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Challenge Your Rhythm & Your Roles
by Lou Burruss
Three thoughts.
First, this is just the way high pressure games are. As the stakes increase, the defense ratchets up and the offense needs to ratchet up accordingly. How do you do this? Be mentally strong. The best path to this kind of mental fortitude is playing in and winning these games. The second best path (and the one reserved for those not on championship teams) is practicing all out. You play how you practice, so if you challenge yourself and your teammates every practice, you gameday performance will be correspondingly superior.
The first technical adjustment is to change rhythm. Are you a dump-on-6 team? Start throwing some of your resets on 1, 2, 3 in the stall count. Good defensive teams and players run a clock in their heads. If your team is predictable about when it throws its resets, you are effectively telling the defenders when you are gong to cut. You don't have to throw but a few off-rhythm passes to get an edge on the defense. Throw a couple swings on stalling 2 and then your fake on stalling 2 gets the defender biting and guessing.
The second adjustment is to bring your bigs into the handler set on stalling 7 or 8 for an emergency reset. Instead of throwing to a dancing and scrambling handler, have your bigs continue their cuts down into the hole for a two or three yard flip to reset the stall count. Then the big hits the handler with the swing on stalling 1 or 2 (see above). Both Sockeye (CK and MC) and Furious (Lugs and MG) use this technique consistently and effectively.
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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 |
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