Opponent Breakdown

There are two camps when it comes to breaking down opponent video. One that focuses on using Hudl as their primary means to breakdown an offense, and the other that prefers to put pen to paper to decipher their opponent. I have been blessed to have had some great mentors who have taught me the value of creating your own system that utilizes the best of both camps.

Hudl gives you a relatively easy interface to sift through data, if you have done the work to input the data into your column sets. Pen and paper can be a little more labor intensive but can help you recall the information later, especially those of us who are primarily visual learners. Both are useful and when combined together can be a system to create a thorough call sheet.

In this article I will walk you through the system I use to breakdown our weekly opponents. I'll cover the data sets I use and some of the rules for inputting the data. I'll describe every column I use then I'll post a video at the end giving extra insight into how I use that column. Then we will take a look at the post video process where I put pen to paper to better understand the concepts we will face that week. Finally, we will talk about using your breakdowns to help craft your practice plans.

Choosing the games to breakdown is crucial to the integrity of your data, and this is where your staff has to decide which games are the most important. Some districts are only sharing the three most recent games and so your games are chosen for you. In districts that pool their film you could have 7+ games to choose from late in the season. You can breakdown every week, and some do, but I believe that four games is about the right amount. I believe that you should watch every game to see changes in personnel and anything that may stand out of importance but breaking down too many games can lead to "paralysis by analysis" and your data can get diluted.

When choosing games to breakdown I would focus on several factors; most recent games, opponents with similar defensive scheme, and roster. Most recent games give you the current identity of your opponent. What they are running week one and week five can be very different, which can be due to personnel issues and injuries or the offense has just found their identity. Put emphasis on games that they are facing defenses that run the same scheme as you. Roster changes like injuries can be a big factor in choosing games as a teams identity changes based on their personnel.

Now that we have identified the games that we are going to breakdown we need to understand what data points we will be tracking and their rules for inputting them into Hudl. In my data set I have 45 columns, which seems like a lot and can be overwhelming but I don't use every column each week. It usually comes out to about 30-35 columns, but even then inputting the data from each column can be a big task and cannot be done by one coach. You must break up the load within your defensive staff and give each position coach a group of columns to input. Try to give them ones that fit their into their position group i.e. DL coach should be inputting pass pro or run blocking schemes.

It's been my experience that front loading your data is crucial. What do I mean by that? Well front loading is making sure you get all the data you can input in before you start your defensive meetings on Sunday afternoon, or whenever your staff meets. Front loading, while it can be a pain, allows you to have all the information in front of you when questions come up in your game planning meeting. Nothing is worse than trying to input data after the fact to justify decisions made.

HUDL DATA COLUMNS:

The first rule I want to talk about is labeling from the perspective of the offense, this should be done with all columns when dealing with direction. This comes into play when you start drawing scout cards, and this will become clearer as we run through the other columns we track. It's also important to understand that there is no right or wrong way to "call" something, what matters is that your staff understands what it means and that it is labeled that way consistently. You can also use abbreviations to help make the process a little faster. Take the time before the season starts to make sure your staff understands the expectations. Have them take ownership in their part and let them teach the staff their nomenclature and how they abbreviate something.

My column set starts out the same as most coaches with the usual down and distance, yard line, play type etc..

HASH: A play is on the hash when the offensive tackle is touching or is outside the hash.

SERIES: Offenses get about 12-16 series in a game, and this column helps me understand where that play falls withing the game.

FIELD ZONE: I use this to identify what part of the field this play is occurring. BU = backed up and is from the -1 to the -19. CO = coming out and is from the -20 to the -39. ALUMNI is from the -40 to the 40. YELLOW is from the 39 to the 21. I like to break up the red zone into two sections, high and low. HI RZ = high redzone is from 20 to 13. LW RZ = low redzone is from 12 to 6. GL = goal line is 5 to the 1.

SITUATION: I like to identify situations within a game to separate later. Things like first play of a series (P), any first down play that was earned (E), two minute (2 MIN), and last plays of half (LPH) and game (LPG). Pulling out their two minute plays will allow you to look at just their base plays.

PERSONNEL: Here I use numbers to differentiate the personnel on the field, the first number is how many RB's and the second number is for how many TE's. It's important that you label the formation as it is presented in the picture, meaning even if you know that the slot receiver in a doubles formation is a TE you still need to label it 10. There will be another column to note that the inside WR is a TE.

FORM TREE: This column is the broad category that the formation fits into. If you start very specific with labeling formations your data gets diluted and you lose the ability to pull out larger data sets. The next few columns is where you get specific with the formation.

FORM SHELL: This describes the outer shell of the formation i.e. the configuration of the WR's. This is important because passing concepts are typically ran out of the shell and we want to be able to see, for instance, what they like to run in 3x1 regardless of the backfield arrangement,

OFF FORM: This is where you label the specific formation as you see it, prior to any motions or shifts.

FORM VARIATION: Here is where you can be even more specific than just the name of the formation. For example you may get a Trips Pistol formation where the #2 is on the LOS. You don't need to call it something new in the off form column and dilute that data.

OFF STR: To what side is the strength of their formation, remembering to use the offense's perspective. Use the same rules that your athletes would use. If your a team that splits the run strength and pass strength up then I would add another column and then you can track both.

FIB: Stands for formation into the boundary. This is not a simple yes or no answer, I like to differentiate if they put the passing strength, run strength, or both into the boundary. If the formation is in the middle of the field then it would be blank. If it's a balanced formation on the hash then you may need to decide if there is some other factor to determine if it is a FIB'ed formation or not.

MOTION: You can call each motion whatever you like but I think it is important to indicate who is running the motion. I number my WR's strong and weak from the sideline in and so I might label a jet motion as - "2W JET". Again this helps when drawing up scout cards later on.

SHIFT: This column is different than motion in that the player who moved becomes stationary for a given amount of time prior to the snap.

BACKFIELD: This is the picture in the backfield specifically. This is where I will differentiate between gun strong and gun weak as apposed to adding that to the formation tag.

PASS FORM: This is the distribution of WR's at the time of the snap. For example if they motion across a WR in a doubles formation it becomes 3x1. I'm going to label the formation what it was originally presented as but use this column to track the new presentation.

PLAY TREE: This is the broad category that a play call falls into. We will use numbers for pass and names for run schemes. 60 for us is quick game, 600 is drop back, 700 is boot, 900 is sprint out, and 800 is play action. Runs would be labelled as zone, gap, iso etc.

OFF PLAY: This is the specific concept that was run i.e. power read or bubble. For passes I will use this column to identify what concept was actually thrown to. The next columns are where I break up the passing concepts strong and weak.

PLAY DIR: Direction that the play was designed to go from the offensive perspective.

READ SIDE: This is where I track the passing concept to the read side (RB side for RPO) or the passing strength like the trips side in 3x1.

B/S ROUTE: This is the concept ran on the weak side or backside of the formation.

TAG: Tag is where I may label the variations you might get in say a flood concept out of 3x1. #2 might run the deep out or #3 may run the deep out, but it is still flood concept and I don't want to dilute my data in the off play column.

# WR: I use this column to track which receiver in the formation gets the ball, not the number of the WR but their number to the strong or weak side.

OPP QB: This is where I track the QB's number. I want to be able to cipher off their starting QB from their backups. This will also allow you to pull out any wildcat plays.

TARGET - BC: This is the jersey number of the athlete who carries the ball or is thrown the ball. In the event of a sack or scramble I will also use this column to track the QB's last target in their progression.

PASS ZONE: I use 1-9 to indicate where on the field the ball is thrown. I break up the field into 3 zones; sideline to hash, hash to hash, and hash to sideline. This is from the offensive perspective and from left to right progression. 1 to 3 = 5 yards behind the LOS to 5 yards in front of the LOS. 4 to 6 = 5 yards past the LOS to 15 yards from the LOS. 7 to 9 = 15 yards plus.

DEEP SHOT: These are passes of 25 yards or more.

BLOCKING ADJ: Run blocking adjustments. Here you can get into the specifics of locking up zone or who they pull in their gap schemes. It's another way to keep the data broad to specific; I want to pull out all counter schemes, then use this column to identify who they pull given the specific defensive fronts.

# PRO: The number of players involved in the pass protection. I use this to pull out the 5 and 6 man protections to help scheme up specific stunts and pressures.

PASS PRO: I use this to identify what the pass protection is; man, slide, or half. If it's half I like to label where the split of slide takes place by using numbers of OL to each split side, the first number will be to the strength.

WR BLOCKING: This is a column that I use primarily with option teams that block 2nd and 3rd level defenders in different ways. Can be used to tag what they block on bubble if there are variations.

RPO: Here is where I identify the play as an RPO rather than in the OFF PLAY column.

RUN PLAY: If the play is an RPO then I use this column to tag the run part of the play

PASS PLAY: I use this to tag the pass part of the RPO

DEF FRONT: The front that the off team faces in the play, use your defensive calls here.

STUNT: I will tag any stunt and blitzes that the off team faces, again using your defensive calls.

COVERAGE: The coverage being faced. This is a great column to be able to pull all the coverage's that you run to help identify what concepts the off likes to run vs those coverage's.

OPP TEAM: Offensive team that you are tagging.

DEF TEAM: Defensive team that the offense is facing.

That concludes the data points that I will tag for our opponents. Again, I don't use every column for each opponent, use the columns that you believe is important to track verse that specific opponent. I would also encourage you to breakdown your game planning to identify if there are any additional columns you may want to add. There is no right or wrong way just the way that works for you!

This post turned into a bit longer than I had anticipated so look out for additional posts that will cover what to do now that you have tagged all the games you will use for your game plan. I will talk about how I use the data to answer typical questions that need to be answered, questions that the standard hudl reports will not answer.