This is dope and very interesting. The guy is 77-17 I believe at this HS. I can see Beamer instituting this system. This vid is on On Sides KO's but they rarely punt either. He is sharp!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3UUtMeHKsI&feature=player_embedded
Copy and paste to your browser if the url does not take. Well worth it. It was 29-0 in the fist qtr. and the opposition has not run an offensive play.
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Yeah, advanced stats have shown that coaches should be more aggressive in terms of going for it and doing onside kicks, though probably not this aggressive...
Let's say this guy is good enough to ensure that his system works 90% of the time. That would be an impressive record to say the least. But, let's say you also know almost without a doubt that the system will backfire 1 out of 10 times. That pretty much means the team is guaranteed to be good but not great. So, I'm surprised a Duke or similar program hasn't implemented a similar system to make an exciting stir. However, I don't see any traditional powers ever going this route because at the end of the day they are striving for perfection.
If it worked 90% of the time, it would be AWESOME.
In college football, no way it works 90% of the time.
It was just a hypothetical number and I was referring to win percentage. My point being that it almost guarantees certain games that it will backfire even if the overall win percentage appears appealing at first glance.
Coach speak: "this was a team we have a lot of respect for, a coach we have a lot of respect for."
Real talk: "f*** those guys!"
According to this article, onside kicks are successful 20% of the time in the NFL when expected. Approximately 60% of the time when unexpected. College numbers are similar, but slightly more successful (I saw somewhere 25% success rate for onside kicks). If you onside every time, a 20-25% success rate isn't great, considering a FG is near assured when failed at the collegiate level. But, sure, for HS, why not.
As for a no punt strategy, we'll leave that to the chop-blockers from Atlanta. No thanks.
How could you see Beamer instituting that system? Field position battle is what Beamer believes is paramount. This is the complete opposite
SLH..that was tongue in cheek.
Mike Leach was super-aggressive early on at Texas Tech and didn't punt much. As his teams got better he got slightly more conservative because the big teams tended to eat his lunch.
Not punting at all works really well in high school because it's high school-level talent. It probably wouldn't work as well at the higher levels as teams adjusted and became more aggressive on defense. There is solid evidence that you should never punt when you're on your opponent's side of the field.
Real Sports profiled this guy a few years ago. His strategy is very sound. He coaches at a small school so he doesn't have big numbers. I believe his roster was less than 25 players. He did the analytics on punting vs. going for it and determined he would be better off long-term never punting. And he never wavers from the approach. Also, he always onside-kicks following a score. He has a great reason for it. High school teams don't see it much and the fact that his team does it forces the opponent to spend much of their minimal practice and preparation time working on recovering onside kicks instead of their normal offensive and defensive preparations. It is well thought-out and proven to work.
It's what you'd call a gimmick, and it works because it's a gimmick. If teams start to prep for it, suddenly it won't work as well.
Literally every significant development in the game of football came about through someone first using it as a gimmick to gain an advantage. At one point, the forward pass was a gimmick.
For clarification, I don't think this is the wave of the future for football. But the word gimmick gets thrown around by football fans way too much. When you have all teams playing by the same rules with the same number of players, coaches will always look for different interpretations to find an advantage. Frank did it in the 90s when he put starters on special teams and gave way more practice time to that aspect of the game. People called it a gimmick, now all the successful programs are serious about ST.
The game evolves, and that evolution is driven by gimmicks.
I don't see this as the same thing as focusing a lot of attention on special teams.
This is basically one trick play, there is a pretty high cost when it doesn't work.
You call it a gimmick. I call it a strategic advantage. Clearly it works in Arkansas prep football.
Yes, I call it a gimmick.
The book, Scorecasting, has an interesting chapter on this coach and his philosophy. I highly recommend the book as it addresses other common "facts" everyone knows, such as the impact of crowd noise, D winning championships, etc. As an engineer and post grad econ major I geeked out reading it. 4 buckeye leafs or turkey legs if you prefer...
Who could possibly prefer a poisonous 4-leaf salad to 4 giant, savory, turkey legs?