Matt mattox was a senior offensive lineman at houston when art briles arrived prior to the 2003 season. He is the author of the art of smart football and the essential smart football. The essential smart football is an examination of football s most important strategies and ideas, through the lens of the games best coaches, players, and schemes. Hes only a couple yards shy of 4,000 for the season, hes set an ncaa record for passing efficiency. The bears 11win season came thanks to a stellar defense that covered up a mediocre offense. Deftly blending analysis and storytelling, the art of smart football examines football s most innovative and enduring strategies and ideas, through the lens of the sports best coaches and players. Baylors offense is more unstoppable than ever usa today. The bears are averaging a football bowl subdivisionbest 63. Baylor coach art briles abandoned the playbook several years ago, and he. How dino babers will build syracuses new offense on the baylor model. The first annual cascade coaching clinic is in the books.
Used at every level of the game including professional nfl, cfl, college ncaa, naia, cis, and high school programs across the us and canada, spread offenses often employ a no. I am an avid reader of articles on the web about football strategy and tactics. I dont know how the new offensive staff will handle things, so i am going by how things have traditionally been done at baylor, which is to move a guy who is athletic and smart. Baylor has college footballs laziest offenseand its also the best. Bear bryant or vince lombardi did, go check out a book from the library. It seems the only way to stop baylors offense is to host the bears in cold, rainy, sleeting conditions, as did oklahoma state in a 4917 win in 20 so if you can control the schedule and. Baylor has one of the most explosive offenses in college football.
The art of smart football features analysis of footballs top strategists and schemes, including. This week we look at the evolution of baylors offense. The lack of a running game hampers the offense and weve seen the cyclones. Most, if not all, of briles concepts begin with one quick read by the qb. The art of smart football paperback skylight books. Because the offense plays at such a rapid pace averaging 76. The origins of this offense come from the split back misdirection offense that we ran while i was a player under coaching great, dale mueller at highlands high school.
The nature of spread passing games has become quicktriggered and based on one or two reads, just like the veer offense that briles operated in the 80s. After three games, baylor ranks first in the nation in total offense 654. A system designed to spread the field and run or pass based upon your personnel. The essential smart football question and answer with author. In the 2014 nfl draft, the bears sent a recordsetting five players into the nfl.
The art of smart football by chris brown 2015, paperback. He lives in new york city with his wife and two daughters. Brown is the bestselling author of the essential smart football, a featured contributor to grantlandespn, and the editor of. Analyzing baylor football ahead of sugar bowl matchup with. By noah riley from robert griffin iii to nick florence and bryce petty, it seems as though every qb to go through art briles system has produced outrageous video gamelike numbers, particularly through the vertical passing game. Baylors vertical passing game rileykolste football. Baylors hybrid offensive approach essentially combines many of the greatest tactics in offensive football into one cohesive and simple package. Pete carrolls aggressive defense chip kellys spread offense and newschool methods the roots of bill belichicks defensive genius gus malzahns uptempo offense the strategies peyton manning, tom brady, and aaron rodgers use to shred defenses art. Smart notes defending packaged plays, baylor s lazy offense, buck sweep, murder. The art of smart football choices analysis of soccers prime strategists and schemes, along with. Rico gathers, taurean pricne, and al freeman are all great players, but freeman makes the scott drew baylor bears motion offense click. The essential smart football features analysis of footballs top strategists and their schemes, including.
He has also written for the new york times, sbnationvox, deadspin, yahoo. Smart football analyzes footballs strategies, xs and os, and tactics, along with the theory and history supporting them. It is a very popular offensive system run by many high school football programs and many college football teams such as texas tech. We learn about baylors high octane offense, different defensive schemes, and. The thing about don is that hes extremely smart book smart and also football smart, said former baylor offensive lineman john jessup.
How the spread offense conquered college football, from hal mumme to joe burrow. Baylor is basically an option offense in all that it does. Baylor coach art briles builds his offense around each. The spread isnt dead, but its rapidly reaching maturity. Football cruises to 5617 win over sfa baylor university. The offensive mvp for baylor football in 2017 could have either fallen to charlie brewer or denzel mims, but one player was vital to the offense. Smart notes defending packaged plays, baylors lazy offense. Art briles at baylor, david shaw and the rest of the guys at stanford, paul chryst. The bears had plenty to show for it, too, with robert griffin iii capturing the. Things have come full circle in htown, as the offense art briles used to win four texas state championships at stephenville high in the 1990s and ran from 2003 to. While mcvay is definitely a smart guy, i believe calling him a genius is misguided. Masterfully blending thought provoking analysis with engrossing storytelling, the art of smart football examines footballs most innovative and enduring strategies and ideas, through the lens of the sports best coaches and players. I ts up over at the grantland blog robert griffin iii should win the heisman trophy. Scott drew lost kenny cherry and royce oneal from last seasons 24win team, and a lack of explosiveness from the guard spot held baylor back in preseason projections.
No playbook texas coaches implement spread offense by. From baylors first game this year, when he shredded gary pattersons vaunted tcu defense for 359 yards and five touchdowns, griffin has consistently been the best performer in college football. Baylors offense under briles has been called lazy because of their tendency. Baylor head coach art briles has perhaps the most explosive offensive scheme in college football. The core concepts were originally developed by lavell edwards and norm chow when they coached at byu. Scott drew baylor bears motion offense by dana beszczynski. Your host apologizes for the late arrival of this weeks seminar. The power spread offense old school power football with the new school spread beauty. The same goes for offense, particularly the offensive line. All of the plays shown are drawn against a 43 defense, a defensive system almost never used below the high school level. The air raid offense is a shotgun spread, passfirst offense designed by hal mumme and mike leach while they were at the university of kentucky in the 1990s.
A muchtalkedabout football player at baylor universitywhom coaches expect back this fallis currently on trial for the sexual assault of a fellow student. Even though baylor made this offense famous, it took the bears several years to get rolling. The bears, under coach art briles, have become one of the power programs in college football over the last five years, and the most noticeable culprit for this rise to power has been art briles offense. Below is a diagram of the weakiso concept commonly used by nfl and other. Chris brown, author of the new book the essential smart football, engaged in a.
The art of smart football is an eyeopening, fascinating and accessible. Urban meyers spread offense tom bradys nohuddle attack bill belichicks hybrid defense gus malzahns uptempo offense charlie strongs defensive evolution mike leachs passhappy air raid the most popular scheme for running the ball. Between racking up touchdowns, the bears receivers can be seen loafing around and taking plays off. The paperback of the the art of smart football by chris b. The best offense in college football is also the laziest wsj. The book speaks to the evolution of the passing game and the major schools thereof. For 4 years 20112014 baylor didnt drop outside the top 5 in passing yards. Sfa scored twice in the fourth quarter against a host of baylor reserves, as rhule used 35 firsttime players in the game. The art of smart football is an eye fixed fastenedopening, fascinating and accessible contribution to our understanding of americas favorite sport. Baylor, smu are among the smart teams to back in week 5.
I like guys that are competitive and guys that are fearless and smart, briles said. Georgia is the favorite on the ncaaf odds against baylor in the secbig 12 matchup at this years sugar bowl. Baylor coach art briles builds his offense around each quarterback. Brilliantly written and eschewing unnecessary jargon and technicality, it makes a major contribution to our understanding of football to help all of us coaches, players, and fans appreciate the game we love all the more. The spread offense is an offensive scheme in gridiron football that typically places the quarterback in the shotgun formation, and spreads the defense horizontally using three, four, and even fivereceiver sets. How baylor used isolation run concepts from spread offensive sets. This is why just about every team in college football now uses these plays, with teams as diverse as baylor and alabama alike profiting from them. Smart notes defending packaged plays, baylors lazy. Baylor coach art briles has blended the spreads spacing and tempo with a downhill running attack. The book also includes explorations of the newest trends in football, including packaged plays that combine runs and passes into one play, pattern match defenses that blend mantoman and zone pass coverages, how defenses are responding to the spread offense, and much more. Coach al blacks excellent book, coaching runandshoot football harding press, 1991, details how he joined the powerful runandshoot offense of coach darrel mouse davis. Brown writes and edits smart football, which is dedicated to football analysis, strategy, philosophy and history. Deftly blending analysis and storytelling, the art of smart football examines footballs most innovative and enduring strategies and ideas, through the lens of the sports best coaches and players.
A very early look at baylors 2017 football roster offense. Pdf the art of smart football download full pdf book. How dino babers will build syracuses new offense on the. Chris brown writes smart football, and he has been writing about football, in one form or another, since 2002. Baylors spread is more intense than most, with even the inside receivers lining up outside of the hash marks. Ebook play calling for the air raid offense as pdf. The standard doesnt change, whether youre a 1, 2 or 3, rhule said. Baylor leans on multiple running backs and, more recently, the tight end. For the better part of the last decade, baylor and offense were as synonymous as alabama and dominance.
Matt rhule has clear vision for newlook baylor offense. Playing smart disciplined football is what i want to see, and it looked like at times it was that way. I have highlighted parts of it to refer back to on such things as the different philosophies of offense and defense. The offense mainly consists of nothing but option reads and option routes. The most popular books bought by smart football readers in 2015 excluding the art of smart football and the essential smart football. The art of smart football is an eyeopening, fascinating and accessible contribution to our understanding of americas favorite sport. Option reads are doable in 06 but option routes are not. On a day when the offense kept shooting itself in the foot and special teams gave up a 95yard kickoff return, the baylor defense came to the rescue to help the bears 80, 50 remain unbeaten with a gutsy 1714 win over an upsetminded west virginia team 35, 14 that dropped its fourth in a row. Almost no effort is devoted in this book to the concept of seriesbased football and the idea of making as many plays in the offense look as similar as possible in order to fool the defense into overpursuit.