Air Coryell and How Lincoln Riley Compliments Stick with the Drive Concept
By Wesley Ross
When Don Coryell was the little known head coach of tiny Whittier College in the late 1950’s, he read a book called Spread Formation Football by Dutch Meyer, who was then the head coach at TCU. Meyer’s book laid out the systematic approach to his unique offense, which entailed 5 wide formations and regularly using the forward pass as a means of attacking defenses, ideas which were considered wildly contrarian at the time. Up until that point, Coryell had been one of the trailblazers of the run-centric power-I offense, but the book inspired him to think outside the box and in his third year at Whittier, he began toying with spreading out receivers and incorporated a more prominent passing element to his system. The spawn of an idea that would eventually grow to become known as “Air Coryell” had been born.
Although Meyer’s book opened up Coryell to the idea of tinkering with his passing attack, he was still a die hard proponent of the downhill running game, and the next season he took an assistant position with John McKay at USC, who popularized the use of the I-formation on a national level with plays like the infamous “Student Body Right”. The following season, Coryell became the head coach at San Diego State, which had gone a miserable 5-32 in the five seasons previous to his arrival. Over the next 11 years, the little known program served as the perfect laboratory setting for experimenting with his new ideas about offense. The evolution of Coryell’s system from ground and pound into a high flying attack however, was a slow one. In his first season at San Diego State, the Aztecs threw the ball a total of 127 times. Three years later it was 250. In 1972 (his final year at San Diego State) Coryell’s offense accounted for 327 passes. Joe Gibbs, who coached as an assistant for Coryell at San Diego State, explains in Tim Layden’s excellent book Blood, Sweat, and Chalk, “Don was a killer running coach. I formation, power running. Just killer. But then it’s amazing the transition that took place. Don switched to throwing it like mad, and he was very creative. He was not afraid to try anything.”
Like practically all football innovation, Coryell’s ideas came about as a result of necessity due to a deficit in talent. After a high level of success over his first five seasons at San Diego State (his record was 38-10), he became frustrated with still losing 2 games per year when their personnel seemed to be outmatched. He decided to level the playing field by doing what he read about in Meyer’s book years before-spreading receivers out and throwing the ball. Coryell turned to a heavier emphasis on the passing game, and the result was an astounding 55-9 record over the next 6 seasons. What would actually become one of Coryell’s most important contributions to the game, more so than the actual passing game itself, was the way in which he called his pass plays. San Diego State was a non-conference school, meaning that they weren’t confined to the typically stringent transfer rules that applied to most universities. As a result, his roster consisted largely of junior college transfers that would only be in the program for two years. Coryell needed a simple play calling methodology that could plug guys in and have them playing right away, so he implemented a 3 digit system for the passing game where each route was communicated with a number based off of a simple route tree. The higher the number, the longer the route. Even numbers were in breaking routes while odd numbers were out routes:
Following his success at the collegiate level (his overall record at San Diego State was 104-19-2), Coryell eventually made his way to the NFL, first with the St. Louis Cardinals before taking the job in San Diego as the Chargers head coach. This was where his Air Coryell offense ultimately came to fruition, with it’s strategic innovations creating a profound and long lasting impact on offensive football. The foundation of the Air Coryell attack in San Diego was based around stretching the defense vertically with the passing game. As quarterback Dan Fouts explained in The Game that Changed the Game, “The first thing in our offense was always the bomb. It was built into almost every pass play, where the QB initially looks for that chance to hit the big one. And I think if you start with that premise and work your way back toward the line of scrimmage, that’s the Air Coryell offense.” This was of course in sharp contrast to Bill Walsh’s popular West Coast offense of the time period, which was centered more around horizontal stretches that involved a quick, ball control passing game. Coryell’s offense wasn’t simply about a deep threat with a checkdown however. His philosophy placed a premium on spacing receivers at different levels across the field to create a layered, multifaceted passing attack predicated on timing and rhythm. He often liked to get all 5 eligibles out into the route concept, which required a tough quarterback willing to hang in the pocket and sometimes take hits. This is why a strong armed, hard-nosed quarterback like Fouts, and later guys like Troy Aikman and Kurt Warner, thrived playing in Coryell’s system.
Defenses often responded to the ever present threat of the vertical passing game by playing soft and conservative, which in turn opened up the power running game, allowing Coryell to incorporate his I-formation roots. This forced defenses into a pick your poison type of situation, one in which if they committed to stopping the passing game, the Chargers would simply hand the ball to Charlie Muncie, their 245 pound running back. This potent passing attack complimented by a power running game was, to a certain degree, the inception of the one back offense that Joe Gibbs would later go on to develop in Washington. Gibbs eventually evolved into using an H-back and placed an even heavier emphasis on the running game, majoring in plays like counter trey on the way to three superbowl wins.
Another central tenet of Coryell’s offense that created an even bigger headache for defenses was creating pre-snap unpredictability through multiple formations, shifts, and motions. The NFL had just enacted the Mel Blount rule in 1978, which banned the jamming of receivers after 5 yards. As Ron Jaworski details in The Games that Changed the Game, this created the ideal conditions for Coryell’s offense to flourish:
Those liberalized 1978 rules created the perfect climate in which to implement previously unseen formation shifts and men in motion. If defenders were allowed contact only near the line of scrimmage, why not have receivers moving prior to the snap, where they’d be almost impossible to jam? And why limit this to wideouts? Why not running backs or the tight end as well? Motion produced another benefit: if a defensive back or linebacker rotated with the moving player during pre-snap, there was a good indication that the defense was in man to man coverage. For a sharp QB like Fouts, knowing this even before the play began was a tremendous advantage.
On top of being forced into predictable looks pre-snap, Coryell further terrorized defenses by masterfully placing his personnel in unique positions to create mismatches. During that time period in the NFL, tight ends were confined to serving primarily as run blockers and occasionally running short hooks or flat routes. When the Chargers drafted Kellen Winslow in 1978, Coryell essentially created the modern tight end position by using him in ways that had never been seen before and that defenses were entirely unprepared to defend. Chargers assistant coach Al Saunders described Winslow as “a wide receiver in an offensive lineman’s body”, and in his role as the self described “knight of the chessboard”, Winslow was taken off the line of scrimmage and placed in different positions all over the field. He presented an especially tough matchup when aligned as the X receiver. At 6’4, 240 pounds with the skillset of an oversized receiver, he was given the freedom to run go routes and posts (something that no one else was doing with their tight end at the time) and was a complete size mismatch against a corner. If the defense decided to move a strong safety out to cover him, Winslow would simply run by him, as strong safeties in the late 70s/early 1980s of the NFL were not adept at playing coverage like they are in today’s game. It is often said that the NFL is a copycat league, and with Winslow’s success the rest of the league soon followed suit, ushering in the era of the modern tight end.
Coryell’s system went on to root itself throughout the league over the next few decades, with notable proteges like Joe Gibbs, Ernie Zampese, Norv Turner, and Al Saunders adding their own flavor to the offense and using it with great success. Mike Martz used Air Coryell in St Louis to break records with Kurt Warner at the helm leading the infamous “Greatest Show on Turf” offense. As Martz explained to Tim Layden in Blood, Sweat, and Chalk, the aggressive philosophy at the foundation of Coryell’s offense allowed him to stay ahead of NFL defenses that were developing new ideas like the zone blitz in the mid 90s: “With all the zone blitzes, what happened with offenses was they wanted to know where every defender was coming from, says Martz. So offenses got real conservative again. Keeping another receiver in to block, that sort of thing. We decided to do just the opposite, and that was all about the Coryell system. We spread’em out and said, ‘Good luck finding the guy we’re throwing to.”
One of the base plays of Coryell’s system in San Diego (and that Martz also extensively used with the Rams) that perfectly illustrates his layered approach to the passing game was the drive concept. Drive involves a dig paired with a shallow, with both routes originating from the same side of the formation and crossing to the other. Both the shallow and the dig, when run properly, are in and of themselves excellent man beater isolations. Against zone, these two routes paired together work to place the hook defender in a vertical stretch. The Chargers would typically run the drive concept out of a trips formation. Winslow at tight end would run the shallow route, while the dig was typically run by the #2 receiver. The #1 receiver would run a vertical to try and prevent the safety from robbing the dig. Quarterback Dan Fouts would first look to throw the shallow route. If the Mike (who in this example is the aforementioned conflicted hook defender) jumped the shallow, Fouts would then turn his attention to the dig. If for whatever reason the dig was covered, Charlie Joyner’s (one of the slower wide receivers in the league but a precise route runner) 20 yard comeback as the X receiver would serve as the de facto outlet for the play:
As Cody Alexander, author of Match Quarters, puts it when describing the ever evolving nature of football scheme-time is a flat circle; football is constantly recycling ideas, the only thing that changes is perspective. Lincoln Riley’s record setting offenses in Norman over the last few seasons have been among the most prolific in college football history and highlight how some of the strategies that Coryell and his disciples pioneered are now being implemented in the modern game. For example, much like how Coryell invented the “joker” position for Kellen Winslow, lining him up in different spots all over the field, Riley will use his own swiss army pocket knife of football positions with a hybrid tight end that can stay in and block or run routes. This tactic has become ubiquitous across the college football landscape in recent years, but arguably nobody has used it with more success than the Sooners. The use of versatile personnel that can line up in unpredictable positions and emphasizing counter as a focal point for the run game (much like Joe Gibbs did with the Redskins) have been key ingredients for Riley’s success at Oklahoma.
At a recent clinic, Riley detailed how the Sooners run their drive concept, which he refers to as “trail”. Similar to the way Coryell ran it years before, the foundation of the play is the high-low stretch created by the dig and the shallow. However, sticking with the philosophy of his air raid roots, Riley’s version features an alert route that allows the quarterback an opportunity to take a shot with the X receiver on a vertical as the first read in the progression. This alert route is designed to take advantage of a 1 on 1 matchup and force the defense to commit safety help. As Riley explained at the clinic, “That is one of the keys to the play that we are constantly telling our quarterbacks-don’t let them take away the X with one player. If we’ve got one on ones out there then we need to go. Make them cover to it. Make that cover 1 free safety fly over the top to take it away. Don’t let them play the X one on one on this concept. If you do that, you’ll get a lot of one on one shots, get the ball out of your hands, take pressure off of your pass pro. And number 2 is, you’ll eventually make them start double teaming him someway, somehow, and then you are going to get a numbers game with the 3 receivers backside.” To the trips side, the #3 WR runs the dig, #2 runs the shallow, and #1 runs a curl:
In the clip below, Baker Mayfield eyes the weak safety playing low with a slow backpedal on the snap, so he decides to throw the vertical to the X knowing he will have room to work:
If the defense takes away the vertical, the QB will then look at the tailback running a free release swing route. Whether the QB throws to the swing or not will be heavily dependent upon the matchup that week. For example, if they feel like their back is matched up on a much slower linebacker, they will tell the QB to quickly get the ball to the back in space if he gets even just a little bit of leverage on the swing. In the clip below, the defense brings pressure so the QB quickly gets the ball out to the tailback in space:
The alert/swing combo to the frontside of the concept should place the defense in both a maximum vertical and horizontal stretch. Theoretically, the vertical should force safety help, while the flat defender must expand quickly with the swing.
Clearing out the front side of the concept should now allow the shallow and the dig coming from the other side to isolate the hook defender against zone or room to separate against man coverage. Riley’s drive concept is a pure progression read, meaning that no matter what the coverage is, the QB will always go through the same sequence when looking at each route. As Graham Harrel (who was the QB during Riley’s time as a student assistant at Texas Tech) explains in the clip below, in the air raid, the reads are sacred:
If the frontside is covered up, the QB will now look shallow, dig, curl. The dig is run by the #3 receiver, who is referred to as the “Y” and is typically a bigger bodied tight end type of player. He will widen on his release to create a rub for the shallow and has the freedom to settle in a void versus zone or continue separating across against man. The #2 receiver (who is typically their speediest WR) will take 1 vertical step and run a shallow route right off the butt of the dig and will keep running across the field. It is imperative that the Y gets proper depth on his route (12 yds) so that there is good separation between the dig and the shallow. Ample space between the two routes creates a clear throwing lane and puts the inside linebacker(s) in a bind. Finally, if the defense is able to squeeze the dig from the outside, then the Z should be one on one on his 15 yard curl, which is the last read in the progression. He will widen on his curl so that the dig runner doesn’t get in the way if he also ends up having to curl up his route and settle in grass against zone.
Drive in Riley’s offense serves more as a constraint play rather than a base concept like it was in Coryell’s system. A constraint play is designed to punish defenders when they begin to cheat in an effort to stop your bread and butter type of plays. One of Riley’s base pass plays is the stick slot fade concept. Similar to a traditional stick concept, the Y will run the stick, but now instead of a vertical out combination they will run slot fade, which can be advantageous against man coverage:
In the clip below against Tennessee, the Sooners run slot fade out of empty. Notice how the Mike has to immediately work out in order to stop the stick:
Later in the third quarter, they run stick slot fade packaged with a slip screen to the tailback. Again, the Mike has to open his hips and run at an angle to cover up the stick:
In the 4th quarter on a critical third down, OU runs stick slot fade with a backside slant/flat. The defense is bringing pressure, so the field safety is manned up on the Y in a cover 1 look. Mayfield works the backside route combination and hits the slant:
Later in the 4th quarter, they again run stick slot fade paired with a slip screen:
In the first play of overtime, Riley runs the drive concept, which serves as the constraint play off of stick. With the Mike having to open up and run at an angle to stop the stick multiple times throughout the game, he turns and runs with the vertical stem of the dig, allowing free access for the shallow underneath him. This is why the widened release of the dig is so important. After the Mike works to reroute the dig, he is unable to transition downhill with the under route:
As Chip Kelly once said, “if you weren’t in the room with Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne, then you stole it from somebody.” What’s old is new and what’s new is old. Football is constantly recycling ideas. The only thing that changes is the presentation.