Three and Out by John U. Bacon Read Free Book Online Page B

staying put.
    If the defensive end stays put, the quarterback releases the ball, and the runner senses that it’s time to clamp down on it—with one fewer defender to worry about. But if the end starts heading after the runner, the quarterback pulls the ball and runs where the end had started.
    It is an elegant, simple solution to an age-old problem that any chess player can appreciate. When you have eleven players and your opponent does, too, how do you gain an advantage? Knocking one of them over is one way, but it takes a lot of effort, you can always miss, and unless your guys are a lot bigger and stronger than the other guys, it probably won’t work very often. But with the zone read, you force the defender to tip his hand first, and if you read his movement correctly—which any decent high school quarterback can do—you have successfully removed him from the play.
    A pianist has eighty-eight keys at his disposal, and a chess master has sixteen pieces—and both of them must use their limited arsenal in ways no one has thought of before. A football coach has only eleven players, but on that fall day, on a scruffy practice field in Glenville, West Virginia, fifteen miles from the interstate to nowhere, Rich Rodriguez figured out a way to eliminate a defensive player without even touching him.
    No one knew it yet, but the game had changed forever.
    With this new key, the Pioneers started unlocking defenses that had been impenetrable just two years before.
    â€œThe defense didn’t know what we were going to do next,” Rodriguez said, “and they were chasing their tails, gasping for air. They had to respond to us. Given our record the previous year, that really impressed me.”
    While Rodriguez and his staff were still learning how their new weapon worked, they soon realized that it forced the opponent’s defense to spread out, too. And once they did that, they couldn’t help but show you how they planned to defend your play before you even snapped the ball—and not just the ends, either, but the linebackers, the corners, and the safeties, too.
    This gave the Pioneers a great advantage, but only if they were smart enough to recognize it. The coaches started teaching their quarterbacks to look where the defenders were setting up and, based mainly on that information, call the play seconds before the snap. Once they got the hang of it, they could not only make the defensive ends chase the wrong guy but also send three or four defenders so far off the scent, they were no more dangerous than rusty tackling sleds sitting in the middle of the field.
    That’s when Drenning “started picking them apart,” Rodriguez recalled. “ That was fun!”
    Even if the quarterback didn’t make a complete read on the defense, or if the defense caught on to at least part of the joke being played on it, Rodriguez still held an advantage. If he could simply force all the defenders to cover all his players—including, crucially, the quarterback—he could make the defense play man-to-man against his receivers. That might not sound like much of an edge on paper, but when you consider that the receiver knows where he is going and where and when the ball is coming, it’s a considerable advantage over the defender, who can only guess at all three questions.
    It is like chess, with a catch: You get only three seconds to make your move, the opponent’s pieces can weigh up to three hundred pounds, and if you make the wrong move, they’ll smash you into the ground. If just one player blew his assignment, not only was the advantage instantly lost, but the ball carrier—usually the fleet-footed quarterback or a speedy little slot receiver—was badly exposed to getting blown up by a big, angry defender who was not going to pass up his chance to hurt the little guy who’d been making him look dumb all day. So, for Rodriguez and his system, being “all