I have a Question

Great football coaches are not scholarly geniuses. Coaches are master collectors of information filling notebooks or phone folders full of everything they see that triggers the "oooh I like that" muscle in their brains. The great coaches take all of that data and are able to distill that information down from what I like to what I can teach to how do I use it in a game. Bloggers and content creators are no different which leads me to today's post.

The other day I got a great email from a reader/viewer named Reed, and to paraphrase his message he stated he was a person with the typical football experience (played in high school) but he wanted to expand his knowledge of the game and in particular the Air Raid offense and if I had any tips or resources I could share with him. I do and I just sent him a very nice reply I hope to point him in the right direction in his journey of discovery for the Air Raid offense, but it got me thinking. That would be a great starting off point for some content on my own. So in this post I'll outline to you what I did for Reed and give you a starting off point of resources to help you learn more about the Air Raid offense (beyond my super awesome informative content of course). Then I will be working on a follow up video that details my journey to get to where I am with the Air Raid offense and how I apply it to coaching at the level that I do.

I started my football journey in the same position as many of you and that was my brief high school playing career. I was a career bench warming fullback/linebacker/kicker for some very bad Baraboo High school football teams in the late 90's that progressed from 9-2 conference champions as a freshman to 0-9 doormats as a senior...yikes. When I started coaching in 2002 I was 2 years out of high school only armed with only the tips and tricks I learned from my high school coaches at my disposal. Luckily the internet is the football coach’s friend and I was able to not only grow my base of knowledge of the game from a fundamental point of view but the systematic point of view.

Starting as a casual fan taking your first steps into a deeper dive into offensive football I would highly suggest Brett Kollmann’s video on origins of the modern spread offense.  Starting with the ancient forefathers and progressing to the modern NFL will give you a great framework to start your own trip down the rabbit hole by giving you names and teams to start researching with.

Who actually invented the spread offense?

Now that you have a basic knowledge of the spread football in general it's time to start looking at the Air Raid offense itself and there no better place to start with than the mad scientist himself Mike Leach. There is a ton of great stuff on YouTube on him, but a great place to start is this video from Matt Wyatt which breaks down how his system does such a great jog of getting guys open.

Film Study: Leach's offense gets people open

If you want to dig deeper into how to implement the offense from a coach’s point of view I have two great resources that you can go for.  Coach McKie presents coaching offense in general in a very simple way and dives into how to run a lot of the Air Raid concepts in an easy to understand manner.  Then Coach Joe Salas is where you should go to really dig deep with the Air Raid concepts and how to run your program in the Air Raid style.

Last I’ll leave you with is Phil Longo himself.  There is a TON of his work online.  He is very open with coaches with sharing his knowledge and there is no lack of it out there to find.  I’ve curated a little playlist that contains everything from fundamentals with his unique QB footwork to pass concepts and play calling.

Phil Longo

I have always viewed the Dairy Raid as a way to take what can look like a very complicated game and making it digestible for the common fan to make your game viewing experience more enjoyable and to enhance your fandom. These resources are here for you when you're ready to take the next step from the casual fan and journey down a rabbit hole that in 20+ years I have never found the bottom of, and hope to never do.