Take Advantage of the Blitz... Screen It

The Colorado School of Mines football program has earned the reputation for relying on the forward pass to move the ball offensively. Over the past four seasons, we have averaged 322.1 passing yards a game. The success that we’ve had throwing the ball has increased the amount of blitzes we see from the defense. We needed to develop other phases of our offense to make the blitz a high-risk endeavor for the opposing defenses. Two phases we felt could help accomplish this were to add more option plays to our running game and improve the execution of screen passes. The addition of option has helped increase our run production from 71.1 yards per game in 2000 to 163.5 yards per game in 2004. The ability to successfully run the ball has kept us in normal second and third down situations and much less predictable for the defense. Our three screens, (F), (X), and (Z) gave us an answer to