Army Offense Breakdown

NikeFootball59 · Dec 5, 2021

I respect the hell out of Army. They are a physical football team that will without a doubt come out and punch us in the face. I coached OL in the Flexbone, so I'm familiar with the offense. We would study the hell out of Navy, Army, Air Force, and GT. I'm excited to talk some flexbone and what challenges the Black Knights present for us.

Army Offense vs. WKU 2021 (YouTube)
Army Offense vs. Georgia State 2021 (YouTube)
Army Offense vs. Wake Forest 2021 (YouTube)
"If/Then" Flexbone playcalling system (Twitter)

Army differs from "traditional" flexbone offenses a little bit. This ain't your grandpa's triple option offense...

Traditionally, Flexbone teams prefer to not use TE's and stay pretty standard formationally, mostly in "Spread" (two A-backs, two wide receivers) and "Over" (same as Spread, but with both of the WR's on one side of the field to make a Trips set). Army does feature these two basic formations, but they are much more multiple with formations than most flexbone teams are. They'll throw "Tackles Left/Right" at us, where they have both OT's on one side of the football and a TE aligned where the OT usually would be. They'll also get in plenty of "Tight" formations, where they have their WR's aligned 5 yards outside the nearest OT. Then, they'll give us some 2-TE formations, called "Heavy". It's a lot to prep for when you never see this offense.
Army does run Triple Option. But that's not the hill they'll die on, unlike Paul Johnson and Ken Niumatalolo. They feature a lot of "Isolation" runs and "Zone Dives" (basically a wedge at the Guard). It's clear that they want to feed their fire-breathing "B-backs" as well as their QBs. They thrive off of putting lots of bodies at the point of attack and out-muscling their opposition.
They have an interesting hybrid approach of Wing-T and Flexbone. The traditional flexbone offenses cringe at the thought of pulling guys. Usually, the lions share of OL practice time is devoted to Veer blocking and pulling isn't a priority. Army sacrifices some of their veer blocking excellence for the multiplicity they offer. They will run the "Belly G" series quite a bit at us, where the playside Guard will kick out the DE and the TE/OT cave down the inside guys. This is a quick-hitting full flow series that violently attacks the C-gap area.
They are fantastic at misdirection runs. Once they find the backside LB clobbering the B-back dive on their option/Belly/midline runs, they will run a "Counter Option", which looks exactly like veer for 3 seconds, then the QB pivots and runs speed option away.

What we need to be the most prepped for is the utter physicality of their OL play. Take the time to watch some of the WKU video.... they get after people up front. I know that we're more talented than WKU, but they do this to just about everybody they play. They tell their OL to get foot-to-foot and never come off of a double team. Kobie Whiteside, Mehki Wingo, and Darius Robinson will need icepacks for Christmas. If we don't answer their physicality, we will get clapped like Houston did a few years back in their bowl game.

the mighty yehti · Dec 5, 2021