AFM RSS Feed Follow Us on Twitter       
AMERICAN FOOTBALL MONTHLY THE #1 RESOURCE FOR FOOTBALL COACHES
ABOUT |  CONTACT |  ADVERTISE |  HELP  



   User Name    Password 
      Password Help





Article Categories


AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Comebacks

Halftime Adjustments That Made the Difference
by: David Purdum
© More from this issue

Click for Printer Friendly Version          

Games can be-and often are-won at halftime. Last year in Division I-A, there were 129 comeback victories by teams that trailed at halftime.

Houston’s Art Briles authored five second-half comeback victories in 2006, most in Division I-A. Having a high-powered, quick-strike offense helps, says Briles, but making sure the team believes it can get back into the game is equally as important.

San Jose State’s Dick Tomey led the Spartans to four second-half comebacks en route to taking the program to its first bowl game since 1990. “There are three types of halftime adjustments you can make,” Tomey explained, “the technical adjustment, the emotional adjustment or the heart transplant. And if you have to make that one, it’s usually too late.”

A well-respected motivator, Tomey spends the first minute and a half of the intermission addressing his team, searching for what kind of attitude adjustment is in order. Meanwhile, the coaching staff piles into an office and begins scouring over play charts.

The same scenario is happening at Houston. It’s inside these war rooms that comebacks are born.

With no more than 20 minutes available to coaches at halftime, efficiency is critical when determining what adjustments need to be made and what adjustments the opponent will make.

“Most of the time, if you’re behind at half, the team that’s ahead is not going to change,” Briles pointed out. “What you see in the first half is probably a good indication of what you’re going to see in the second half.” Houston defensive coordinator Alan Weddell says his staff spends no more than seven minutes scouring play charts, looking for possible adjustments. That leaves a few minutes for the staff to instruct the players on what adjustments are to be made.

“We look at what’s happened, why it’s happened and what we need to do,” explained Weddell. “Sometimes, they just catch you with a good play. So you look on why that play is hurting you. Is it because of an alignment problem? Is it a personnel match up? Did we blow an assignment?

“Sometimes they just have a very successful play. They find something and really hurt us with it. So then we’re looking for what calls do we have to stop this play, and when they’re running the play, so we know when to use them.”

The first thing San Jose State OC Steve Morton looks at is if his pre-game intelligence was correct. “Are they the same team that we saw in film in previous weeks,” he asks his staff. “Then, I ask if we’re the same team that we’ve been. How are injuries affecting us?” Unlike Houston, San Jose State scripts a number of plays to begin the second half. They look at the plays that were successful and make sure they run them again early. This allows Morton and his staff to recognize what adjustments the defense has made.

“We want to see exactly how teams are going to react to us,” said Morton. “They may give us something that we don’t want to see, so we’ll stay out of that.”

Briles doesn’t script plays, but he does confer with his play list. “We make sure that we’ve run the plays that we feel we have a big chance to be successful,” Briles said. “If we haven’t run them, we’ll try to come back to those plays, hit them early in the second half to get us an opportunity.”

How San Jose State Came Back From a 13-point Deficit To Beat Stanford

Trailing 34-21 at halftime, San Jose State made two critical adjustments, one on each side of the ball, in its come-from-behind win over Stanford.

Offensively, coordinator Steve Morton and his staff were convinced they could move the ball on the ground against the Stanford defense. They had experienced success specifically running the ball to the strong side. Morton knew the Cardinal would have to adjust and prepared a counter attack to what he expected to be the defense’s adjustment.

“We had one formation that had presented them problems in the first half,” Morton said. “We kept in that formation and gave them what they wanted to see early in the third quarter in the first series to see what their adjustments were going to be because they had to stop that. Their adjustment was as we anticipated,” he continued, “and we could run another play opposite the side we had been running to. That broke some things open.You know where you’ve been hitting them. They’re going to strengthen and counter and reinforce that area. First, you have to see how they do it. Then, the question is, if they do this, do we have a play to the weak side?”

The Spartans staff was confident in their adjustments and counters but facing a two-touchdown deficit, was there enough time to get back into the game by running the football? “We had to use the clock efficiently,” Morton said. “We couldn’t lolly-gag coming in and out of the huddle. We had to get up, get down and get going. If you’re going to run the football to get back into the game in the second half, the tempo has to be increased,” he continued. “Every precious second was vital for us to get back in that game. If we’re not getting out of the huddle, getting up the line of scrimmage and getting the ball snapped with 15 seconds left on the clock, instead of five, we’ve got no chance.” The Spartans averaged seven yards per carry and finished with 342 yards rushing.

Defensively, San Jose State had surrendered four Trent Edwards’ touchdown passes in the first half against Stanford. Defensive coordinator Dave Fipp had been aggressive with pressure and played more man coverage than usual. His secondary suffered some uncharacteristic breakdowns. “The biggest thing in the Stanford game was that we had some breakdowns in coverage where we tried to blitz a little bit when maybe we shouldn’t have,” recalled Fipp. “We were in some man coverage stuff that we might not have wanted to be in. We just went back to our base (4-3, with quarters coverage).”

At halftime, Fipp and the staff knew that they could match up with Stanford’s receivers, who were banged-up at the time.

“We just said, ‘let’s take a step back,’” said Fipp. “We match up well with these guys. We don’t need to over do anything. We just need to force them to drive the ball down the field.” Fipp scaled back his pressures and played more of the Spartans’ base 4-3, quarters coverage defense. “We also pressed them a lot on the perimeter,” Fipp added. “We didn’t feel like they were great getting off the line. Their receivers were beat up at the time. We challenged them in many ways.”

San Jose State limited Edwards to less than 70 yards passing and kept Stanford from scoring in the second half. On the season, the Spartans shutout five teams in the second half.

3 Adjustments That Worked

1. San Jose State offensive coordinator Steve Morton has made tons of halftime adjustments during his 32-year coaching career. Some have been more complex than others.

“Years ago, we were facing a defense that really crowded the box,” he recalled. “The team we were playing ran the wishbone offense, so you knew that you weren’t going to see the ball very much. They were just going to consume the time. They also played a very unique defense. They were playing a chaotic front and linebacker deployment. It was a stunting defense similar to the one the old Chicago Bears used to use.

“It was a hornet’s nest. We were struggling and were down 10-7 [at half],” Morton continued. “All the papers and all the alumni thought we should run them out of the ballpark.” Morton thought back to something former Kentucky and UCLA offensive line coach Don Riley once told him.

“Always remember that the gaps that are the most undefended are the A gaps,” Morton explained. “Sometimes it’s as simple as taking the ball and handing it to the fullback. I went to our coach at the time and told him that they’re running into us. We’ll put a hat on a hat. Just get the ball to the fullback and it’s on top of them. If we crack one, it’s going to the safeties. Our fullback ended up rushing for 80 yards in the second half. We pulled ahead and stayed ahead.

“Sometimes the answer to what seems to be a complex problem is a very simple one.”

2. San Jose State defensive coordinator Dave Fipp could see that his defense was outnumbered to the short side of the field. But, with time running down in the first half and Nevada moving the football, he was hesitant to burn a timeout. “They were moving the ball at about eight yards a pop,” recalled Fipp. Fortunately for the Spartans, they created a turnover and were able to get to halftime unscathed.

“We weren’t covering down on a couple of formations correctly,” explained Fipp. “It was just a matter of getting our guys lined up right. It was a real simple deal, but it was obvious we hadn’t done a real good job teaching our players. It was something they saw on film and they attacked us with it. They were getting an extra body into the short side of the field. So they had an extra guy to block over there and they were running the ball at us. We had to either bump our linebackers over or drop a safety that way. We had to get another guy over there.”

3. Sometimes the best adjustment is not to adjust at all. In the season-opener against cross-town rival Rice, Houston fell behind 27-14 in the first half.

Cougar defensive coordinator Alan Weddell didn’t panic and explained to his players what had happened on each of Rice’s scores. “We just looked at why they scored,” said Weddell. “They scored the first touchdown on a good call. We had a max blitz on. They broke the line of scrimmage, and the kid outran us. The second one, they ran a screen pass that went right behind our secondary. Our safety thought we were in one defense and we were in another defense. It just happened that they called a screen to his man. We were in man on that guy. The safety was in zone and boom, they scored.”

Weddell said his best adjustment was no adjustment at all. “We didn’t run that blitz again, we made sure our communication was good and we came back and won the game,” he said.






NEW BOOK!

AFM Videos Streaming Memberships Now Available Digital Download - 304 Pages of Football Forms for the Winning Coach



















HOME
MAGAZINE
SUBSCRIBE ONLINE COLUMNISTS COACHING VIDEOS


Copyright 2024, AmericanFootballMonthly.com
All Rights Reserved