There are several bootleg VHS tapes made several years ago when Norm Chow was at BYU that float around the high school coaching community. I saw a copy of one where Norm gave a 3 hour presentation to some local coaches and let someone tape it I guess. A friend has a copy and loaned it to me for a week. I listened twice took some notes and sent it back. It is pretty refreshing stuff and not all that mysterious. I"ll list the highlights below for those interested. The tape is roughly one hour on pass protection, one hour on passing plays, and one on hour run plays with Q&A. It is lecture format with diagrams drawn up on a white board.  Any errors in communication are my own.

Opening Notes From the Presentation:

Just so you know there is no "Norm Chow offense" everything here we do stems down from Lavelle Edwards and some things I have picked up from other coaches and NFL programs over the years. I willl tell you what I have figured out over the years and I hope some of it works for you.

We are a non-conventional attack here by necessity. We can't recruit many big skill kids here or speed players at running back, etc. If I could we would but we can't do that here very well so we have to defy conventional wisdom to succeed. We throw a lot of short passes on first down, run more on second down, and then adapt on third down as needed etc. For us the short pass on first down is the equivalent of a run play.  That is just the head coaches philosophy.

I'll talk today mainly about a very few things. If you execute a few plays very well you will play good ball and have a chance to win. If you can't execute those things well then it won't matter much what you do as offensive coordinator.

I am a former offensive lineman myself by background and played at Utah. I played briefly for two years on the offensive line up in the CFL for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

I coached in high school in Hawaii then came to BYU as a graduate assistant. I coached WR's and then QB's, and then in 1982 became the co-offensive coordinator. Now I am assistant head coach, offensive coordinator and QB coach. Lavelle Edwards has been very good to me and I am loyal to him and that is why I am still here.

I'll cover in order today pass protection, our basic pass plays, and then our basic run plays here at BYU. You will quickly realize it is very basic stuff despite what a lot of people seem to think in the public and media. I hope you get some use out of it.

Hour 1 - Pass Protection Notes:

We'll start here since it is the most important area for our attack. We don't run block as well as we pass block here. A lot of that again is what we are able to recruit and practice successfully here. And given how much we throw on first down etc. protecting the QB is paramount. You guys all know how it is the O-line protects the QB and he has time to make a play and you both look like a hero. If the QB has no time to throw then things go south fast suddenly the QB is a bum and you are a dumb coach. Because of its importance I'll spend most my time with you first covering our protection schemes for our short three step drop routes, 5 step drop routes and the few longer drops we sometimes take.

Defenses today are extremely difficult and confusing though so we'll talk a lot about pass protection adjustments. The blitz looks they throw at us are increasingly complex and we have to account for where the unblocked man is coming from. It you don't do this the play won't work no matter what you draw up on the board or call down to the field.

On an aside this is where I sort of screwed up with Steve Young the first QB I really worked with here at BYU. I only taught him to read the secondary coverage and not the front seven. At the time I thought that was the responsibility of the offensive line. It worked in college but he struggled terribly his first few years in the NFL because of this. The 49ers worked on this with him though and fortunately it all worked out for him in the end and he is a great QB. He still lives down the street from me and I've course corrected since then and taught the QB's a lot more about reading the front seven as well as the secondary coverage.

Note: At this point there are 45 minutes of basic play diagrams, adjustments, and how BYU pass protects. It would be too much effort to draw the different diagrams but it is very plain stuff. The backs stay in and account for the LB's and then release into the pattern if their man does not come. Exotic blitzes (CB's and combination stuff) have a hot receiver and if there are more rushers than defenders either dump the ball off to a hot receiver or throw the ball away and don't take the sack.  It deals with solid protection, fan protection, slide protection and mix protection schemes.  That is the gist of it with lots of adjustments. The changes to calls on pass protection once the huddle is broke are all made by the O-line and not the QB.

Hour Two - Passing Play Notes:

Okay now if you can pass protect you stand a decent chance of throwing the ball downfield.

We use the same eight or so basic passing tree routes as everyone else in football it is no different. We didn't invent any of them here I just adapt and pick and choose to fit our personnel each year.

Repetition and timing is the key to success with young QB's and WR's in the passing game. You can't throw a lot at them early on or they'll just make mistakes. This is why we sometimes have to emphasize running fewer types of plays than more in practice. It makes my job harder on game day though in that in order to confuse people we use lots of motion and different formations to make things look different.

The 49ers and Bill Walsh emphasized a lot of motion in the NFL a few years back and a lot of that has trickled down to the college ranks. Motion makes the play look different, it helps you get better blocking angles on some plays, and it sometimes makes the defense declare its defense (i.e. man versus zone). I'll put the fullback in motion, the tailback in motion, the x, the y, the z receiver all of them will go in motion. Anything to help confuse the defense, make them declare the defense, or disguise the play.

80% of our pass offense is about eight different pass plays for simplicity but because of the motion and the formation changes it looks like 80 plays to some people. For example we'll put a guy in motion and throw the slant route. We'll do this out of a one back 2 TE set, a two back set, a three receiver set, etc. I'll put the receivers on the one side and then on the other. Anything to make it "look" different to the defense so they have to keep guessing.

After protection timing is the key to making a lot of the passing game work. Routes come in increments of 0.8, 1.2, 1.6, 2.0, 2.4 seconds etc. based upon the route type he is running. The QB often has to throw on timing and assumption that the WR will be there. We work a lot on WR route running and exact route timing because a tenth of a second off and the play does not work. This is why we drill so hard and emphasize both timing and pass protection here.

Also we try to teach the QB to go through all his progressions in a certain order. The routes are designed to open up at different timing increments and sometimes from left to right and sometimes from right to left. They have to open at different times and places. They can't all open at once. You can draw great routes up on paper but if the QB has to look left, right, left right, all over the place etc. it generally won't work.

As QB's mature we coach them to audible more at the line of scrimmage. The more experienced QB's do this a lot and check out of certain plays. The defenses these days are so smart they show you one look and then they switch and the play we called suddenly won't work any more. An experienced QB spots this and changes the play call at the line of scrimmage. The younger ones sometimes try and force the play and learn the hard way. We go over this with them on film after the game and they learn by making mistakes. Experienced QB's might be changing our play calls 30-40% of the time some games it just depends and we give them full authority to do this in our offense since they are the decision maker on the field.

Note: The lecture continues next with diagrams of several routes that BYU liked to run at the time. There is Q&A about most of the routes and adjustments. Some of the routes are option routes where what the WR runs depends upon how the DB plays him.  It is to specific to summarize easily.

Hour 3 - Run Play Notes

Okay we've gone over pass protection, basic passing plays and now we'll get into our basic run sets. You'll probably be disappointed to learn that we really only run four basic run plays here at BYU. They are variations of a draw play, a counter play, a trap play, and a power play. These four runs or variations account for 80% or more of our running game.

A lot of this is because of who we can recruit and what we can do well. Our power run game is not that effective. We pass block better than we run block. If I could recruit bigger, faster backs here I'd do it differently. With what we have we are forced by necessity to rely upon more deception and misdirection in the run and less on power. It is not ideal but it is necessary for our situation.

I try to set up most of the run plays to look like pass plays so the defense can not guess as well what is coming. We'll pass out of a split back formation with some WR motion and then come back a few plays later and run a draw play out of it as well.

We have a lot of little twists on our draw plays. Short draws, medium draws, sprint draws, QB draws. We do a lot of this with the QB under center and we also emphasize play action style plays. That helps us freeze the LB's and safeties for a split second or two. Every little bit helps. If you don't execute this well then the defense just sits on the draw play and stuffs them for a 2 yard loss. To avoid that I try to run the draw plays on less obvious situations, etc. We have never been a great run team to be all that honest and we'll never lead the NCAA in rushing.

Note: The next 45 minutes are examples of different draw plays, trap plays, power plays, counter plays, etc.

Final Q&A

There is a lot of stuff about goal line situations and two minute situations discussed in general. The is one interesting comment about play calling by Norm Chow and it is the only reference to play calling in the entire video.

Defense are so complicated today that frequently during the first half I don't have a clue what they are doing out there. We run a lot of plays in the first half just to see what the defense does in reaction and then we use that for decision making and adjustments in the second half. I have a graduate assistant up in the play box with me. I call him the "laptop guy" he charts everything in detail and we discuss it when we are on defense. It helps us see if the defense is staying with tendency against our plays and formations or if they are doing something different. It gets harder every year.  (Note: This was probably back in 1998 or 99)

Summary:

What I took out of this video is the following in no particular order.

1) An under appreciated fact about Norm Chow may be that he is a former offensive lineman and probably understands pass protection far better than most people from first hand experience.

2) Norm tries to keep things simple, and basic for the QB, and yet have many variations of a pattern or different adjustments.

3) There are a relatively few plays his teams run a lot (e.g. a Pareto rule) that make up 80% of the pass plays or run plays. Then there are a lot of special plays or adjustments that make up the remaining 20%.

4) To keep the defense from over attacking or spotting tendencies he likes to use a lot of motion and different formation while running the same basic play.

5) He teaches QB's to not force the ball into coverage and to just take what is open. In other words check down to the full back or even throw the ball away and avoid mistakes.

6) More experienced QB's will of course read the defense better and audible more. He encourages this 100% as they are the decision maker on the field.

7) The old BYU running game by necessity relied upon deception more than power due to the style of athletes they could recruit.

8) Norm values execution and keeping things simple. If it does not work in practice it is not magically going to work on game day. Don't call plays that you have not practiced and mastered in practice.

9) Even the best offensive coordinators like Norm Chow are at times stumped by the complex defenses of today. They'll run certain plays just to see what the defense does in reaction to make them give away a tendency for later in the game.

10) Norm was more interested in the video in talking about pass protection and pass plays it seemed than the run sets.