What is the difference between a tight end and an H-Back?

The H-Back is a position that few admit to or knowingly use. However, they’re showing up more and more across the world of Football. In the NFL, Travis Kelce has been playing the role since his emergence in 2014. In college, the Oklahoma Sooners have had a pair of H-Backs helping in their bread-and-butter counter game for at least the last 5 years. Last but not least, the High School ranks have been attempting to use everything the next level does for ages, and the H-Back is just the next thing to trickle down to their level in mass.

On this episode we’re focusing on identifying what a H-Back is, the benefits of using one, and how you can fit a H-Back into the offensive scheme you’re already running. You may be closer to having one than you think. It may be as simple as changing the designator in your playbook.

TRANSCRIPT

[[00:00:44] Daniel Chamberlain Welcome back, coaches, this is the football coaching podcast. I am Daniel Chamberlain, the co-host with most. I’m here with Joe Daniel, as always.

[00:00:53] Joe Daniel I don’t have a tagline.

[00:00:55] Daniel Chamberlain I don’t. I just made that up on the fly. Yeah, you like it? I get, yeah.

[00:00:59] Joe Daniel I don’t have something like that. I don’t know if that’s wildly original, but

[00:01:03] Daniel Chamberlain It’s not at all. No, I’ve been at this for a lot of years. I figured you’d have a thing.

[00:01:07] Joe Daniel Oh, no, no, I. I may have had a thing at one time and I just forgot it.

[00:01:11] Daniel Chamberlain So that happens. Yes, truly. Yeah. So tonight we’re guys, we’re going to try to stick to our time hack here. OK, we’ve got timers running on the screen and we’re going to do our best a little easier topic tonight or less in-depth. We’re talking h-back’s. Sure you saw by the title of the podcast. So we’re talking all things h-back. We’re talking why, why you want to use one, what their benefits are, what is an h-back exactly where it kind of come from and then how to add it to your scheme. Whatever you’re doing, I bet an h-back can help you.

[00:01:43] Joe Daniel You know, it’s it is an in-depth. I mean, there’s a ton of things that you can do with an h-back. It’s for I feel like it fits into what is the modern football thing that seems to be the way that things are going. We see it, especially on the defensive side, where every defense now has hybrids, right? Every single defense that we run has a hybrid, you know, position where it is. He’s a safety, but he’s a linebacker. He’s a defensive end, but he’s a linebacker. You know, those kinds of positions. So defensively, I think everybody’s real familiar with the concept of that hybrid player. But offensively, we all are aware of it and people say, you know, there’s no full backs or tight ends anymore. Well, there aren’t. They have it’s because they have mostly morphed into these other things and some schools don’t use anything like that. But when you look in the NFL, people say, Well, you know, there’s still tight ends in the NFL, but the tight ends that, you know, I would describe as an H-back at that. Most of them, you know, going back, you know, Jason Witten was probably a tight end. Yes, absolutely. Travis Kelsey does a lot. He’s more like an age back, you know, so the people that you know today, as tight ends there, their h-backs, most of them, the guys that I would call a tight end. They’re like the third string guy. You know, they catch four balls a year. They come in on that three tight end set on the goal line. That’s to me, is a tight end. And so when we talk about back, while it’s not called that in the NFL and again, I’m using the NFL as an example, but just to get an idea of what we’re talking about, it’s the guy that can literally do a little bit of everything. And so that’s what we’re gonna talk about today is the h-back. The back is a feature in the pistol power offense system, and that’s why I wanted to talk about it because in our one back offense, so I learned pistol power, I learned the offense. I did not learn the pistol part of it from Bill Mountjoy because Bill’s like, you need to go under center. Bill, this team was straight up like air raid or whatever the day that we had the kid go under center to put in like sneak. All the kids were giggling, like he’s touching his butt like, Oh my god, we’re not going under center, right? We might go under center now, but we got that team late. The pistol power offense system is a one-back offense. Bill calls it the East Coast offense. It’s a very NFL Pro-style offense, and it is very much featuring not just a tight end, but also an H-back that allows us to be. It’s funny because I’ve been using the Go Army Edge football app this last week. I really got back into kind of putting it together and using it, and they have personnel packages. Everything is kind of centered around personnel packages and you put in, you know, this is a twenty two and it comes with kind of like a set list of formation. I assume you’ve looked at it before a yeah, it’s cool because it does the on field

[00:04:57] Daniel Chamberlain Like the innovation thing, right?

[00:04:58] Joe Daniel Yeah, they’re like 3D animation thing. That’s cool, I think, to show kids. But so if y’all don’t know, I’ll just go and tell you the Go Army Edge app. It’s a cool, free playbook software. It is only available in the United States because it is literally a recruiting tool for the U.S. Army, so they have no reason to make it available to you in other countries. But it’s a well-made piece of software, even if, like, you know, you go to print off a playbook it’s going to have, like for propaganda. I mean, you know, everything on there, but it’s free. So that’s what you get. But everything is based off personnel, and I’m going through that and I’m looking at these formations and I’m like, we we’re 11 personnel, 90 percent of the time. But all these from there like this is a 22 personnel set, and I’m like, no, it’s 11 personnel. It’s always 11 personnel. So in the pistol power offense system, we do heavily feature a tight end in the h-back. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today is that position and what that position could do for your offense. Whether you are running a pistol power offense, whether you’re running a one back, you want to incorporate it into your, you know, your spreads and your, you know, these different offenses or just changing your way of thinking about some positions and using guys in different ways. First off, our offense is part of JDFB Coaching Systems and five complete coaching systems full access for $1. Go to join.joedanielfootball.com. The pistol power offense system itself is I’m very proud of that. It’s very in-depth. I mean, but I don’t mind saying I think that it’s the best that I have put together. It is extremely in-depth. So if you don’t like, I don’t think it’s just entertaining to watch. It’s for people who want to run an offense and run it well, but you don’t have to run the entire system. I know some people have just taken the pass protection. I went super in-depth on pass protection because I love offensive line and I love our style of pass protection so that there’s a great deal of depth in the pistol power offense there, features h-back so join.JoeDanielFootball.com that’s pays bills. So let’s go and get started. Excellent.

[00:06:59] Daniel Chamberlain Excellent. So we’ll start tonight by just asking the question why you should use an h-back, why anyone should use an h-back, which inherently is what are the benefits of the H-back, right? What does it really bring t to your package, to your team. I Google search man. So I told you, I don’t know a lot about h-back’s way. I’ve never seen one in an offense beside yours looking online, and I’ve never seen that on the field. So historically, you know, it told me what an h-back is, and that’s fine. But I found it hard to figure out why. What’s the benefit? What do you use or why do you use an h-back? So where you get to spill the beans, man, you get to be all the knowledge knight.

[00:07:39] Joe Daniel It’s the amount of flexibility that you have. And I will say that we’re going to talk about what an h-back is, what an h. But you know, the guy that can be your h-back, what you’re looking for in that position. But I’ll say this in our offensive system, and I got this from coach Mountjoy. There will always be the h-back position will never go away because even if we don’t have the right guy, a Travis Kelsey, I’m looking here to mention this. I’m looking at the Wikipedia article on it. Rob Gronkowski, these athletic, even if you don’t have that guy most of us don’t. Coach Mountjoy immediately, when we, you know, the first year that we ran, this was another we have a guy that is a great. Then when you want to run the ball, you put a lineman in. When you want to throw the ball, you put a receiver in. But the position remains the H-back back and you know, you don’t always throw, you know, you don’t always make that personnel change. I can put the h-back in over here and still run over here and all that kind of stuff. But the concept is this position offers a tremendous amount of flexibility to your offense in the way that when you are 10 personnel offense and you spend most of your time in 2×2 and 3×1. Now, do you have flexibility? Absolutely. Can you get out there and do your options and RPOs and you’re passing concepts? Absolutely. You have flexibility. You are not limited, but the way that I can use my back is I can be in 10 personnel. I can have him split out, I can have him in the backfield and I can easily motion him and move him. And you may be saying, Well, we already do that. It’s a feature of our offensive system. It’s not. This is not a yeah, you can do that. I understand anybody can motion your slot, right? Anybody can motion your slot in the backfield. This is a feature of the offense. He is the shiny object in our offense. I see better blocking a better blocking angles. It’s funny because that now our H-back can obviously line up in a fullback position and we can be in an eye formation. But one of the things that was that Coach Mountjoy was very insistent on. And through experience, I’ve found he’s right. Is that running power from the I. The angle for the fullback is not as good as running power from the one back set with the h-back in the guard tackle gap, right?

[00:10:16] Daniel Chamberlain That’s not getting is what we call it. I’m sure most people call it a sniffer, right?

[00:10:20] Joe Daniel Sniffer, yeah, he’s just our h-back. So yeah, he could be. But in that simple position, right. A yard off the line of scrimmage yards, we tell him, can you reach out and touch the ball to the guard? Great. Now, don’t do that because we don’t need that

[00:10:35] Daniel Chamberlain Got a quarterback on the center.

[00:10:37] Joe Daniel Yeah, a quarterback on the center. Fine, but like, there’s no real reason. You be touching the guards, but for long. Just make sure you can do it so that that was actually a thing that I had always learned power and obviously and I know people run power from the wing. It’s still about the same angle as a fullback would get because you’re kicking out with the fullback in the wing because it like a four yard depth in a true Delaware wing-t system. He’s very tight. I’d always learned in run power that way. And then and I’d only been coaching for a few years. I started learning Coach Mountjoy System in 2006. I’d been coaching for like four years, maybe just in seven. But it really like that was that changed the way that changed power from being a good play to being the feature he’s you were able to to move him in and out and bring him in to the pass protection scheme. He’s part of the pass protection scheme. We have a seven man pass protection scheme where he’s he can be a check release and in that seven man now most of the time he’s getting out because he can see pre-snap whether or not he needs to. If you’re all 5×5, I don’t care if you blitz as the ball is going to be out, but if he’s walked up breathing fire, I know I got to kick and block. So that’s how he handles that. So he can be in our pass protection, but he can also get it out into a route. He can. He can do so many things for you. He is an extra lineman who can go catch a football. And one of the things that I think makes eight-man football so tough. Ding, ding ding. We are talking eight man football for the second time in like five episodes

[00:12:13] Daniel Chamberlain But I think it is five. I think you’re right. Bring on the eight man.

[00:12:16] Joe Daniel Welcome to the eight man football coaching podcast. One of the things that I love about where’s that timer? One of the things that I love and I think makes eight man so difficult is that you can be in a spread and you can defend that. I can. I can give you a defense to defend 2×2 eight man football to about one two three four. That’s an empty formation, but the point remains we can defend that. Then you can be in a two tight end set in eight man football, and I can defend that. The problem is when you can go from out there, this is a bigger problem an eight man than it is in an 11 man. When you can go from out there to in here, an eight man, that’s really, really tough. I think that the eight back in 11 man gives you the ability to do that.

[00:13:03] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, I see the benefit of how close this is. You know, this is a player that when I think h-back, it’s usually like running back that maybe doesn’t have the ability to make the cuts or the read or the tight end is not quite big enough or can’t block well, right, the slot receiver that’s not the Wes Welker of the world. And that’s what you’re talking hybrid. We’re talking average on defense last week and just that hybridized player, like you said, a jack of all trades, but he’s not that great at everything. And sometimes they are like, that’s also a position you can just put an absolute all star there that he’s too good to always be the back in the backfield or always be the slot, right? I have had the benefit of watching some backs at O.U. Obviously the school closest to me, the Jeremiah Hall’s, the Braden Willis, those guys and man, it’s awesome getting to watch them catch passes, block their tails off. I mean, you get to really see them. They fully use that position at the school. As long as our last coaches there, he who shall not be named.

[00:13:59] Joe Daniel Yeah, I don’t know those guys because I don’t watch J.V. football, but I do have some good,

[00:14:03] Daniel Chamberlain You know, national championship blah blah blah. But just the thought of getting a guy that a back out of the backfield on a pass route, but he starts a yard from the line of scrimmage instead of, you know, five or six or whatever your quarterbacks line up in your system. He doesn’t have to start Sidecar and then try to go help a tackle, make a combo block and zone blocking, and you can just run him out there. Know it’s just a really the hybridization and the ability to put him where you want. It’s like cheating, right?

[00:14:28] Joe Daniel It’s you’ll have teams constantly questioning how to defend that guy. And if you and you know, from being in chalk talks and being on a chalkboard for him. We have guys talking about how to defend tight and wing. How do you know, how do I handle that sniffer back? And when we draw this stuff up and we go, okay, here’s how we’re going to defend a tight end wing. Okay, great. now we line up in an 11 personnel twins to the left. You get it on your normal lineman. Now I move that guy and he’s tight and wing, and I understand you can move your slot receiver. I’m talking about a guy who has the skills to be a lineman has now just become an extra lineman. That’s that, to me is a massive advantage and being able to do all that at the line of scrimmage.

[00:15:12] Daniel Chamberlain So that if you’ve got a guy you don’t know where to put him, you need to get him on the field. He’s a player that may just be for you. That’s the benefit. It gives you that extra position. I’m not saying this dude on a go route because he’s not going to burn anyone generally, right, but he’s going to catch a lot of stuff over the middle for me. Also, just as soon as they back their linebacker up and try to man him up, that’s fine. He’s just crashing down on the defensive end and we’re out of the gate.

[00:15:33] Joe Daniel So the and I’ve told I’ve said this many times we laugh about it. As we get into what an H-back back is, who then age is, this is what you need to know. You know, Bill Mountjoy told us this. You can all laugh at it. If you haven’t heard it before, you’re going to, you’re going to say, that’s great. You’re going to say the same thing that we did. Great. But Bill, who’s the ideal h-back? You need to find a guy like James Farrior. That was the best H-back I ever coached. Like would be the best player I’ve ever I would ever coach and probably the best player you ever coached. Right? But to give you an idea. James Farrior was a hybrid defender. Same concept he could block. He could run now. James Farrior could run by people, and he could also run over people at the high school level. So in the NFL? So but that is the that is your like ideal world. You know, we were talking about who where the best player goes. And you know, your 3-tech, your 3-tech ideally is 300 pounds. He’s six foot and he can run. I know we don’t all have that. Your h-back ideally can block and can catch. We have. We usually don’t have that guy, though, right? We just don’t have James Farrior our h-back this year. Better athlete than blocker. Adequate. Adequate. Better than a good blocker. He could get into a block, but he didn’t look like a block. Not a weight room guy. Our weight room shut down for two years. He became a much better block and he was an aggressive blocker, so he could do that. But he was a threat. He was probably our biggest offensive threat as far as catching the football and running the football in some cases. So we got him very involved in the run game. More involved than most of our backs have been three years ago at an age back, who was not a good blocker, but he was a weapon and a half. He now let me say this if we hand the ball, he was very dangerous. He was one of the fastest kids on the team. So all I had to do was showcase him running. By now, he couldn’t catch it. But you don’t know that because he looks like a champ, right? He was just your fun. So we would have run more each toss if I had trusted him to catch it. Instead, when we were in toss, it was a five yard loss or a 65 yard gain in one or two ways. There was no in between. It was going in the end zone or it was going, you know, nowhere, right? So yeah, he’s an athlete. He’s a good athlete. He’s a I would probably 10 or more towards a blocker. Probably some of the best eight backs that I’ve had have been the great kid, the program kid, the tough kid. Who should I mean, you know, we all at small schools, we have that kid who like he should be a guard, but he’s only one hundred and fifty pounds on a small school coaches. He’s your h-back. Yeah, he’s your h-back because he’s still going to be an effective blocker for you. He can pull. He can kick. He can do all the things that a guard does. And if you run a winning team, maybe he’d be your guard. You know, we always talk about the small guys in the winning team. But for us, he’s an H-back good enough to catch a football here and there and be a threat in the passing game. But you know, we had a kid one year name’s Colton, Colt got a bass fishing scholarship like awesome kid, right. Kids don’t get bass fishing scholarships, but I don’t think you can be lazy and get a bass fishing scholarship because let me tell you, everybody wants that you’ve got to be the dude that’s out on the lake like 4:00 a.m. You know, like you’ve got to be, you’ve got to work for it. We all would love to have that, but we literally of catching bass.

[00:19:16] Daniel Chamberlain I’m down with that.

[00:19:17] Joe Daniel Yeah, he was from West Virginia. We had he was uncovered sometimes and would be like, OK, we’ll throw to him. The other three receivers, we’re all-state. All three of them were at some point in their career, All-State. They were all in the same year. But the other three were all state receivers at the 2A level. OK, so Colton would sometimes just be uncovered. All right. Well, he can catch and he can run now he catch it uncovered and go from 14 yards. The other kids, we catch in double coverage and get six. So, you know, we take what we get. But he was a great blocker. He was a much better blocker than those other kids, and that’s a different element to the game. That’s just a different element to the game that you get.

[00:19:55] Daniel Chamberlain So, yeah, I mean, we covered why moving it, like you said, move kind of into what is an h-back and what are you looking for? I think of the weight room kid, right? That kid that lives in the weight room. I like what you said the program kid. He’s never going to be the starter. If you don’t have an h-back, right? You’re never gonna put him at X or not, even at Y right. It’s just not going to happen. So just that kid kind of his. It’s a good realm to live in, though.

[00:20:20] Joe Daniel Now that said, if you’re if you have Travis Kelsey, if you have that phenomenal athlete who can block and catch and run and do all of those things, he’s also an H-back. But most of us don’t. We have we’ve got a kid who a good gust of wind could blow him over, but he can run and catch. That’s a receiver. We’ve got the. Maybe not a motivated blocker. That’s a receiver. What if you’ve got that really special athlete? Your free safety on defense is your back on offense. If if you’ve got that kid, but yes, he’s a great kid. Ideally, he’s a kid you can trust. You can rely on our h-back this year knew the blocking scheme better than most of the linemen. So he would be.

[00:21:06] Daniel Chamberlain He’s got to be from every angle, right? So he has to know on every play.

[00:21:10] Joe Daniel He’s from the backside. He’s kick out. He’s back, you know, he’s window dressing. We talk about what is an h-back. I should mention that he’s the shiny object in your offense. Guys look at our offensive system and they go, Well, aren’t they just going to kick back? Absolutely. Because the run is going to the back, especially if you’re running a lot of power, the run is going to the back all the time. We get people blitzing and we motion the back all the time. Fifty percent of the time there is motion happening in almost all of that motion is the back. Now this year we did a lot more smoke and mirrors just because we didn’t have the time to get these guys ready. There was no weight room we were behind, so we did a lot of smoke and mirrors. We motion to everybody. We shifted everybody. But usually the package is probably 80 to 90 percent of our motion, and he is the shiny object. I want you looking at him. He’s going in jet. He’s going in, he’s going in cross motion, he’s going in return motion because I want to see what you’ll do. He’s starting inside and motioning outside. He’s starting outside, motioning inside because I want to see how you’re going to adjust and I’m going to break your defense at some point. By doing that, you’re going to make a mistake. But when you start the first thing that we get, people start blitzing or sliding the linebackers with that H-back motion because we’re in a motion where we’re going to run power, we’re going to motion, run and power. Our most common play call is Ham Pro 3 24, OK, that’s him motioning over from the left to the right and then running power to the right. We’re going to do that over and over again until I see your linebacker slide with him or I see you blitz that, then we run counter, right? That’s the design. He is the shiny object in the OR or I’m going to motion him over. You’re going to blitz your linebacker and I’m going to throw tight and seam right behind him. That’s wide open. There’s options. There’s things we can do, but he’s the shiny object and I want you to pay attention to him. And then we’re going to have tendency breakers, right?

[00:23:06] Daniel Chamberlain And he’s really not. You don’t have to use him in your blocking game and your blocking scheme, right? So it’s like you said you motioning way over here to the left, I’m going to the right, but I’m going to watch you slide everybody because you have to govern. Otherwise you end up what you said the guy that three All-State receivers, he’s open, right?

[00:23:22] Joe Daniel Yeah, he doesn’t have to stay

[00:23:23] Daniel Chamberlain By the time you decide not to not to go with him. We’ll hit him, right?

[00:23:26] Joe Daniel So he’s yeah, he doesn’t have to stay in pass protection even with our seven man protection. If I bump him out, then I make the protection call to his side and that puts the Y because he’s always the backside protection, the arms, always the front side cause eye protection. The what the why is always the backside check release, right? And so all I do if I motion him out is we call the protection to the side that he is out and then the backside y has the check release and we still have a seven man protection. We’re getting the ball off in 2.8 max, usually two point three seconds and everything is protected because I want the ball to get off at the if the ball doesn’t get out. I would say that we had a lot of sacks this year, but with the quarterback learning the system. But as the time went on, week six and on there was a lot fewer sacks and it wasn’t because it got easier, wasn’t because the schedule got easier with a lot fewer sacks, because he learned to know where everybody’s going to be and get the ball out or the previous quarterback that I had, I think, was sacked six times, actually sacked like there were three where he just jogged out of bounds after a scramble. But he was sacked, I think six times. All six were his fault, and he knew all six were his fault. No, there’s one. There was one where the right guard just, you know, brain melted and left the defensive linemen unblocked. The rest of them were his fault because he held the ball too long. And that’s why we had the protection, and having that back allows you to do that and still get him out routes.

[00:24:45] Daniel Chamberlain Yes, the brain, the brain-melting, that’s excellent.

[00:24:48] Joe Daniel I love that kid. But oh my gosh. Then I moved to a school almost an hour away, and lo and behold his cousin walks through the door and was every bit, every bit. I mean, he’s like, That’s my cousin. And I’m like, Yeah, it is. I know how it is. I didn’t know when you walked in the door, but I yeah, it is. Holy cow. Great kids up.

[00:25:15] Daniel Chamberlain So watching the timer tick away, I’m I had even mentioned the timer, but it’s funny because we actually set one and I have to keep looking at it. To bring this back down to you, new coaches who are more in my shoes. The naming was weird to me. I know trying to tag these positions as a defensive coordinator, it was weird to me. I used sniffer a lot and then I just to be honest until I read your playbook, I didn’t even recognize. At the slot, moving over to a wing at an h-back, I just called him another receiver. And the old offensive system that I was a part of. I think we called it an F, which Wikipedia told me is, you know, it did switch to an F back at some point. Whatever

[00:25:52] Joe Daniel Everybody uses different letters. It doesn’t matter. But yeah, like your some of your wing-ts and some of your flex bones, call them like A B and C backs and things like that. There are A back B back. You’ll see those kind of designations, F, I think F is usually the running back in an air raid, but in other places it’s a fullback or yeah,

[00:26:13] Daniel Chamberlain Or this people who refuse to call their running back. Not the halfback, right? They have to. Yeah. So that takes h away.

[00:26:20] Joe Daniel So to me, it means hybrid back. I don’t think that’s official. I’ve never thought of as a halfback because to me, the halfback is a tailback. Herschel Walker was a halfback right, back in the day. Like that was what he was called. I think that that guy gets the ball. Our h-back is just a hybrid lineman, tight end fullback receiver.

[00:26:46] Daniel Chamberlain True. I mean, hybrid is the ultimate word for it, right? Because it needs to be all of those in one embodied in one person.

[00:26:51] Joe Daniel He’s the only guy on your offense that is regularly going to kick out and run a deep route. In our passing scheme, in our base passing scheme, he is responsible for running the corner route and smash concepts. He is also responsible for being the kick out and power.

[00:27:07] Daniel Chamberlain Gotta find that dude, right,

[00:27:08] Joe Daniel He’s that guy.

[00:27:10] Daniel Chamberlain So now I hope, hopefully you have a better understanding of what you’re looking forward to. Using H-back, we’re burning through here. So now it’s really talk about how you can add an h-back to your system. And like I said before, you might already be using one, right? If if you have a slot and you run an orbit motion or jet motion or constantly yoyos or what you call a return motion. Any of that stuff, if you’re moving a lot, chances are you’ve probably put that person in a position to block at some point, which means you probably already have an h-back. You just haven’t named it that. Or maybe you have in your an episode going, that’s not what I think he is, but uh, yeah.

[00:27:44] Joe Daniel So I see that. I see that wing back the weak side wing back. Now I know a lot of guys run them left and right. But when you’re looking at a wing T that the halfback or he’s the wing right, not the wing. He’s the part of the team, not the guy that’s broken at one hundred and one hundred formation Delaware wing T. He’s the guy standing behind the tackle. The fullback is the guy standing behind the quarterback. The wing back is the guy standing next to the tight end up there. He’s the guy standing behind the tackle who gets the ball a lot, but who also is the ISO blocker on a belly, right? He also can go line up in a red and blue at a wing position, and he can run a go route. He can run a drag route. He can do. He can be in there and he can be in your projection. So you know, if you’re in a wing, you don’t call him that, probably. But he’s already doing that. A lot of us. It’s a personnel package. So again, what we’re looking for in an h-back, and I guess it was kind of looping back to what is an h-back. What we are looking for is the guy that we have multiple. You can’t figure out what personnel package we’re in because he is all the personnel. So like I said, we work out of eleven personnel. It’s an 11 personnel offense, 11 personnel. For those that don’t know, one back, one tight end. OK. Now he can come in and line up as a tight end. Now we’re 12 personnel. He can come in and get in the backfield. Now we’re twenty one personnel, so it’s the ability to be multiple in our offense without having to necessarily use personnel packages. Now, if we don’t have that guy, as I said earlier, we will have to use personnel packages. But the benefit of finding that guy is you can’t personnel us because you don’t know where he’s going to be right? And then you’re going to go, Well, I’m going to look at your formations and you’re going to have tendencies in your formations. Absolutely. Except for I run 19 formations and it changes every week, right? I don’t. I didn’t use to do that, but I do. I ran it around too many formations and shapes and motions this year because even I was getting confused with them. But again, we smoke, mirrored it and it. It worked. It got us. It got a productive offense that probably shouldn’t have been but it. We have the ability to line up in a lot of different formations. Formations or cheap plays are expensive. We’re still only running five or five run plays, five drop back pass plays, two quick games. You know, I do it from

[00:30:14] Daniel Chamberlain All over the place, right?

[00:30:15] Joe Daniel Yeah. And you know, you’re not going to be able to just personnel it or formation, right?

[00:30:21] Daniel Chamberlain I think the most prominent use of H-back and excuse me, in high school in my area is probably the sniffer and I don’t know who brought it into the area, but that is something that has really grown like even at the collegiate level. I mean, I talked about how they’ve used a sniffer for, like the last five years. Maybe just Lincoln Riley come in and that was his offense, but and the way that they use it, man, it’s just been pretty awesome to watch him. Like you said in power, right? Because now I can put him behind the tackle and guard with a tight end to that side and my tight end can stand and block. And I just, you know, I’m pulling and guarding an h or counter the same way that we’re doing the backside duo play, I know duo has been kind of taken off here, high schools trying to put it in now. Coach Guidetti down in Texas is really making it famous on YouTube. I’m sure he’s not the only one. He’s the one that I’ve seen the most of. And so people are using H-back for that because I need to gain an additional blocker. I need an extra double team. Where am I going to get it from if I put a tight end there, you’re lining up and making it hard. OK, so then we just use this guy behind and see how you play. You have to expect him to be a receiver. You have to expect him to be a running back of sorts. And then truly, we’re just using him as an extra line. So those are all places. If you’re running and you’re probably run in zone or you’re running power, probably have one of those in your wheelhouse, right? And so that’s a place you can really use this h-back and change the defensive linemen, get them out of the advantageous line up against whatever you’re trying to do.

[00:31:46] Joe Daniel Yeah, one of my favorite things with the h-back is our h-back, I always tell him he’s responsible for the number three. It’s usually the backside number three because we usually tend to run inside zone away from him, not always outside zone, but inside zone. We tend to run away from we like to run on the tight end. The tight end is usually a better blocker. Normally, our tight end is a very good blocker and has hands and can catch. But he is probably closer to being a sixth offensive lineman than the back is right. But what I can do with that h-back is okay, I can line him up and say I want to run the zone to the right. I can get my tight end into the right and I call inside zone to the right, and I put my h-back on the left at the wing position and he’s going to block the number three in our count. He’s going to get his play side number OK, I can then move him to an inside position, a tight, a fullback. I can move him into a, you know, I can move him into a zero alignment, which is a fullback position on i-formation. I can put him in a sniffer on the left and he can kick out to the left and we’re still running zone under the right now. I can put him over to the right and this is where misdirection comes in, because now I put him over to the right, which we usually run power. Then we run counter, we run counter. The h-back still is the rapper per counter and we go to the left. So now you’re following the h-back. Now our run zone to the right from h-back kicks out to the left. You’re either running away from my zone, going to the right or you’re not paying attention. The back is making the cut back line bigger because he’s got that angle to kick out and now I can hit the cut back.

[00:33:15] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, I like what you said about using the opposite of your zone because, you know, he didn’t have to be the best blocker. But if he gets just a chip shot on, you know, your most dangerous man, your guy, your outside backer, trying to fly in and hit the cut back line, you just kind of got to get in his way and in, you’re opening that up, right?

[00:33:31] Joe Daniel Yeah. So and he’s look, he’s a guy who is blocking. He works with the offensive linemen, right? But he’s not in a three-point stance. He’s in a two-point stance because he moves so much. I can’t put his hand down. I mean, I could put his hand down, and when I line them up a tight end on the ball, we just put it on tag like he moves on one scrimmage and there’s the X moves off when I do that. He does put his hand out, but I don’t do that very much. And usually he’s in a two point, but he’s spending the majority of his time working on kick-out block, right? So he may not be as good as your tackle at getting into a base block and moving his feet, driving you out. But the good ones love it when you don’t know he’s coming that that’s your H-back.

[00:34:16] Daniel Chamberlain You know, alignments coming right. You have enough time. You get a down block. You know, alignments coming. But that little dude,

[00:34:22] Joe Daniel It’s the h-back coming and throwing his full body at you that that is really I love. We don’t run it much. We run it in the past. But it’s a great, great play is the way I’m playing, where we are kicking a nose or a tackle. And I love that, especially with the with when you got that h-back, that’s a smaller, just tough kid just throwing his entire body at a 3-tech who doesn’t see him coming. And it’s like he doesn’t knock him down. He bounces off of him. But yeah, we need and a split second, right? Yeah, you love to see that kid just throw his whole body into a defensive tackle. And that’s what in an h-back can do that he can line up and he can iso a linebacker. He can do all of these things, and our most common alignment is either the wing or the sniffer. But in our formations. So two and three, our H-back has five, five base alignments, one, two three and four one to split out to the left. Two is the off tackle area. Talk about that in a minute. Three. To the left, three is the off tackle area to the right or is split out to the right. Zero is by formation. But his rule as far as where he lines up, if he’s in a sniffer or a wing is just like when we’re on defense aligned to perform. Where do you need to be to make that block? If I’m going to have you kick out, if I want to run power against a three stack and I’m going to have you kick out the overhang, oh, you can do that from a wide alignment, right? So whereas if I need you to kick out a six pack, you need to be in that guard tackle gap. And if I’m running outside zone, you need to be a wing. If I’m running hit seam, you need to be in a wing. But all of those is a two or three, and you just need to know where I need to be to make this block right,

[00:36:19] Daniel Chamberlain Which adds something we didn’t really talk about. Your scheme could determine metaphysics this last week zips it all over again, but your scheme could determine what you’re looking for in that h-back, right? Because he’s got to be able to know the plays. Like you said, they knew the blocking scheme better than the O-line, and that’s okay, too. That’s all he does. So it needs to be a fairly intelligent kid, someone who kind of ideally are comfortable with the X’s and O’s.

[00:36:40] Joe Daniel Now again, I’ve done it with an athlete who really didn’t know the scheme, who really wasn’t a great blocker, but was really an athletic threat. And you’re just working him differently. You’re you are. I’m making you back off. You’re not going to put nine in the box against that guy because he’s going to run by. He’s going to run over the top. So within your scheme, your offense, and this is the importance of a system. If your system can account for that h-back being a different guy every year, then you have a very good system. So maybe this year I’ve got a quarterback that can just sling it. So maybe I want an H-back who’s a little bit more receiver like, or maybe I’ve got a quarterback that can sling it, and I’ve got three all state receivers and I need an H-back who can protect me because I need my quarterback to have time to find one of those guys. It’s your system has to adapt to that personnel and be able to find somewhere in your gut. And I think this is the other thing about the back position is, again, Bill says James Farrier is your ideal man. No kidding. He’s also my ideal guard. He’s my ideal running back. He’s my ideal defense player, just 11, wherever he’s my ideal guy. But with no matter what we did with our offensive system, with the h-back, the way we use, no matter what you have, you can find the right guy or potentially the right two guys for that position. You can find you can fill this position and then we’ll adapt your play, calling your formations and all those things to the guy that you find, right? I run h around love h around. It’s basically rocket toss, OK? It’s basically it. Well, the way that we run it is a fast truck task. It’s basically rockets. We kind of concept. I love it. I read it one time with our h-back in 2017. He got tackled for a one yard loss. Whatever one, maybe a maybe gain. I think he gained a yard because it was like the first time he touched the ball. This is a Typekit. This is the kid with all the paint knocked off their helmet. You know this was a tough kid while he was playing corner on defense. I don’t have that answer, but he got that football and he was like, If I don’t do something with this, they’re never going to let me touch the football again. And he turned up and he got two yards, but it wasn’t there. You know, he ran some kid over. Some kid paid the price for him being like, I got to get positive yardage right

[00:39:10] Daniel Chamberlain Earn my keep here.

[00:39:11] Joe Daniel But that just changed, like is the tallest one of my favorite plays. Yes, it wasn’t the guy for it, so we just didn’t call it right. Call it one because I liked him.

[00:39:20] Daniel Chamberlain So you mentioned earlier, you know, you’re not going to stack nine in the box against someone with an h-back. And that’s that kind of goes back to how can you put one in your system if you don’t have one? Now, if you’re a two tight guy all the time or you constantly have two backs in the backfield like this is a great place for you to put it in your h-back and let them go to work right back that tight end off the line put in a kid who can block some. But now you have a whole other threat, and maybe you have two giant titans who can block and also, you know, get out on a corner or whatever. But it gives you the opportunity to give that person eyes up at the linebacker level in order to see if they do need to pass block who’s come in like you mentioned earlier. It’s my standing up there, their eyes in the dirt. Maybe it’s a little harder for them, but letting them have that freedom to kind of move, move around and get open quicker. So that’s somewhere. Also, if people are stacking up on you because you’re fairly run, have you starting, like you said, in the sniffer and the movement to slot like him out? No one’s going to leave the box, you know, closed off or if they do hit him.

[00:40:22] Joe Daniel So nothing, nothing will help your defense more. Well, the only thing that will help your defense more is getting ridiculously simple. But if your defense is struggling and you’ve gotten simple, actually, if your defense, if you’re offense, the. First thing is getting ridiculously simple, executing your place, putting in, you know, to run schemes, which is what we have and getting great at them, one pass protection scheme and getting great at it. A couple of past concepts getting great at them. Learning how to pre-snap. Read getting your players to a position where to a place where they know what’s happening. The other thing nothing else will help your defense more than getting the help your offense more than getting the defense to move. Make them adjust. Make them check. Make them communicate, make them check out and check back in. Everybody works on checking. Everybody works on what I do when they go from 2×2 to 3×1, right? Yep. How many times do we work on 2×2 to 3×1 to 2×2? Very little. Very little. Very make them move. Make them talk. High school players hate to communicate, and that h-back will allow you to do that.

[00:41:33] Daniel Chamberlain Well, man, we’ve kind of bumped through our deal here. The timer says we’re out of time.

[00:41:40] Joe Daniel I got one minute like I thought we did pretty good

[00:41:45] Daniel Chamberlain You’re witnessing audibly the first time we’re ever going to make our time. Yes, I hear you talk about how we’re going to make our topic for the next two minutes.

[00:41:54] Joe Daniel So we’ve talked about it a lot. The pistol power offense, obviously, this is not intended to be a feature of the pistol feature show on the pistol power offense, but the H-back is such a critical part of our offensive system. I think that whatever offensive system you’re using, you can find you’ve got four backs by back. You’ve got five guys that are eligible, right? Which one of those guys is the most versatile pick, the one who’s the most versatile and start moving him and using him in new ways? That’s an h-back. That’s all that it is. Like I said, a guy that can run a guy that can catch a guy that can play in the NFL. We don’t talk about h-backs, but Travis Kelsey, Rob Gronkowski, these guys can walk, they can catch, they can run, they can do all of these things. And they’re some of the most important players in, Oh, there we go. This is the pitch. This is OK. These guys are so important in an offense they can do so much for your offense. Find a guy that’s versatile. Get him moving. Get him doing some different things. If you want to see how the h-back works within an offense, check out the pistol power offense system. It’s included as part of JDFB Coaching Systems. You can get access for $1. You don’t have to run the offense to get something out of it and also get access to four defensive systems, including the 4-2-5, the 4-3, the 33 stack and the 3-4 defense system, which is getting a full overhaul right now. Module one Module two is out already on coverage. As you’re listening to this Module two is out on the coverage package, a very detailed. We’ll be adding video. There’s not a ton of game film right now, but we’re going to be adding more game film as we go. So be on the lookout for that, but very detailed and 3-4 like. So I think I’m getting better at this stuff as time goes on. So for $1, you can check it out. Go to join.JoeDanielFootball.com. If this is your first time listening to The Football Coaching Podcast., make sure you subscribe in your podcast of your choice. We are on SoundCloud, we are on Stitcher, we are on Apple Podcasts, we are on Spotify and we are wherever you get your podcasts absolutely free, check us out. Subscribe, don’t miss any episodes. We have new episodes every week and if you’ve been listening for a while, please go and leave a review. Apple podcast is the place to go to do that. Huge, huge help. Greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate you doing that and getting the word out to more coaches.

[00:44:05] Daniel Chamberlain Social media. I’m on it. You are.

[00:44:08] Joe Daniel I am @footballinfo on Twitter and I am @JoeDanielFootball on Instagram. And I tell you that because I like Instagram better. And so if I ever actually start working on my social media, it will be on Instagram. Daniel likes Twitter.

[00:44:23] Daniel Chamberlain I do. I do the twitter’s just to stay away from the rest of them. I just picked one. The podcast has a Twitter @theFBCP spelled out in my head. It’s OK. It’s not a big deal.

[00:44:35] Joe Daniel The Football Coaching Podcast.

[00:44:37] Daniel Chamberlain You can at that go check it out. It’s there. We have pictures and everything. Still, not a lot of content to see me tagging at a bunch. If you are on Twitter, oh, I am @CoachChamboOK. If you’ve listened this long, you know that we’re like Marvel. At this point, we put stuff at the end after he’s paid the bills, but we are going to be sending out a form via Twitter. It is a Google form for you to fill out. It’s pretty simple administrative data and then just kind of some experience. And what you think that you were football smart about. What we’re looking for is just people to come on every once in a while. We have an opening to be a guest probably give you about a week or two notice to kind of let you know, Hey, this is what we’re looking at. Timeline wise, we try to schedule to where everyone’s free. We’ll see how that goes. Scheduling can sometimes be tricky. Point is, if you think that you have what it takes to come on and talk with us, which takes a little literally nothing, I am. I don’t have skill, so I’m here. But you can fill out the form, put your interest on there. And then as we come to that topic, we will shoot your email or text or whatever. We’ll get a hold of you. So if you want to come on, we want to talk with us. Fill out the form. We’re going to log all that data and we’ll get back to you as needed,

[00:45:47] Joe Daniel But you only get 48 minutes to talk. The time the timer is off, the timer comes down and it’s done.

[00:45:54] Daniel Chamberlain If you’re long winded, let us know. We’ll split it up to two different visits.

[00:45:57] Joe Daniel All right, there’s going to do it. Anything else? All right. That’s going to be it. Thanks for listening to The Football Coaching Podcast. Remember coach simple, play fast, win.