Coleman Feeley
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submitted Today, 03:51 PM in Texas Longhorns Football By Coleman Feeley
Spring Games are conducted differently from one institution to another across the country. Some coaches divide their players into two teams and conduct a ‘draft’ where seniors select their teammates onto their respective squads. Other programs divide players into two teams based upon the depth chart – for instance, the first string offense will be on the same team as the second string defense and vice versa; ensuring that the first string offense faces the first string defense. Some colleges pair their first string teams against the second stringers, then spot the second string team a several touchdown lead to begin the game.
Texas, however, has a different format than most schools. The Longhorns split offensive and the defensive players on opposing sidelines.
Offense:
Generally speaking, offenses in spring games stay fairly basic or ‘vanilla’ as coaches often call it. There are two primary reasons for teams to keep things simple on offense.
The first reason is that running basic plays provides coaches the opportunity to see players compete at the most fundamental level – can your guard beat the defensive tackle? Can your receiver beat that cornerback?
Secondly, by keeping the offensive play calling vanilla, teams don’t give any plays away to future opponents. When preparing for the season, coaches watch as much film as possible on opponents in an attempt to gain competitive advantage. But, for teams like Texas, all opponents have to do to get spring game film is hit record on a DVR.
Based on what I’ve been told, expect Texas’ offense to run a lot of plays from shotgun formations. Texas will most likely run only a few different plays, adding what are known as ‘tags’. A ‘tag’ refers to an additional read to the play.
For example, if Texas were to call their zone read “22†they could add an additional tag to make the play “22, X-Hitchâ€. The quarterback would then only perform the “22 action†if the correct number of defenders were in the box (in this case 6). If not, he would throw the “hitch†route (fig 1 & 2).
Defense:
In my experience, defensive coaches handle a spring game in one of two ways; they play very basic defense, or they dial up every blitz in the playbook. Defenses keep play calling basic for the same reasons that offenses do: to see who plays fundamentals the best. Some defensive coaches also find an advantage in maintaining an air of mystery when the season starts.<br>
It will be interesting to see how Coach Bedford plays this scrimmage. So far this spring, Coach Bedford has mixed defensive coverages and fronts, but Texas’ most consistent package has been what’s known as a “Nickel†package.<br>
This means that the defense has five defensive backs on the field instead of the traditional four. One of the benefits to the Nickel is that it allows Texas to use its hybrid players like Malik Jefferson and Jason Hall to shift from odd fronts to even fronts without changing personnel (fig 3&4).
Spring games are always different, and honestly can be hard to follow. Regardless of the format Texas employs, spring football’s focus remains the development and evaluation of players.<br>
Every rep on Saturday will be analyzed, evaluated, and graded; all to optimize the development of Coach Strong’s team. Setting a depth chart isn’t easy; it takes tremendous thought and attention to ensure the best players are on the field. The spring game is an integral and interesting part of that process and it always leaves us hungry for August, when the real fun begins.
