Thoughts on using your talent

Unfortunately, talent is a scarce commodity for coaches. Skill can be developed on some kind of sliding scale based on the talent at hand, but, especially for those of us not actively recruiting, we must make the best of whatever we get.

If one looks around the coaching landscape there are a variety of approaches, some teams two-platoon, others play their best players both ways. It becomes particularly interesting if there is a definite "stud" who is surrounded by "average" players; do you put the ball in their hands 25-30 times? Does every pass need to go to the stud?

I myself am an advocate of the "Spread it around" school of thought, with the caveat that in gameplanning and gameday there is a concerted effort to get the ball to the studs. The simple fact is that football is a team sport, and getting the ball to more players than less should always be the goal. Furthermore, the advantage in football is that it is a team sport and there are many opportunities for multiple pass receivers or deception in the run game, all of which are conducive to putting the ball in different player's hands. There are ways to isolate your studs, and whenever the defense does not account for them properly you can take advantage. Reggie Bush at USC is a good example, the defense (rightfully) is very concerned of him at all times, which has opened things up for his teammates and allowed his Quarterback to win the Heisman trophy.

Furthermore, looking at the Indianapolis Colts--they look almost like a R&S team these days. The sense that I mean is that, with a few exceptions, almost every play has a single back in the backfield, Harrison as the right outside wideout, 87 Wayne as the left wideout, the tight end is almost always right and the slot man is usually to the left, but sometimes forms a trips to the right. They mix it up some with two tight ends, etc, but they do not use countless personnel or formations. They will use formations to see how you adjust and will attack weaknesses from there, but I don't see them constantly getting cute.

Another extreme example is Texas Tech, where the players line up in the same place on the field on nearly every play, and the tight end always lines up right and the split end left.

As a final example, thinking about wishbone teams and wing-t teams that use slotbacks and divebacks. Even though many of these roles, particularly wingbacks, have to do a number of different skills they are still able to specialize. Even with the Colts, the slotman does not have to learn what it is like to be the flanker or the split end, and, with Texas Tech, they really only have to learn how to run their routes from one side of the field, getting more repetitions.

I apologize for this rambling post, but I really wanted to put forth some example. The baseline for all this? Before you decide that you must teach your 4.5 guy to play wideout, slotback, tailback and running QB, or that you need to be able to run 100 different formations each with different personnel in different places, think about what the gain is. Furthermore, when you have a stud and you want to give him 30 touches a game, think about what potential gains there are if they only had 20 touches a game, or 5 catches instead of 10, would the rest of the team benefit more? It is difficult to find the optimal mix, but it is usually best to trust what talent you do have, plan to get the ball to your best talent, and let the defense dictate how much they will get it.