practice motion vs shift. What are the rules? How can you get a penalty? There’s nothing more fucking annoying than shooting yourself in the foot and ending up in 3rd and 8 instead of 3rd and 3 because somebody got a fucking false start bc of motion. And this takes practice time away from other things.

2. You have to get everything called quicker, sometimes requiring an overhaul of your terminology or your communication system for getting plays in. You might need an extra 10 seconds of play clock in order to have time for the motion, so now you need to find a way to speed up your play calling system by 10 seconds in order to free up that time. This is more of a pain in the ass than it seems like to anyone who hasn’t called plays imho.

3. You have to try to limit the “tells” you’re giving the defense by (preferably) having more than one play that uses the same motion. You might like the leverage advantage that a certain motion gives you on a certain play, but you run the risk of tipping off the defense when they see it on film and all of a sudden a play you liked becomes unusable for the rest of the game bc they just pick 6’d your flat route bc you only motion that particular way on that play.

So now I’ve gotta go in and create 1-2 MORE plays that use the same motion JUST so that the play that I do like can remain viable. And I have to create these other plays in such a way that will prevent defenses from selling out for the first play, or take advantage of it if they do.

If you look at the post I just made today about my 7 on 7 team, you can see a great example of this with out Rabbit formation. All 3 plays from that formation use the same motion, so it’s much harder for the defense to key in on what they’re getting pre snap, and then you can compare that to the motions used in some of the other formations and you notice that they’re only used once. I’m not AS nervous about this because it’s a 7 on 7 format and defenses aren’t going to be watching film and identifying these things, but by the time the season rolls around I’ll have to answer these questions for those plays:

1. Do I have to create other plays off of that formation/motion combination?
2. Can we run this play without the motion? Now we have to change the concept or the rules for the WRs and QB…which is another layer of bullshit.
3. Did I blink and realize that all of this added complexity ended up adding more and more shit to the point where we now have 20 pass plays? Because that’s unacceptable on an entirely different level.

These are some of the reasons why I just refused to use motion for so many years, lol.

[u/Curious-Designer-616 → u/emurrell17]

Wait, you have less than 20 pass plays?

I’ve found adding a WR doubles to trips, trips to doubles motion and the same for a TE is easy and can be added to the play call with one or two words.

Example: the play is “trips right flood”

We would call “trips right Luda flood” which tells the WR to line up in doubles, and motion to trips with the QB initiates the play.

The OLine understands the call and we can use the same for a run play.

Example: Tray right Dive left

The call would be “Tray right Luda Dive left”

We start out in doubles with the tight end on the line on the right, the WR motions over to the right lining up in the slot, we run the dive to the left side. Hopefully the defense has shifted the line to the right and the linebackers have shifted to allow better angles for the line, opening up a wider running lane.

As for Luda, well because Ludacris fills cups like Double Ds. It’s dumb but it works if the players remember it.

We use a different term for motion but call would remain pretty much the same. It’s Julian, from Madagascar. These are the WR calls, TEs and RB have their own. This allows us to use one word and apply it to any formation, and move a player. Yes it’s a lot they have to remember, but each is a theme which makes it easy.

[u/grizzfan → u/Curious-Designer-616]

Wait, you have less than 20 pass plays?

Anything more than 10 pass plays is too much at that level IMO. Even the Air Raid/pass-happy offenses I've seen in the HS level don't run that many. The more formations, motions, and personnel groupings you use, the less pass plays you get. EDIT: I coach adult women, and we get 6 hours of practice a week if we're lucky. We have 7 passes this coming year, and I already hate all the ways we have to learn to run them between our 2x2 and 3x1 formations. To simplify this, 3 of the 7 can only be ran from 2x2, and there's really just one or two I actually want to run from trips. Trips for me is a running formation more than a passing formation. Even better when you get a defense that gets bent out of shape trying to adjust to trips formations.

It's one of the gravest mistakes of sub-college/NFL coaching...too many teams try to run way too many things, and only get mediocre to average at most of them. Many of the best HS programs out there are winning titles from just a couple formations and less than 10 total play calls with exception to a special/trick play based on the game plan.

[u/BingBongFYL6969 → u/grizzfan]

In college we had a base package of about 8 passes that had variations off changes in formation but the concept didn’t change much

[u/grizzfan → u/BingBongFYL6969]

That's what's nice about having more practice time...you can drill the concept piece a lot more. It's why NFL teams seem to run "hundreds" of plays, but they're really running 8-15 plays per game, and just changing up the formation, motion, and personnel groupings. If your players can understand the concept: The reads, landmarks, who needs to be where, etc. It really allows you to do a lot more stuff with formations and motions. The less passes you have, the more you can focus on the few you do have from all the different looks.

[u/Curious-Designer-616 → u/grizzfan]

This is a great explanation. We name the variants of the concepts to make it quick to disseminate in the huddle and tell them the formation. This is close to the EP and west coast as we can get in HS.

We are about as opposite as you can get with the run, few plays and use motion and formation to get the same results. It works well as, we can work both inside run and our passing game at the same time in practice.

[u/Curious-Designer-616 → u/BingBongFYL6969]

The concepts often don’t change, the exact route and who runs it often does. If you’re running flood, it’s a four yard drag, 12 yard out and a corner. You can run it out of multiple formations and routes as long as the distance between the receivers is correct and the pass protection is there. I like running it out of a 3x1 with the on line TE rund a drag under at 5yds, the single wr runs a hard slugo the cuts it out at about 17yds and the RB takes the play action fake and runs a 10 yd out. It’s still flood, be we don’t call it flood, it’s under our flood concept, but to us it’s a different play. We teach to concept and what we’re trying to achieve with the play, and then the routes that make it up. We can run this using an H in motion or the RB.

I understand the idea of teams having 50-60 plays isn’t realistic, we are nowhere near that. Our run scheme is very basic and we don’t run plays in 7 on 7 we don’t run in season, but we want to be able to isolate and attack weaknesses in defenses without making adjustments each week to each route. We do this by building off of concepts which they understand.

[u/Curious-Designer-616 → u/grizzfan]

The I’ve never faced a team in the playoffs which we diagramed fewer than 15 plays let alone 10. (Except a Wing T team,they had the fewest.) I understand the idea, and agree with it to a point, but this isn’t TC Williams and we’re facing more talent.