Inside Veer from a Shotgun Set

Option football has been popular for a long time, but recently it has undergone a facelift. Now you have teams running a zone read triple option, you have the inverted veer, and you have teams like Georgia Tech running a flexbone attack that is predicated on the inside veer play.

(As a disclaimer I am working on my PlayMaker Pro skills, if anyone has any advice or pointers please leave a comment.)

At my last coaching stop we ran inside veer from multiple shotgun formations. While we were in the shotgun we were not a spread team. We almost always had two backs in the backfield and were almost always in a "pro" set. We were the only team running triple option in our league and this gave us an advantage in that teams had to prepare for something that they hadn't played against yet. The option proved to be great equalizer of talent because while we were rarely the most talented team on the field we went two rounds deep in the state playoffs.

The inside veer was the bread and butter of our offense like most option teams. Here is what the play looks like in a traditional split back set vs. a 4-4 defense, which is what we saw most of last season:

Utilizing an inside zone/down blocking scheme up front made things easier for our offensive linemen as we could tweak small things up front and still run multiple plays with the blocking scheme. It was also beneficial due to our small offensive line (we averaged about 175 lbs per player). 

So we take the same blocking scheme and put our quarterback deeper into the backfield (Heels are at 4 yards):

I feel that the quarterback's read in the shotgun is easier than being under center. It also doesn't have to happen as fast. We coach the dive back to squeeze the play-side guard's down-block on the nose-guard. This makes it very difficult for the defensive end to ever be in a position to make a play on the dive back. 

As a staff we always got a laugh out of opposing coaches screaming, "DE has QB on option!" If that is the case we will be able to run this all night! 

We really coached up our guards on down-blocking and we would often have the PSG drive the NG into the opposite A gap. When we got our guards blocking like that this play worked incredibly well. We had out best linemen playing OG for this purpose.

While there certainly are benefits to the option game from a shotgun set there are also some drawbacks. The most glaring deficiency, for us, was that we were never able to get outside veer and midline to work for us. We also started to see more 5 man fronts with a double eagle alignments. This gave our offensive linemen fits because we had to do more base blocking which was not a strength of ours. Our center wrestled at 152 lbs following the football season and often times would have to base block a 300+ lb NG. We ran a lot of speed option and load option when we saw these fronts.

 

One last note, a team we played in a district game had watched some film on us and saw that we liked to run inside veer to the weak side of our pro set. I suppose their logic was something along the lines of "If we put a 3 tech to the weak side they won't be able to run inside veer" So this was the look we got...

I guess they hadn't thought out their strategy very well. If a 5 tech struggles to get to the dive back what chance does a 9 have? Down-blocks anyone?

Best part is they didn't change out of this the whole game. Our dive back went for 300+ yards on the game leading the team to a 600+ yard night on the ground. It amazes me the people who fall into (and keep) coaching jobs...