Learn How to Improve Your Offense with USC’s “Harrell Effect”

• By Coach Grabowski

Graham Harrell, offensive coordinator has quickly made a positive impact on the offensive production of the USC Trojans.  It’s been referred to as “The Harrell Effect.” He’s orchestrated a quick turn around for the Trojan offense as shown below:

The Harrell Effect by Texas High School Coaches Association (THSCA)...

In this course, Coach Graham Harrell takes you through the foundational philosophy he teaches his players. He covers things like core values, philosophies...

He doesn’t do it with an elaborate playbook.  Like many Air Raid based teams, it’s a simple attack with enough answers that are perfected in practice by doing them again and again and again.

It starts with Harrell’s offensive philosophy:

- Commit to what you do

- Keep it simple

- Put your players in a position to be successful

- Score

While he does not identify as a pure air raid coach..he does believe in the philosophy of committing to what he is doing.  With 20-25 plays, he knows they can get good at them.  

He points out that most coordinators get themselves into trouble because they want to have the capability to run any pay in football. There’s a lot of good plays, but you can't get your players good at 200 plays.

You need to say “this is who we are and commit to it.”  Keeping it simple allows your players to play fast.  A quick rule of thumb he uses is if it requires more than 4 signals for a play to get in, it’s too complicated.

From a practical perspective, this means installing everything in three days.  This is how it breaks down:

3 day install

- 1 quick game

- 3 dropbacks

- 2 runs

- 1 Movement pass

That format is repeated over three days to install their entire offense, then they repeat that throughout camp working on getting better at it each time.

Harrell explains his philosophy on video:

Harrell’s clinic, “The Harrell Effect” covers his player development philosophy then demonstrates how the get their players better in practice as well as showing how they use concepts in different presentations.  As a bonus, Coach Helton gives a clinic on the USC culture and how they coach their student athletes to be successful on and off the field.

Learning from Helton about keeping it simple could be just what you need to propel your offense to the top in 2021.