Game Week Practice Planning to Defend the Spread Option Attack

When we prepare to play against the spread option, we first need to understand that getting the most out of our practice time is the number-one priority. We understand that the option teams that we face run their offense at a high level and they have gotten hundreds of reps at what they do before we face them. So, we need to be able to get as many reps as possible in just one week. For the past eight years, our philosophy has changed from trying to get good at practicing and playing one scheme vs. the option (See Diagrams 1 and 2) to showing multiple defensive looks vs. option teams (See Diagrams 3-6). Both philosophies are based on our personnel and the personnel of our opponent at that time. If we went with playing one scheme or playing multiple schemes, we knew we had to do certain things the same in our teaching progression. First, we wanted to teach from a “whole - part – to