How to Make the Proper Pitch in Football Option Plays

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson, for Expert Village. What we want to talk about now is when running the option play it is very important for the quarterback to read the defense to see what's going to happen. Once he makes the decision to pitch it to the tailback there's a certain way you have to pitch the option. It's a couple of different things. One is that there is a lot of balance involved so that if he goes to throw the option and he gets hit he has to be well balanced when he throws the option so he doesn't get hit off balance. The other thing is he doesn't want to throw a high pitch to the player or a low pitch to the player. He wants to be able to look at the player and throw it right in the player's numbers so he makes a good pitch. He also wants to throw with the outside arm. We're going to show you what this looks like as we walk through it (video demo). First of all, on the option he has to sell the fake to the fullback. Once the fullback goes through he'll come down the line. You can see he'll try to stay good and balanced and low. Once he reads that this guy is coming up on him the first thing he wants to do is the jab step. He wants to get this guy to come to the inside to try to get him to make a decision on whether he wants to tackle him or not. Then he'll step with that outside foot and then he's going to make the flip right into the chest of the tailback. He's probably going to brace himself to get hit pretty hard. It's very important for the quarterback to throw that pitch in that fashion. We don't want him to try to pitch down because if he gets hit that ball will come loose and he'll fumble. So, he has to be able to pitch it with that outside arm keeping that defender away. That's the way to make a proper pitch in the option."