Note:  Last weekend I attended the annual USC / Nike coaching clinic in Los Angeles. The clinic consisted of a Friday USC football practice session, a barbecue dinner, and then USC coaching presentations in the evening until nearly midnight. Saturday is an additional full day of presentations by other coaches such as Jim Kunau of Orange Lutheran High School, Mike Stoops of Arizona, Rocky Long of New Mexico, and others.

Other than watching the high intensity USC practice the highlight for me personally was listening to Pete Carroll and then hearing the various members of the coaching staff present on different topics. Some of the USC coaching sessions run concurrently so you can’t attend every single one. Since I figured the offense would be under the most scrutiny in 2007 I opted to attend the QB Coach / Offensive Coordinator session run by Steve Sarkisian. Video taping and recording devices were allowed so I shot a good part of the session. He presented for about an hour and then he showed some nice footwork drills in particular for QB’s that I might try to edit those down and post later as time allows. For now however I’ll provide a general summary of the notes and video I took during the session. Any errors in communication are my own of course. I’ll insert my own specific comments in italics for clarity in certain places. Here is a shortened summary of the first hour from Coach Sarkisian's presentation.

• Regarding USC’s Overall Offensive Philosophy

We are a pro style offense with multiple formations and personnel sets. We will present you with a multitude of different personnel looks, formations, shifts, and motion during the game. We pride ourselves in being a balanced offense. By “balanced” I of course mean that we will force the opposition to defend both the run game and the passing game. We do not want our offense to be one dimensional and to become easier to defend. That is how you open things up in reality by not allowing the defense to make you one dimensional. The UCLA, Oregon State, and Michigan games you saw this year where we threw the ball a lot were out of necessity. That is not the goal of our offense. However those were adjustments made at the time required by the circumstances. It is more important we have found over the years to run a few plays well than it is to run lots of plays poorly. We want to run the USC offense and play with confidence at all times. We build in confidence by the way we practice and by the way we compete here every single day.

• Regarding USC’s Rushing Attack

What makes any rushing attack work is the offensive line. Pat Ruel is our offensive line coach and presenting next door for those interested. USC is primarily a zone running team in terms of rush attack. We have an inside zone run and an outside zone run that we will use either to the left or to the right. We can run this out of our two back sets or our one back sets. While that is our primary rushing identity we will still pull and trap and run other plays such as the toss sweep or the draw play as well. I won’t speak about these topics in this session unless there are specific questions.

• Regarding USC’s Passing Attack & WR’s

We have been blessed with tremendous wide receivers here in the program the last few years and Lane Kiffin has done an outstanding job developing these players. Our current young crop of kids is no different and we are excited to see what they can do this year. We run multiple WR sets such as Doubles, Trips, 2 TE alignments, 4 and 5 WR sets. We don’t utilize a passing tree in the strict sense. I mean we don’t describe our patterns with numbers as most schools do. We use names to define the route such as “Z Drive” or “Y Option”, etc. (There was an audience question about the Y option routes). Frankly we had to decrease usage of that particular play last year as we did not have a lot of receivers capable of reading the defense correctly and running that route. Those “dumb” passes where you see the ball thrown somewhere and no one is near by? Those are blown reads either by the QB or by a receiver who did not adjust and run the right route. Then everyone looks dumb and we wasted a down on those. Steve Smith was the only one capable last year for the WR group of consistently making these reads correctly. Desmond Reed was the only running back capable of running an option receiving route out of the backfield last year and he was not at full strength. The rest could not execute it without making mistakes in practice let alone games. So that particular pass play type was used less last year in games. They all could and did make simpler reads of course like on our one step hitch route that Mike Williams made famous for us. On those like most schools when the CB plays press coverage the WR simply runs a slant route. If the CB is off we’ll run the hitch route instead. That route depends upon the player making the correct read.

• Regarding USC QB’s

I’ll spend more time here since I expect that is what most people are interested in. For starters here is a list of 10 things we look for in a quarterback.

#1 Be a leader at all times. I was a QB in college and from personal experience the number one most over-rated aspect of being a successful QB is arm strength. The second is height. At least in college. The most important is leadership ability. Give me a natural born leader and he will nearly always find a way to win the game for you. Plays break down, offensive line protection breaks down, players make mistakes. What makes successful QB’s at our level is the guy who can think and react on the run and make plays work when stuff breaks down. On an aside note that was the main difference between Matt Leinart and Matt Cassell. Matt Cassell had the same work ethic, was as good at film study, as good at making defensive reads, did as well in normal situational practice as Leinart, and had better arm strength. But when plays broke down in practice and the QB had to invent a solution Leinart clearly had the edge and that is no knock on Cassell. We are thrilled for him and how he is doing in the NFL with the Patriots. Guys now know that even if you are the back up here at USC you can play in the NFL. This is just my way of telling you the #1 thing the coaches and I am looking for is a guy who can be a leader and create on the fly when things go wrong or break down as well as function during more normal times. That is the sort of fellow you most want at QB – a leader and a winner.

#2 Master your trade. By this I mean the QB has to prepare and work hard in order to become a great player. He has to put in more film time, more study effort, more work and more training than anybody else off the field. Guys that don’t like to work or study hard are not going to succeed in an offense as complex and demanding as ours is here at USC.

#3 Play fast. You can’t waste time as a quarterback in our system. You have to play fast and practice fast both mentally and physically. This is one area where QB’s always get better at from year one to year two. Getting people up to the line of scrimmage and not having the clock already near zero.

#4 Don’t waste plays. On average you only get 60-70 or so plays per game. We can not afford for whatever reason to waste a lot of those snaps because of mistakes or errors. The team that makes the fewest errors tends to win the game.

#5 Protect the football at all times. You heard Head Coach Pete Carroll talk about his philosophy and holding onto the football. Turnovers kill you in any game. We teach our QB’s again and again to take care of the ball. This means lot’s of different things. It means not forcing the ball down field into coverage and making and interception. It means keeping the ball high and tight if you have to run with the ball. It means sliding properly and not exposing the ball. It means having pocket awareness and not letting the ball get knocked out of your hands when you are being rushed. Limit turnovers and mistakes and you will win most games.

#6 Game management. This means that the QB has to understand our goals and plans for the game as well as the coaches at the high level. What are we trying to accomplish versus this team? What are our advantages and their liabilities. At the more detailed level it means always knowing down and distance, the score, time remaining in the game, time remaining on the clock. It means knowing all the check down plays and how to get out of bad match ups at the line of scrimmage.

#7 Understand the defense. The QB has to be able to read both the defensive front seven and the secondary. This only comes from repeated film study and work at practice. It is how to spot the front seven coverage. It is a 4-3 over, or a 4-3 under? Most of the time we face either the over, under, even aspect of the 4-3, or an eagle or bear look, or a true odd style 3-4 front. The QB has to spot the main secondary coverage patterns at a glance e.g. Cover 1, 2, 3, 4, or the man under variations of these in addition to all the special variations each team runs. He has got to know our best match up versus their weakest link on every play. The QB is the final decision maker at the line of scrimmage and not the coaches. You want to know what football really is? It is a bunch of special situations. It is how we use our 60-70 snaps on 1^st and 10, 2^nd and 8, 3^rd and 2. The QB has to be a master of understanding what special situation we are in and what the defensive coverage schemes and vulnerabilities are for each one. We spend endless hours working on them with this off the field. This is something again where experience and having a second year quarterback starting make a ton of difference.

#8 Direct the running game. The QB has to know for each run play what formation, what personnel, what motion and shifts, what fronts we run what play against, what checks we use at the line of scrimmage to get out of a bad play, and what keepers we run. If he is going to run the he also has to sell that play like a naked bootleg effectively for it to work.

#9 Direct the passing game. Our QB has to play within the system. The difference between a 55% passer with a bunch of interceptions and losses or a 68% passer with a bunch of touchdowns and wins is mastering the check down plays. It is not forcing the ball down field into double coverage looking for the “big play”. Trust me I speak from experience. (He may have been alluding to the Carson Palmer situation in the past here at USC as well as his own days at BYU where he was a 65%-69% in 1995 & 96. I could not tell.). The QB has to read the secondary especially the safeties and also be aware of where the blitz might come from at all times. The QB has to be alert and ready to make any adjustments at the line of scrimmage. At the line of scrimmage he has both “alerts” and “kills” that he has to call an audible on depending upon the situation. He has to yell at the “slap dicks” who always seem to go the wrong place or forget the play and their responsibility. He needs to do all this and yet stay aggressive, take his shots down field when they are open, move around in the pocket or run if forced to, and know when to throw the ball away. In addition the QB should not allow any sacks. Here at USC we think the QB is as responsible for the sack as the offensive line. The QB has to know how to get rid of the ball and not take a sack.

#10 Play with confidence. I can’t say it enough. The team feeds off the confidence of the quarterback. The QB has to know the play I signal in, know how to call it in the huddle, how to run it at the line, how to check out if it won’t work against the defense, and how to direct his offense on the field with confidence. I tell you it is the hardest job in the world and from personal experience I can tell you it is also the most fun when you know what you are doing.

End Note: The meeting went on for another hour and a half with some video on foot work drills for the QB, and film cut ups of big pass plays from the past couple of seasons. A high number of the big pass plays were indeed when the protection broke down, the QB moved up, sideways, or out of the pocket to buy time and then found a receiver down field. This accentuated the points that Coach Sarkisian made in the presentation and the footwork drill video clips. Then there were probably also about 15-20 questions Sark fielded on what plays to run in what situations from high school coaches and other topics. Sark handled them all pretty effortlessly…It was very, very impressive to watch and listen to.