How to Avoid Losing Yards During an Option Play in Football

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson, for Expert Village. What we want to talk about now is when running the option play it can be a good, effective play but if we get too close to the sideline it could turn into something that's a loss of yardage or we don't pick up any gain. We want to run this play for positive yardage. So, there are a couple of things we want to talk about. As we're running the option, here's something we don't want to have happen (video demo). Sometime the defense will be able to string this play out wide. We don't want our quarterback and tailback to run so far to the outside that when he makes the pitch this guy is at the sideline. Once he makes the pitch the only option the running back has is to run out of bounds or get hit on the sideline. So, we don't ever want to throw a late pitch. We want to throw the pitch giving our tailback the chance to cut the ball up field and get positive yardage. The other thing we don't want to happen is when the quarterback goes to pitch it to the tailback, we don't want our tailback to catch the ball and string the play out. We don't want him to run and let this defensive end push him up and out of bounds losing yardage. So, the option can be a very effective play if used right. But, a couple of things to remember. We don't want to throw the ball late and we don't want to give that ball to the running back and have him run to the sideline for no gain or possible loss of yardage."