Happy Friday! My family and I are on a late-summer beach vacation in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Other than a jellyfish swarm on day 1, it’s been great sun, sand and waves this week.
I’ve also enjoyed a little beach reading. I’m almost through an engrossing book called The Perfect Pass.
It’s about the advent of the Air Raid offense in football. Those of us in the Big XII conference are all-too-familiar with Air Raid. I saw first-hand how Mike Leach’s Texas Tech Red Raiders dismantled my TCU Horned Frogs using this aggressive offensive scheme when I was a cheerleader in 2003. (It was ugly)
If you aren’t familiar with the term (or with football in general), Air Raid was a revolutionary shift in the way football was played. Football was traditionally a run-heavy game with strict routes for each player. The Air Raid offense, in contrast, relies heavily on passing the ball, and gives players the freedom to adjust their routes as they see fit.
The book talks about the group of coaches who invented Air Raid. Many “traditional football” type folks thought they were crazy… until these coaches started destroying other teams with it.
These coaches were able to take teams that only won a few games, and lead them to a 10-1 record the following season. Quarterbacks and teams that broke long-standing yardage and scoring records, accomplishments no one had seen before (or even thought possible).
My favorite parts of the book are when they discuss the philosophy of the scheme. It’s not just “you run this way, you run that way” rigid plays. There’s a freedom to it, but there’s also a mindset to it.
As Hal Mumme, the main coach character in the book, describes it:
“The oddest and most unusual feature of the system: it was less about Xs and Os and more about attitude, optimism, and a way of thinking. To make this offense work, you had to believe you were going to score from any part of the field anytime. You had to be fearless. You had to stop worrying about what the defense was going to do to you. You had to be prepared to flex as the systems built to stop you flexed.”
Let’s apply this.
When you have vision to do something no one else has done… or at the very least to take your team and your practice to levels you personally haven’t realized before…
It takes more than rigid plays and memorized scripts.
Hal Mumme didn’t even have a playbook (in contrast to other coaches with giant binders full of detailed plays). Air Raid had a few simple, foundational components, and the rest was sheer belief, mindset and optimism.
So it goes for your practice. You need more than scripts. You need more than plays. You need the attitude, optimism and mindset.
You want your team to take the Air Raid Approach.
Belief in knowing you’re the best in town.
Belief in knowing your procedures are life-changers.
Belief that $15,000 is the Deal of the Century relative to the life-change that your procedures will provide.
Optimism that “we can get creative and figure out a way” to get you financed and get out of those glasses.
And so on.
So if you’re in the mood for an interesting read, pick up The Perfect Pass. Other features of the Air Raid approach include simplicity, binary choices, reading the situation, freedom to make things happen, and going against the grain.
I bet you’ll find more than a few ways to apply some of these concepts to your practice.
Enjoy your weekend,
Troy
PS – A lot of the Air Raid concepts mirror the approach we take in our coaching. Sure, we have some basic foundational “plays” and scripts we use. But a lot of it is teaching teams how to think, read situations, react, and lead out in ways they haven’t tried before. And yes, it can produce Air Raid-type record-breaking results.
So if that’s interesting to you, football season is a great time to get rocking in one of our coaching programs. Reply if you’d like to discuss coaching, sales or how good/bad the Cowboys will be this year… (I got a good feeling about this season!)