Alright, guys, so I wanted to dive into something a little different today – college football, and specifically, the “Air Raid” offense that Mike Leach used to run at Texas Tech. I’ve always been fascinated by how he could take a team that wasn’t always the most talented and just light up the scoreboard. So, I decided to spend some time digging into it.
First, I grabbed a bunch of old Texas Tech game footage. Let me tell you, that was a trip down memory lane! I watched games from the early 2000s, all the way up to when he left for Washington State. It was awesome seeing quarterbacks like Kliff Kingsbury and Graham Harrell just slinging the ball all over the field.
Then, I started taking notes. Seriously, pages and pages of notes. I focused on a few key things:
- How wide the receivers split out. It was crazy, sometimes they were practically on the sidelines!
- The different routes they ran. Lots of short, quick passes, but also some deep shots downfield.
- How the quarterback made his reads. It seemed like they always knew where to go with the ball.
Putting it all together
After all that watching and note-taking, I tried to piece it all together. It’s clear that Leach’s offense was all about creating space and getting the ball out quickly. He wanted to force the defense to cover the entire field, and he did it by spreading his receivers out as wide as possible.
It’s not rocket science, but it’s definitely effective. I even tried to draw up some of the plays on a whiteboard, just to see if I could understand the concepts better. My drawings were pretty rough, but it helped me visualize how everything worked.
So, that was my little deep dive into Mike Leach’s offense at Texas Tech. It was fun to revisit those games and learn a little bit more about how he did things. Maybe I’ll try to implement some of these ideas in my next flag football game… who knows!
