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We run gap scheme the majority of the time at Broken Arrow High School. The 2 plays that average us the most amount of yards per carry have been Strong Power (9 YPC) and Weak Power (7.2 YPC). Weak Power is when we run power to the 3 man surface instead of a 4 man surface, or as we tell our offensive line, weak power you have 1 helper. On weak power the Tight end OR Fullback kicks out the end man on the line of scrimmage, we get a double team to the backside linebacker, and our backside guard pulls for the playside linebacker. We like weak power for 2 reasons. The First Reason. It gives us a great play to run weak when teams overcommit to the Tight End’s side of the ball in our I Formation to stop Strong Power. The Second Reason. Weak Power is a way for us to have a very physical run out of multiple personnels and formations. The key to running weak power successfully is getting vertical movement on the double team, and having a running back that is patient and will hit the run in the frontside or backside A gap.

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When we call weak power, we have multiple variations that we can tag at the end of the play call. By making the variations a tag at the end of the play, it allows us to keep all of the blocking rules the same for the 5 offensive lineman. The tag only pertains to 1 or possibly 2 players. In doing this, we can make weak power look like multiple different plays to a defense but keep it simple and concise to our offensive players, allowing them to effective block a lot of different variations to multiple fronts and blitz’s.

Installing Weak Power

With a set of simple and concise rules to our weak power play, we have developed a way to install more than 6 variations of a play against the 3 predominant fronts we say all in to a single day of installation. We can run weak power to a Tight end or to a Fullback, we can run it out of 11, 12, 20, 21, 22, and 31 personnel, and we can get all of this blocked to 3 different defensive fronts consistently throughout the year. This is our most dynamic play!

Weak Power Course

Would you like to learn how to install and implement Weak Power into your offense effectively? Check out my Weak Power Course. The course includes a series of 7 Videos totaling just over 1 Hour and 20 Minutes of film break down, blocking rules, philosophies, execution, and installation of Weak Power out of multiple offensive personnels and sets. As well as 7 Downloadable & Fully Customizable Documents used to enhance offensive line play and install Weak Power. This course puts an emphasis on Offensive Line play to enhance your team’s ability to Run & Install Weak Power out of 1 and 2 back sets.
click here For 10% Off my Weak Power Course today!

Every offseason I look forward to the opportunity to travel to different places to learn from some of the best football programs in the country. I have been to Nebraska many times, having went to school there from 1997-2001. But this trip was special. This was an opportunity that not many coaches will have: to sit on the ground level of a rebuild in all aspects. Strength and Conditioning. Offense. Defense. Special Teams. To sit and learn the #1 offense in the country at UCF…to learn their install…to learn play calling and tempo…to learn the techniques and intricacies. To learn how they train and condition to get ready to play at that speed and pace.

Lucky for me, our head coach Rick Nelson here at Ankeny HS coached with Scott Frost, Mario Verduzco, Erik Chinander, and Jovan Dewitt while he was at Northern Iowa for many years. These guys are some of his best friends, and for good reason: WHAT A GREAT GROUP OF COACHES. Humble. Honest. Smart. Relationship Builders. Teachers. Organized Planners. You can see how they helped orchestrate the turnaround at UCF. They take minimal credit, and they give it all to the players who did the work and bought in. What an amazing opportunity to learn from some of the best, and what an amazing opportunity to be able to share some of that experience in our first video podcast.

We will be releasing more of the information we learned in later posts and podcasts. Make sure you are following us on Twitter @RunThePower and listening to our podcasts on iTunes or SoundCloud.

At RTP, we firmly believe in giving the players and coaches we coach and instruct a very clear message…the motive…the “WHY?” of what we are trying to accomplish every day, every week, every month, every season. This is one of the principles we have learned from Jocko Willink in his book Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win. We have read this book several times, and it is always in our audiobook rotation on Audible using RTP Books.

This video using audio from Jocko sums up The Why for RTP: we strive for DAILY improvement in our own coaching lives, other coaching lives, and all football players’ lives. There is no quick fix or shortcut; it is a long, extended CAMPAIGN of DISCIPLINE & IMPROVEMENT. RTP is committed to providing you all with tools and platforms that assist you with this CAMPAIGN.

I don’t really like those words self-help, self-management, or self-improvement. I don’t really like what those words have come to mean these days…cuz there’s a lot of people out there trying to improve themselves by looking for that one change…the one change that is going to make their dreams come true.

I’m no GURU, and I definitely don’t claim to be. I’m just a MAN. But I will tell you this: IT ISN’T ONE THING. IT ISN’T TEN THINGS. AND IT ISN’T 100 THINGS. IT ISN’T A QUICK PATH, AND THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS. MEDITATION WON’T GET YOU THERE, AND NEITHER WILL A MIRACLE DRUG OR AN ORGANIC SUPPLEMENT OR SOME SUPERFOOD. Getting better isn’t a hack or a trick or one change that you need to make. GETTING BETTER IS A CAMPAIGN…A DAILY, A WEEKLY, AN HOURLY FIGHT…THAT DOESN’T STOP AGAINST WEAKNESS, TEMPTATION, LAZINESS…IT IS A CAMPAIGN OF DISCIPLINE. CAMPAIGN OF HARD WORK AND DEDICATION…IT’S WAKING UP EARLY AND STAYING UP LATE AND GRINDING OUT EVERY SECOND IN BETWEEN. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

So you want to get better? You wanna self-improve? STOP LOOKING FOR A SHORTCUT AND GO FIND YOUR ALARM CLOCK. FIND YOUR DISCIPLINE. AND FIND YOUR GUTS, AND YOUR PASSION, AND YOUR DRIVE, AND FIND YOUR WILL.

AND THEN…AND THEN…YOU WILL FIND YOUR FREEDOM.

Those days when I’m tired, or worn out, or just basically sick of the Grind. What do I do on those days? I GO ANYWAYS. I GET IT DONE. Even if I’m just going through the motions…I GO THRU THE MOTIONS. I don’t really wanna workout…I WORK OUT. I don’t really wanna hammer on the project…I HAMMER ON THE PROJECT. I don’t really wanna get up and get out of bed…YEAH, I GET UP AND GET OUT OF BED.

Now these could be signals that you need some time off, and those signals might be right. BUT DON’T TAKE TODAY OFF, NOT TODAY. WAIT UNTIL TOMORROW. DON’T GIVE IN TO THE IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION THAT IS WHISPERING IN YOUR EAR. SHUT THAT DOWN. DO NOT LISTEN.

INSTEAD, GO THRU THE MOTIONS. LIFT THE WEIGHTS. SPRINT THE HILL. WORK ON THE PROJECT. GET OUT OF BED.

As an overall rule, I do not like procrastination. You need to get things done. But if you are going to rest, that is one thing you should procrastinate on. That is the one thing I want you to put off until tomorrow. And when tomorrow comes, you still feel like you need to rest or take a break? Ok…take it. But the chances are: YOU WON’T. YOU WON’T NEED THAT REST. THE DESIRE TO REST WAS JUST WEAKNESS. IT WAS JUST THE DESIRE TO TAKE THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE. THE DOWNHILL PATH, THE EASY PATH. AND BY SIMPLY GOING THRU THE MOTIONS, YOU OVERCAME THAT PATH, AND YOU STAYED ON THE RIGHTEOUS PATH, THE DISCIPLINED PATH.

THE WAR PATH. Which is right where you KNOW THAT YOU BELONG.

The RTP Commitment

RTP is committed to fighting this campaign with you. We are fighting this campaign ourselves: WE WANT FOOTBALL TO GET BETTER. We want our players to get better. We want our coaches to get better. We want parents and administrators to get better.

Why? We believe it will make the future of our game and country brighter.

How? Blog articles and interviews about topics important to you and your players. Podcasts with great coaches and players providing inspiring and productive insight. Video clinics that do not just show you some trick/hack, but give an in-depth installation of that play/front/coverage so you can teach it thoroughly to your team. Team Attack Academy so you can design a school, courses, groups, and assessments OUTSIDE of your educational realms and constraints to educate, enhance, and assess the foundational, fundamental, and schematic football knowledge of your players on a DAILY BASIS. A CAMPAIGN of education for your coaches and players.

We have more planned to serve the needs of coaches and players. We appreciate your support, and we look forward to fighting this campaign alongside you all.

RUN THE POWER IS NOT JUST A PLAY. IT IS A LIFESTYLE COMMITTED TO EXCELLENCE IN THE GAME OF FOOTBALL.

Coaches we’ve been saying that the game is under attack for years, and it’s never been so evident than it is now with the laws certain states like California, Maryland, Illinois, and New York are attempting to put in place. As coaches, we’ve seen what football can do for a young man, and it is our duty to protect that for generations to come! Think we are blowing this out of proportion? Look at the tweets of California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez and Assembly Member Kevin McCarty who want to pass legislation to make it illegal to play tackle football until a certain age.

It is times like these, more than ever, that we must come together as a football coaching community, and stand up for the game that has made us into the men we are today. We are trying to do our part at RTP to build a community of Football Coaches that love the game, the players, and the lessons football has taught and is continuing to teach us in life.

If you’ve created clinic film that would benefit football coaches around the country, don’t just sit on it, join and contribute like so many other coaches have to the RTP community by contacting us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, or by emailing us at coach@runthepower.com . Go check out our Free Clinics on YouTube, our Podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Stitcher, and our Articles on RunThePower.com to be a part of the RTP coaching community. We are humbled to be part of such a giving and caring community of Men, and we look forward to serving you and football for years to come!

GUARD – We make our zone double team calls based on covered/uncovered players on the offensive line. For the remainder of this post, we are going to assume a Right Guard and Right Tackle have made a backside zone double call from a 3 technique to a backside linebacker stacked over them. The goal of the guard is to try and turn the shoulder of the defensive lineman, and work to his landmark on the linebacker, all while staying square throughout the play. In order to do this, the guard must have a great Position and Power step. The key part of any block regardless of scheme is our first two steps which we call our Position and Power step. The guards position step should be at a 45 degree angle gaining ground. This step needs to be quick and should put the guard in an ideal Position to execute his power step and make contact. The guards Power step is the most important and difficult step on a backside zone double. In order to not get pressed into his inside gap, and instead help his tackle on the double team. The guard’s Power step must gain ground, get vertical, and get into the ground before making contact with the defensive lineman. The alignment of the linebacker dictates what body part the guard contacts the defensive lineman with, and how long he is able to stay on the double team. If the linebacker is stacked over the 3 tech or further backside (an alignment we refer to as THICK) the guard knows he has more time to get to the landmark on his linebacker. He can use his shoulder against the defensive lineman, and stay on the double team longer before he presses off square on his angle to the linebacker. This allows him to have a better chance to get movement and get the defenders shoulder turned on the double team. If the Linebacker is inside of the 3 tech or further frontside (an alignment we refer to as THIN) the guard knows he doesn’t have as much time to get to the landmark on his linebacker. He can only use his hand against the defensive lineman’s shoulder. He must use the punch and his power step to propel him square on his angle to the landmark on his linebacker. This doesn’t allow him to get as much movement or shoulder turn against the defensive lineman, but allows him to get to his linebacker square. Allowing the runnin back to make the proper cut.

TACKLE – The goal for the tackle on a backside zone double is to get to his landmark on the defensive lineman, working the guard off to the linebacker all while working his hips square. In order to do this, the tackle must do a good job of throwing his head towards the guards hip with his position step. The tackles position step should  be flatter than the guards, but should still not lose any ground. If possible, depending on how tight the 3 is, the tackle would still like to gain a little ground with his position step. The most difficult and important part of the tackles power step is gaining enough ground to be able to start working square, but not so much ground that it crosses the position step. Once the tackle hits his landmark on the defensive lineman, he wants to fight his playside hip forward and press through the defensive lineman’s playside shoulder at the angle the tackle finds it.

The footwork of a backside zone double is extremely similar to the footwork of a frontside gap double, allowing you to kill two birds with 1 stone in practice. The major differences in these two double teams is the angle the guard must push to after contact, and the ability of the tackle to take over the playside shoulder of the defensive lineman on backside zone double teams.

I wanted to gear this post towards “new” offensive line coaches because I feel that I am still in the later part of that category, and there is no better time to remember information than when you are going through it. I am starting my 4th year coaching football and I have learned valuable lessons in my first 3 years of coaching that I would have loved to have heard my first year of coaching. So, in an attempt to not offend any new coaches I have decided to write this “letter” to my 23 year old self that just landed a job coaching Offensive Line at the biggest high school in the state of Oklahoma.

Obsess over football! If you want to be great one day, (and let’s face it – if your going to do something you might as well be great at it), you need to be obsessed with football. Don’t buy into that garbage that mediocre people say, “You should be very balanced as to not get burnt out.” It is NOT true! If you want to be great at coaching football you have to do what others are not willing to do. You have to learn in 1 year what other coaches have been learning for 15+. The only way to accomplish this feat is to be completely and utterly obsessed with football, which is not a bad thing, no matter how many average coaches tell you it is. There will be plenty of older coaches making fun of you or telling you that your work ethic won’t be the same after 10 years of doing this job with obsessive enthusiasm, but DO NOT listen to them! Just because they are okay with being average doesn’t mean you should be.

 These are the best ways that I have found to keep your obsession of football going.

Find a Mentor! Seek out a coach that has your same goal of being great. Find a coach, hopefully on your staff, that obsesses over the game of football and is well on their way to being a great coach. This guy won’t be hard to pick out. Find the coach that never complains about coming to work, never says he is tired, never admits to being sick or not feeling well. Find the coach that seems to never leave the office and while he is at the office is constantly watching film. This coach is often not best friends with all the other coaches. They respect him and like being around him, but they can also tell that he has a much higher level of commitment to the game of football than they are willing to have. Listen for the coach that all the other coaches say will be burned out in 5 years, that’s the guy you want to emulate. Watch him carefully! When does he show up to the office? Try to beat him there. When does he leave the office? Stay until he leaves. You are not trying to outdo him with this tactic. You are trying to make his habit your habit. Also, by staying at the office 2 hours passed every other coach, you are allowing yourself time to ask questions. When the entire staff is not in the room, you are much more likely to get full honest answers, as long as you ask them humbly. Also, obsessive football coaches love obsessed football coaches! They won’t have a problem helping out what they see as younger versions of themselves.

Eat up Knowledge! Be done with the idiotic college thinking that “nerds” read books. Read as many books as you can get your hands on. Buy and read books, not only on football, but about a variety of topics. Read books about the schematics of football. Read books that the coaching greats have written. Read books about leadership that are often written by military personnel. Take any and every chance you have to go to a clinic. If there is a clinic within 8 hours of your house, find a way to get there! You need to have a clear mission for why you are there. Don’t go to clinics to hangout and have a good time with other coaches down at the bar. Remember, they all have 15+ years of coaching experience on you, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do if you want to be great! If there is a game on TV,  watch it. If it’s a Monday, Thursday, Saturday or Sunday, there is no reason for you to not be watching football and breaking it down.

These first 2 are going to be pretty easy for you, you love football and those two things helped you get through your college football career. BUT LISTEN UP!! These last two are going to be a lot more difficult for you, but they are just as important!

Be Humble! Just because your team has a good season doesn’t make you a good coach. You are still a young guy and so you know relatively nothing. You are a coach, not the player, so things are no longer all about you! You can either humble yourself, or you will shortly be humbled. Luckily, there are a couple of really good ways to humble yourself. The hard part, however, is going to be swallowing your pride to do these. Do the jobs none of the other coaches want to do. If none of the coaches want to stay late and wash laundry, you do it! None of the coaches want to do the boring input on film, you do it! Also, any praise that you get, deflect it onto your players or onto your superiors. This is probably a good practice to use all through your life, but it’s especially practical when you are a young coach.  In reality, you probably aren’t the reason things are going well.

Don’t Judge Yourself on Others Approval. It’s a good thing that you want to be great coach, but don’t judge your coaching ability on what other coaches think of you. This isn’t easy to do! It can feel like a cop out at times, but the quicker you can judge yourself truthfully the better off you’ll be. I have seen many overrated coaches, and I have seen even more underrated coaches. It doesn’t matter what other coaches think of you or how much notoriety you garner for being a good coach. What matters is your ability to be very truthful with your own faults and strengths and to judge yourself. It doesn’t matter what others think of you, as long as you can lay in bed at night knowing your living up to your standard of trying to become a great coach.

I want to leave you with the most important rule of all. Always remember why you are a coach. Coach for the love of the game and the ability to transform boys into young men.

When we run weak or strong power our backside guard doesn’t throw his elbow, open his foot and shoulder, or wrap around the double team. Instead, he pushes off of his inside foot kicking his outside foot back behind it with depth. He stays square and comes down hill off of the double team. We call this a skip pull. Coach Gordy Shaw would hate that I call it that. He was my offensive line coach my senior year at Houston. He said that he invented that pull years ago and that the right term for it was a Glide Pull. Either way – we don’t open pull on power.  I know there are a lot of teams, including about half of the NFL teams I watch that open pull on power, but I think skip pulling gives us a couple of very distinct advantages.

1. Staying tight to the double team

When weak or strong power is called, the first thing our backside guard does is find the linebacker he is pulling for and finds where the double team will be happening playside. We teach the guard that his job is to read the double team up through his linebacker’s inside hip.  The worst thing a guard can do, other than fall down I guess, is pull and be too loose to the double team. When this happens the linebacker sets up the guard and beats him inside, which is not good because that is where our running back is looking to hit power. I have found that when our guards skip pull they have a much higher percentage of staying tight to the double team. The reason? Depth increases the pullers vision. When a player skip pulls, he gets himself away from all the big bodies on the line of scrimmage. This allows him to see the entire frontside of the play as he comes downhill towards the double team and adjust as needed.

2. Bringing power with your pull

We want our guards bringing as much power as they possibly can so they can get the playside linebacker, or any color that shows up from slanting down linemen, out of the hole. The obvious reason a guard is more powerful with a skip pull is that he is gaining momentum by setting back with depth. That is the reason fullbacks are 3 yards in the backfield, so they can have momentum coming forward. The other, less obvious reason is also vision. When a guard open pulls he rarely has a good view of defenders coming downhill because he is stuck in the land of the trees. He is often “surprised” in the hole, either by a down lineman or a good linebacker that was hidden behind the double team. However, when a guard skip pulls with depth, he gets back behind the line of scrimmage and gets a much clearer picture (much like a running backs view) of when a defender will be filling the hole, allowing him to make contact, instead of being contacted.