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GAME STRATEGY AND PLAY CALLING: THE “HEDGEHOG” PHILOSOPHY

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By Bruce Reynolds
Former Head Coach
William Penn High School, New Castle (DE)

Game day strategy and play calling should not be too elaborate. Go with what got you there. Too many coaches make the mistake of trying to put in too many “new” things for the big game. My father, the Dr. Brooks E. Reynolds, a Methodist minister, was always preaching Steven Covey’s theme: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” You can apply that to any phase of your life. In football it has its own application: concentrate on what you know how to do best. Stay within your system. Stay with your basic philosophy of offense and defense. Go with what you’ve practiced a thousand times. Players can’t have the necessary experience and confidence in wholesale changes before the big game. Stay with the core plays and base defenses that they know. That allows you to “nibble” at the corners with a few well-selected adjustments or “wrinkles.” But always remember, “Keep the main thing the main thing.”

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, calls this the “Hedgehog Concept.” Collins took this idea from Isaiah Berlin’s essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” The story is based on an ancient Greek parable. The fox is a cunning and gifted hunter. It is clever and devises a multitude of ways to attack and eat the hedgehog, but the hedgehog always wins. Collins says, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Every time the hedgehog is attacked, he simply rolls himself into a ball and withstands the attack. He does what he knows how to do best. His defense is simple and direct. He knows how to do this instinctively and without hesitation. Collins says that this is what businesses have to do to become great. They have to keep things simple and do what they do best.

Football is no different. To be successful, you need to do the core things well, and you need to do that which you know how to do best. This is especially true when you are in a tight game and things are not going well. Instead of “grab-bagging” for gimmick plays and wildly calling miracle plays to catch up, just stop, regroup, and go back to basics. Go back to your core offensive and defensive plays. Let your players rebuild their confidence on the plays they know the best.

This also works when you find yourself in mid-season and not playing particularly well. Instead of panicking and changing everything as so many coaches do, do the opposite: start small. Take the six core running plays and the six core passing plays and run only those plays. You need to concentrate on perfecting these and only these plays. Depth, not breadth, is your goal. You want your players to become experts on these base plays. Run your base defense and make the team work out the necessary adjustments rather than changing defenses. You don’t change horses in midstream, yet this is exactly what I have observed so many young coaches do time and time again. Get simple! Go back and emphasize basic skill drills. Go back to your tackling and blocking drills. Re-teach the fundamentals. Then apply them to your base plays. Your team will soon be acting and reacting and not having to think about what to do. Instead, they will be doing it naturally–just like the hedgehog.

The simpler you make your offense, the better the outcome will be for your team. I like to call the basic play structure a “Six Pack.” That makes six basic plays that can be run to both sides, thus doubling the number of plays without doubling the learning. They form the core structure of your attack. I believe the six plays should incorporate a straight-ahead dive up the middle, an off-tackle play, an outside play (a “sweep” for us), an outside end trap play that looks like a sweep, a counter play, and a reverse.

These six basic plays should be paired with an equal number of play action pass plays to complement the run and keep the defense honest. Don’t get me wrong. We did not run only six plays in our games, but the core “six pack” of plays were our “go to” plays. We knew them inside and out, against any defense, stunt, or maneuver. This gave us confidence that no matter what new wrinkles were thrown at us in a key game, we could always run these plays. The deep confidence in these plays also helped to calm the jitters always present in the big game.

In going back to the basics, however, be careful not to oversimplify. I feel that is as wrong as trying to put in too much. Remember, this is an “upset” attempt. Your normal game won’t beat the outstanding opponent. If they were not better than you are, it would not be an upset. When you add some “wrinkles” to your game, you let your team know that this game is special. New things that will help you win are always exciting to staff and players alike; your players will be more charged up for pre-game practice sessions. You also will give your opponents something to worry about and occupy their time during half time.

For an “upset” victory, you need every advantage you can get. Putting in something special for the game can give you the emotional edge, the strategic edge, and the element of surprise. Remember the Trojan War? When all else had failed for the Greeks in their attempt to topple the city of Troy, they pulled out all the stops. They went to the ultimate “trick play”: the Trojan horse. The Greeks “set up” the Trojans. Just as in football, they feigned one way and countered back another. Odysseus was the quarterback of the best trick play in history.

One championship season we put in some new wrinkles that I borrowed from Mouse Davis’ version of the “Run and Shoot” offense. We appropriately called the plays “Special Right” or “Special Left,” “Special Right Pull” or “Special Left Pull,” and “Special Follow.” Our version of the “Special Left Pull” play was even written up in a national publication ( Football’s Best Offensive Playbook, by Dwight “Dee” Hawkes). The naming of these plays was intentional. They were “special” that day. They worked for us, and they worked well.

One coaching note on adding plays to your game: sometimes a good strategy is to use the special formation or trick play immediately before half time, or keep it only for the second half. The rationale is simple. Sometimes I liked to run the play right before half time, hoping that the opposition would spend their half-time preparation making adjustments to this special formation or play. Then I wouldn’t even run it in the second half. The flip side to this is to save the play for the second half. That way your opponents cannot prepare half time adjustments for something they have not seen. You make the call. Both strategies are effective.

To this day I think the fun we had in putting in those simple extra plays helped us to enjoy our preparation for the big games. It also gave us confidence, which was exactly what we needed. Don’t overlook these points.

Critical well-planned changes to your special teams can also provide an advantage. Never make wholesale changes, but a special maneuver to rush a punt or to block a field goal or extra point can produce great results. I can’t recall the last time we went into a big game without some type of “trick” or “special” play. Do you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor? Do it the old fashioned way, but always have something special tucked away and ready to go. You just never know when you’ll need it.

To prove my point, I could tell you about the game between the Division III Trinity Tigers and the Milsaps Majors, played on October 27, 2007 at Harper Davis Field in Jackson, Mississippi. The Tigers used fifteen laterals (that’s right, 15) on the last play of the game to win, 28-24. The play, dubbed by media as the “Mississippi Miracle,” took over a minute to complete and secured the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference championship for the Trinity Tigers. What a play.


For more information about Coach Reynolds and his book, Art Of The Upset, please visit his website: www.coachbrucereynolds.com. This article is published with the permission of the author.






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