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The Fly Guy

Willamette’s Mark Speckman mixes simplicity with complexity to produce big results
by: Mike Kuchar
Senior Writer, American Football Monthly
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Take one of your quicker athletes, start him in full motion before the snap, get him the ball as he hits top speed and let him run. Sounds simple? Hardly. Sure, on paper, the concept of the fly or jet sweep is elementary, but to run it effectively – that takes some precision. It’s a precision that has made Mark Speckman at Willamette College in Salem, Oregon his living as a head coach. He’s known around the country as “The Fly Guy” patterning his offense around the fly sweep – a scheme he’s been running for 29 years. Just this season, the Bearcats averaged 41.5 points per game en route to an 11-1 season and their first Division III playoff birth since 2004. It’s produced over 250 yards per game on the ground and 415 yards of total offense.

Just for the formality of it, the “fly” is commonly known among other regions as the jet or speed sweep. The play is designed, albeit in many different ways, to get to the outside or perimeter of a defense very quickly. It thrives on the full speed motion of a slot back with a deceptive 180-degree handoff by the QB and you’re off to the races. What originated in 1950 by a legendary high school coach in DeLano, California has now developed into its own entity with various other complementary plays built off of it. According to Speckman more than 50 teams at the high school level alone run the scheme solely with countless others either running the sweep as a change up or to provide some misdirection to the defense. With the success he’s had we’re sure that number will be growing. “It’s not a precision offense,” says Speckman. “It’s very forgiving. We believe in simplicity within complexity. The fly takes us 15 minutes to learn while it takes our opponent more than a week to prepare for.”

Why The Fly?
Like any other productive scheme, be it the zone read, west coast or pro I, in order to be successful you’ll need to commit to it. Sure, there are plenty of teams that feature some element of the fly in their game plan, but Speckman has broken it down into a science. “I think you have to create an image for your program, and the image comes with confidence in your system,” says Speckman. “Our image is the fly sweep. It’s our bread and butter play and to beat us you need to stop it. To us, offensive balance means 33 percent sweep, 33 percent other runs and 33 percent pass. It has taken on a life of its own. At our home games we have close to 3,000 fans in the stands carrying fly swatters. It’s a good confidence booster for our kids and with confidence comes success.”

Aside from the psychological reasoning, Speckman believes in the fly because it attacks the largest gap in the defense – the D gap. “That gap is 5 to 30 yards long depending on where you are on the field. If you can get someone out there in space, there’s going to be trouble.” According to Speckman, who that someone is really doesn’t even matter because of the nature of the play. “So many guys that run it telegraph it by running to the wide side of the field or to their best athlete. It doesn’t matter to me. I always tell people that no matter whom I have running the play my guy is much faster in motion than your players standing still. Now having said that, there is still a specific technique to running the play. So you got to have a lot of guys run the sweep in practice and get a feel for the play itself.”

According to Speckman, in order to run the fly with a great deal of precision there are three components that you have to master:
1. The rules of the line
2. The mesh of the QB
3. The technique of the ball carrier

Line Rules
Perhaps the rules for the offensive line are the simplest. Speckman numbers the perimeter defensive players from outside to inside so blockers know whom to account for. The cornerback to the play-side is always the number one player because he is the furthest outside defender. The number two defender is the OLB or safety, which is usually the force player while the number three defender is the play-side inside LB. The number four defender is always the level-three safety. According to Speckman, those are the most important defenders that need to be blocked. The offensive line releases on a track – meaning to the play-side gap. Speckman isn’t concerned about splitting hairs over precise footwork; their main objective is to get to LB depth. “I’m not real big on blocking everyone because you really never get to them. I guess it’s just my background as an old veer coach. We try to get to the LB’s. That is our track. If an interior defensive lineman gets on our track then we block him. A track to us is the best way to get to the closest LB that we have outside leverage on. If he is gone, we don’t chase, we just look back away from the ball. We tell our lineman to get their butts to the ball and take a Polaroid of the play. We want to wall off any back side pursuit.”

QB Mesh
For the signal caller, Speckman goes with a 180-degree turn once he receives the ball from the center. “We talk about our QB’s having a rubber band connected from your belly button to the ball. He needs to turn with the ball. He can’t show the ball to the defense, it will give away the deception.” Similar to the spin series, the QB will pivot off his play-side foot and rotate his torso. “We want the snap to come by the time the slot is behind the back-side offensive tackle. When the QB is behind the center, it is his responsibility to provide the timing. In a gun formation, the responsibility is on the ball carrier because the QB has to be more concerned with getting the snap and extending the fake.”

Rounding the Bases
Continuing on the theme of simplicity, Speckman doesn’t teach the backs specific holes on designated plays. He believes in what he calls a path system that each running back is responsible for learning. These paths are applicable to any play in the Willamette scheme. They serve as benchmarks for players when first learning the structure of the “fly” offense. “Once the kid knows the path of where he needs to be there is no need to explain anything else,” says Speckman. “Once he’s able to correlate which play dictates which path - then we go from there. As far as the fly play goes, it’s an option path. It doesn’t matter who is running the sweep. We just tell them it’s an option path.” The verbiage may be simple, but the technique is broken down into a couple fundamentals – the approach, the slide step and setting up the block.

“We talk about the approach, which is how the ball carrier will receive the ball from the QB. The ball carrier’s aiming point is one yard behind the QB as he starts to build speed. We teach the gradual buildup of speed, acceleration to and through the QB. A lot of programs teach to go full speed right away, but I don’t think you are able to hit top speed that way. Once he receives the ball from the QB, he executes what we call a slide back which is basically to move one body width away from the line of scrimmage and what we call bow out. We talk about “running the bases” like you would in baseball. You don’t just run straight and make a 90 degree turn up-field.”

“Once the ball carrier gets the ball he must ‘slide-and-hide-it’ on his hip so the defense cannot determine whether he has it or not. Because of our other complimentary plays off the fly sweep action, it all needs to look the same. Once he does receive the ball, now he needs to set up the block by either faking inside and going outside or faking outside and going inside. For the most part, the cornerback will always have outside leverage on the perimeter, so we tell our guys not to make a cut until you hear pads collide meaning when the blocking back makes contact with the defender.”

Red Light, Green Light 1, 2, 3
Once the fundamentals are mastered, the challenge is figuring out where to run the fly sweep. Speckman breaks his fly into three different types – the red light, green light and the yellow light. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t get too complicated – any sixteen year-old taking driver’s education can figure out the meaning of each. All joking aside, it’s this type of ingenuity that makes the play successful. Where most coaches would call the play one particular way, Speckman is able to run the same play giving three different looks to the defense. And isn’t that what all offensive coordinators strive to do?

For starters, the green light sweep is a “get outside at all costs” play. It relies on an aggressive crack block by the corner on number two and a load or cross block by the blocking back. It can be run out of different formations that create different edges such as a pro slot (See Diagram 1). “Depending on how good that corner is, we may not even need to crack him,” says Speckman. “We just want to get to the perimeter by whatever means possible. The most important player you have to account for is that force player because he may be the toughest defensive player. It’s not always good to block one of their most physical players with your speed player. If that’s the case we’ll even come out in a double-wide set and double him (See Diagram 2) just as long as we get to the edge.”

Diagram 1

Diagram 2

The red light sweep (See Diagram 3) is an automatic cut up the field scheme. Speckman mainly uses it when teams have tried their best to outflank him on the perimeter by producing wide defenders. Instead of being hell-bent on running his play where he wants it, like any cerebral coach worth his salt, he’ll take what the defense gives him. “The tight end will block down on the defensive tackle and we’ll pull our guard to kick out the defensive end. We’ll take the ball right up through that gap. The key is if they have a good three technique we must stop his feet right away and not let him get to the ball carrier.”

Diagram 3

Mixing the green and red concept produces the yellow light sweep (See Diagram 4) another variant of the fly scheme. Yellow simply means read – it can be run either outside (green) or inside (red). Speckman likes to run the yellow light sweep to the closed, or tight end side, which is an edge that most fly sweep disciples don’t dare to venture to. “We’ll just have the fullback read the tight ends block on the defensive end. If the end fights hard outside, we’ll just cut up underneath it and it becomes a red light sweep. If the end fights hard inside we’ll take it to the perimeter. Whatever he does, he will be wrong. We’re not going to let the defense dictate to us what we want to run.”

Diagram 4


WHAT IF?

Q1. What if teams start to play you with a wide five technique defensive end making it virtually impossible for you to run your play to the open side?

At our level, those rush ends are pretty good athletes. We’ll do whatever we can to get that five technique out of the way. We can reach him, pass block him, cut him, give him a down block key, whatever. Just don’t let him turn and run to the sweep. If that’s the case, we’ll call red light and cut it up inside him.

Q2. What if you get that strong safety coming up hard on the force and you can’t crack him with your wide receiver?

We tell our wide receiver to step to crack him for two steps. If the strong safety is across the line of scrimmage by then, we will switch assignments with the blocking back the next time we run it. The blocking back will pick him up and the receiver will take number one (the corner).

Q3. What if teams are overloading your tight end side with a 7 and 9 technique and you are still trying to run the tight side?

We’ll just run red light with the tight end blocking down on the 7 technique and the tackle now kicking out on the 9 technique. We’ll have to cut the play up inside because it’s virtually impossible to get outside of that.






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