"Adding the bubble screen to your youth football offensive attack"
Coach Big B
Host/Producer-The Red Zone Show
I went to the Mid-Atlantic Wing T Clinic last weekend and enjoyed every minute of it. The venue was awesome and Coach Phillips ran a 5 star event no question. During one of the lectures one of the speakers mentioned that he wasn’t a big screen guy. He had a few screen plays in his packages, but he didn’t use screens as much as others would or do. I spoke with a few youth coaches off the air and I had noticed that most youth teams don’t use any form of screens in their play calling. Most coaches feel the use of screens at the youth level isn’t worth the time of effort of installing. The use of screens can be very useful to any offensive attack when used properly. The reason why screens should be used is because of 4 reasons:
(1) It allows you to take advantage of blitz heavy youth defensive schemes
(2) It allows you to get your key player in open space
(3) Use of screens can be an extension of your rushing attack
(4) Quick passing play that don’t take long to develop
The main reason why I enjoyed using screens at the youth level is putting a youth defender in a situation that he has to make an open field tackle. When I studied screens there was one that was effective for my squad last season. This screen was the bubble screen. This screen could be used where you could have a back leak out in the flats, or a quick pass to an isolated wideout. Most teams don’t use press coverage, will allow you to get anything underneath, and don’t practice pass techniques enough within our tight time frame with their youth players. When I looked at screen plays the bubble screen took the least amount of time to install and didn’t cost me anything with blocking up front. I will show you a bubble screen play we used last season that was a good play for us in any situation.
Disclaimer:
Not even screen will break for 80 yards!!!!
Understand that when you use any screen play in a perfect world you would love to take a 2 yard pass to the house. The key to using screens is to get 3-4 yards. If my player picked up more than that I was fine. The way I used the bubble was to force the defense to account for every player on the field. I refused to allow any team to stack the middle without making them pay dearly for it. The bubble screen allowed me to get my stud in open field and make a play. I would use players that can make the 1st man miss by quick open field moves and getting behind his pads to finish off the run when he get hit. Most coaches I seen use screens would dump the play quickly when the play don’t turn big yards. The bubble screen should be used to help move the chains and if the player miss the open field tackle you will get interest on your investment. You must be patient and work it in within your play calling. Too many times people will file 13 a play if it don’t generate big yards. If my players get my 4 yards a play I take that any day of the week.
Trips Yo-Yo Bubble Screen
Hybrid Wing T-Jet Sweep Series
You can run the bubble screen from any formation you want. When you use compressed sets like double wing sets the leaking the fullback to the flats is a great play if you have been beating your opponent up well inside. If you use some sort of spread attack 2 x 2 or trip sets the bubble is a great way to put a team in conflict. You must hit the un-covered wideout and make them account for him every play. Last season we ran the Hybrid Wing T from pistol depth. We ran a jet sweep based series. We would flex out FB out along with out TB and SE. The FB would be the outside wideout, the SE would be in the middle, and then the TB. We would run jet sweep to the raw TE side with our QB. The TB would fake jet and lead and kick out the DB for the QB when we ran to the raw TE side. We would also run power with the QB with the jet fake underneath. We have seen that by us being in pistol it forced teams to send pressure from the edge. We would show double tight or a our base formation “Ace” and then flex to trips. When we made this shift only one team in our league would slide a defender over to the trip side last season. This allowed us to have numbers outside. The influence of the jet would force the defense to flow to the jet action. Once they would slide to the jet action we would attack the bubble screen with our FB that was within the bunched trips alignment. Since our QB was in pistol he had enough time to set up and drive the screen route.
Trips Alignment from left to right with rules:
SE: Crack Block 2nd level defender (OLB)
TB: Run jet fake and yo-yo back to kick out DB
LT- WB: Jet Sweep blocking rules
QB- Fake to TB and drive the bubble screen pass
What we found out was when we ran the yo-yo motion it allowed us to get flow away from the bubble and pick up another blocker. We also only had to teach the SE and TB to pick up key blocks. This cut down on teaching anything new up front and made this add painless. Then when the TB yo-yo back towards the DB he was in perfect position to crack the DB. The DB in most cases would chase the jet backside or sitting reading the backfield. The SE has a crack call in our jet sweep system anyway. So this was an easy adjustment for the SE with the bubble screen.
Adjustments:
You will get plenty of looks when you run jet sweep. When we saw that the OLB followed the TB we would add a “Ride” fake to this play then still run the bubble. Our QB and TB knew this and it was an option that they could run without us signaling this in. This can be done with drills during your offensive sessions at practice. We would have our OLB mix up his reaction. My assistant coach would mix up the OLB calls so this would help the TB and QB know what to do. This helped our kids with their reads and made it second nature for them. This adjustment only took 3 minutes in one practice to get in. Then we would add this to our series prep during the week.
If the OLB shade the trips side and jump the bubble the QB would pull the ball down and run the ball where the OLB have moved from. This was also added in our practice sessions around week 3. This made our bubble play harder to defend. We just didn’t want to get negative yards on the play. One game our QB broke a 35 yard run when the OLB jumped the alley of the bubble. (This team had scouted us 2 weeks before our game that week.)
You can also tag your players and rotate who would run the bubble as well. If you run it to your TB you can use the yo yo motion and have the FB stalk the DB. The SE would use his crack call on OLB. If you wanted to hit your SE you would allow the FB to crack 2nd level and the TB would kick out DB.
Closing:
There are 4 things that made this play a great add for us.
(1) Was in pistol depth
(2) Flexed our formation to trips to put the defense in conflict
(3) Use PA to generate flow away from our bubble
(4) Being proactive with offensive adjustments to keep the defense off balanced
The bubble screen allows you to take advantage of aggressive defensive coordinators that like to send heavy pressure. The use of the bubble with other play action pass plays can keep any team off balanced and force defensive coordinators to account for every player/alignment. I hope this play can help other coaching staffs as it did for us. This is a play that the kids loved and mesh well with our offensive system.
Samples of bubble screens:
Coach Big B
Host/Producer-The Red Zone Show/ Moving the Chains
http://www.coachbigb.com/
(Diagrams provided from http://www.dallcowboystimes.com/, http://www.smartfootball.com/, http://www.pistolspreadoption.com/ )
(youtube vid provide by Coach Bruce Eien a former guest of The Red Zone Show)
For more information on passing concepts check out http://www.chiefpigskin.com/.
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