Question from Rutgers OC - What does your offense say about your coaching?

• By Keith Grabowski

Rutgers Offensive Coordinator posed an interesting question at the beginning of his presentation at Lauren’s First and Goal.

“One of the things that I thought about as I was building my philosophy was what would I want an educated person, someone who's educated about football, if they watched our offense play, what would I want them to say about us?”

For Coach Ciarrocca, he wants that answer to be three thingsL

They value the ball

Their execution is fantastic

They’re violent

He explains how he views his philosophy in this video:

With those three things in mind, Coach Ciarroca built their offense starting with the run game. He loves winning the turnover battle and explosive plays.  Getting the ball to your best player is one way.  Another which he really believes in is the run action pass.

Coach pointed out that there is no one run scheme that is better than another.  It’s about what you are best at coaching.  The detailed coaching of the scheme is most important, so pick what you know and what you can solve the problems for.

Rutgers majors in three schemes: tight zone, outside zone, and gap scheme.  They put them together in a way that is complementary and which allows them to get correct repetitions to build habits and instincts.

Create Explosives with Run Action Pass

They tie their run action passes to tight zone and outside zone in order to slow down safeties in their run fits. It starts with studying how a defense will fit a run and then attacking the void that those dual responsibility players leave when they fit the run.

As an example, here is an outside zone action  with the line blocking like it’s outside zone for two steps.  The push crack of the receiver looks exactly like run to the safety, and they are able to throw it over the top for a touchdown.

The RPO to Create Explosives

The RPO is a great complement to the run game.  It protects the run and allows the opportunity to take a chunk out of the defense if the read player fits hard.  It puts the offense in a positive situation. In this example, there 5 blockers for 6 in the box, so the RPO protects the run allowing the QB to throw the Glance into the void.

Action off of the RPO

Like the RPO is used to protect the run, there must be things to protect the Glance on the RPO, otherwise the corner can sit inside and play the Glance.  Coach Ciarrocca shows how they hurt that over play with a concept they call “Casino.”

Elements of an Offense Must Be Complementary

There are a ton of great plays out there.  It’s easy to fall in love with plays that look great on film, but remember, no play works in isolation. it may have a play that set it up.  It has compliments. All of those things work together to solve problems.

Like coach pointed out, what do you want football educated people to say when they see with your offense?

When all of those things work well together, you and your team will be happy about how those results look on game day.