The Role of the Screen Game in Explosive Offense

• By Keith Grabowski

In today's fast-paced and competitive world of football, having a difficult to defend offensive strategy is crucial for success. At the 3rd Annual Lauren’s First & Goal Clinicm/users/johnloose"> Lauren’s First & Goal Clinic, Tiffin University Head Coach Cris Reisert shared insight on building a powerful offensive strategy tailored to your team's unique strengths and goals. 

The Foundation of a Winning Offensive Strategy

Before diving into the details of a successful offensive strategy, it's important to establish the foundation of your team's offense. Coach Reisert builds this foundation on four main principles:

1. Simplicity: Your offensive strategy should be simple and easy for your players to understand. This allows them to focus on executing plays without overthinking or getting confused.

2. Speed: Playing with speed gives your team an edge and puts added pressure on the defense. It's important to communicate and execute plays quickly to wear down your opponents.

3. Physicality: Encourage your players to be aggressive and make mistakes without fear of failure. This mentality allows them to play without inhibition and attack with more intensity.

4. Explosiveness: Remember that it's the players who make the plays, not the plays themselves. Focus on putting your best players in positions where they can make explosive plays and create opportunities for success.

The Importance of a Layered Approach

A layered approach to offense means seamlessly integrating runs, RPOs (run-pass options), screens, and passes into your offensive schemes. This approach creates more opportunities for success on the field by forcing the defense to defend multiple aspects of your offense at once. The best offenses often look like they're running the same play repeatedly until they catch the defense off guard with a different play.

Incorporating Up-Tempo, Space-Driven, and Multiple Offensive Schemes

When building your offensive strategy, it's important to be up-tempo, space-driven, and multiple in your offensive schemes. This means playing with speed, forcing the defense to defend the entire field, and being versatile in your play-calling. By doing this, you can create more opportunities for big plays and maintain control of the game. For the Dragons, the screen game fills a major roll in accomplishing this.

The Crucial Role of the Screen Game

The screen game is an essential part of a winning offensive strategy. By incorporating screens into your offensive schemes, you can create high-percentage situations where your best players can make plays in space. Additionally, a strong screen game can help increase your team's passing completion percentage, which is vital for offensive success.

Let’s take a look at two of the screens which Coach Reisert shared in his clinic.

The 2-Count Screen

There is a lot of grayness in screens which makes it challenging to coach.  Coach Reisert believes in allowing players to get to a spot and catch the ball and go and create.  They drill these often to help players understand assignment but every player has to get that feel of doing their job in space including the offensive line.  Here is an example of their 2-Count Screen. (The video is in the link below.)

The 1-Count Screen

The one count screen is more for the tunnel screen off of the run game.  He shows how they use the GT counter to draw defenders away from the screen and run the tunnel into space that is created.

Allowing Your Team's Identity to Grow Organically

Lastly, it's essential to allow your team's identity to grow organically. This means not forcing an offensive identity on your team, but rather letting it develop based on your players' strengths and the specific plays that work best for them. By allowing your team's identity to grow organically, you can create a more effective and cohesive offensive strategy.