I want to take a few minutes to talk with you about Nascar Tempo, and the value of tempo to your offense. Nascar Tempo isn't a speed we play, it's a way of life. It's how we live. What does this mean?
Everything we do we want to do with a sense of urgency. You want to have no wasted movements. You want to always be moving from one point to the next, and doing so expediently. Tempo is about being early and on-time. Tempo is about hustle. Tempo is about being determined and focused.
As an OC, I wanted to find any advantage possible to score as many points as possible. But more important than points scored, was setting ourselves up to win the game. We had to score more points than our opponent. There were seasons where our defense struggled and we had to score more points on offense to win. There were other seasons where our defense was the strength of our team, and we wanted to do everything we could to help our defense. That meant not putting them in bad positions. But at the same time, we always wanted to score. Nascar was always a part of our offense, but we used it strategically based on the situation we were in.
I look at our fastest tempo as an opportunity to play fast, but we don't just want to play as fast as we can. We want to mix up our Tempos or modes for teams to defend. I recently asked one of my quarterbacks from several years ago if he remembered how many tempos we used. He said sure coach, "fast, faster, and ludicrous speed." That made me laugh, because I showed them the luriscious speed scene from Spaceballs.
We didn't always play as fast as we could, but had the ability to. There were times we played faster than others. We wanted to have the ability to change speeds. Today I want to talk with you about playing at our fastest tempo, which most people call Nascar.
Benefits of Playing Fast
I look at Nascar Tempo as the great equalizer. We have the ability to keep the defense off balance, and not allow them to gather themselves between plays. We want to be able to dictate the pace of the game and get the defensive players out of their comfort zone. Defenses also don't have time to substitute. If they try to substitute players, they will have too many on the field. Here is an example from a game where the defense had 13 players on the field when the ball was snapped. They also weren't able to get lined up.
In our most disappointing offensive season, we had 64 nascar calls on the season. We averaged 9.4 yards per play on Nascar Calls. for the season we averaged 5.8 yards per play on calls in our other tempos. We should have had more calls in Nascar tempo. That season we had a young offensive line, and playing with tempo helped them out tremendously.
Looking at explosive plays, we had 30% of our explosive plays on our tempo calls. Yet Tempo calls made up only 14% of our play calls. That means that we had a much greater chance of an explosive play with Nascar tempo. Drives with explosive plays increase your chances of scoring by 40%. 54% of our drives with at least two tempo calls resulted in points. This is an important statistic to look at.
On our most explosive offensive season, we snapped the ball 842 times. Of these, 202 snaps were in Nascar Tempo. We averaged 11.4 yards per play in Nascar. We ran the ball 126 times in Nascar, and threw ball 76 times. Of the 76 passes, 42 were what we call pre-snap RPO's. This is where we call a run, but attach quick game concepts our QB can throw based on the defensive alignment. I detail these concepts in a CoachTube Video I linked below. We line up fast, and either execute the run or pass based on alignment. This was simple for our QB's to execute, and helped us to be able to play fast and keep the defense guessing. They didn't know if it was a run or pass.
The season we used the most Nascar, we averaged 92 snaps a game at the high school level. We averaged 7.8 yards per play. That season we had a quarterback who was young and inexperienced. It helped him to play fast because he didn't have to think as much between plays. He made quick decisions which aided him in games. Teams also couldn't disguise their looks against us, which simplify his reads.
Now, for you defensive head coaches... Embrace tempo. If your offense is struggling, then mix in some tempo. Tempo can help your offense create some momentum and get into rhythm. I know that playing slow keeps your defense off the field, but mixing in some tempo and move the ball helps your defense. Think about how tempo affects your defense, and use that to your advantage on offense. Make sure you don't get too caught up in protecting your defense that you miss an opportunity to move the football, change field position, and ultimately, score more points.
Keys To Playing Fast
When we play at nascar tempo, we want to snap the ball very quickly. Our goal is 8 seconds from the previous play ending to the ball being snapped for the next play. This means we have to have a simple way to get the play signaled in and communicated to all 11 players. That is the first key. How quickly can you get the play communicated to all 11 players?
The second key is that we have to be able to get lined up quickly, and get the ball snapped efficiently. You have to practice your tempo in practice, with coaches off the field. During this drill we go as fast as we can, moving the ball 5 yards per play. You can work this drill on air to save yourself the pain of having to get the scout team lined up.
Third, you have to be willing to sacrifice your line calls and the QB getting a detailed look at the defense. This means we are going to call our identity concepts in tempo, that require minimum communication from the offensive line, or require the QB to have to determine coverage. We found there are very simple concepts we can call in both the run and pass game to help us with our tempo calls. In the pass game I like quick game concepts, sprint out passes, and vertical shots to one guy. As mentioned above, our pre-snap RPO concepts off runs are also very effective.
Finally, you have to be willing to sacrifice an occasional bad play for more explosives. We are going to call something with nascar tempo and the defense will line up in a position to take it away. Because we are running the nascar concept automatically, the ball will be snapped. These cases happen rarely, however.
Success of Nascar Tempo
The first time we used tempo, we were playing a team that was much better than us up front. Their front 7 had 5 FBS players. Our offensive line was undersized and didn't have anyone who would go on to play college football. Their defensive line averaged 6'2 275 pounds. They were big. We decided to open the game with tempo. We were going to run our sprint out concepts to the field. We started on the right hash, and ran sprint out to the left. Then we ran sprint out to the right. Then we ran sprint out to the left. We were running a flood concept to trips. Play 4 we ran sprint draw for a TD. The most important thing from this drive isn't that we scored. It was that their front 4 were running sideline to sideline with no time to rest.
We didn't play with tempo the entire game, but we did snap the ball 32 times in the first quarter. We were up 28-14 at halftime, and went on to win 42-28. We were able to wear them out physically. Our guys were in shape because we had practiced that way. Our opponent had never had to play defense at that pace.
The next week we played a team that liked to stunt and blitz. They struggled to get their signals in to their defense fast enough. They had to stay more vanilla than they liked to play. They didn't run their fire zone packages. We also wore them down as the game went along.
We ended up making a playoff run that year that we wouldn't have made if we had not played fast. We were able to take pressure off our offensive line, and get the ball to our skill guys in space quickly. We kept defenses off balance and didn't let them get lined up and they never got to relax. Even when we didn't snap the ball fast, they thought we might, so they had to be ready.
Playing with tempo can help give you an advantage over your opponent. Now, you have to be able to execute or you will end up with a bunch of fast 3 and outs, and that is not something you want. You have to be detailed in your game planning, and have a simple tempo package that you can employ strategically. One thing that helped us greatly was using our detailed call sheet. It helped me to quickly be able to call plays based on down, distance, and hash. Our call sheet helped us win a lot of games, and it is being used by high school and college coaches all over the country. Numerous very success coaches have reached out to me saying it is a difference maker.
A few years ago I was speaking at a clinic about our game planning and an FBS coordinator asked me after the talk to go through what we do. I shared with him our offensive game planning resource and he used it through the spring. He emailed me back that it was a game changer. It was an honor to have him use these documents. After speaking at clinics and hearing that more coaches didn't know where to start, I decided to make these available.
Here is a link to my offensive game planning documents: https://sellfy.com/p/AndN/
All three of these courses are detailed, with everything you need to be more explosive and to score more points.
The course on communication gives you a detailed approach to your gameday communication. I give you a system and a process to improve the quality of conversations, leading to improved play calling on game day. This course has received outstanding reviews from coaches at all level of football. A coach with multiple state titles told me this course helped them to be much more efficient and explosive this season.
My two RPO courses take you through a systematic process of installing RPO's into your offensive system. RPO's put the defense in conflict, forcing them to defend all 53 yards of width and all 6 skill players every single play. I not only give you a system, but I teach you the methods to develop your own RPO concepts.
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