Roger Holmes’ Buck Series

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Roger Holmes is the head coach at Dublin High School in Georgia, USA. He has 40 years of experience with the Wing-T and originally learned the offense under Coach Herschel Moore of Cumberland University. This is the first of two articles and focuses on his approach to the Wing-T buck series.

Personnel-wise, he likes to put his best running back at wing, not FB. He believes the biggest plays happen on the perimeter.

Also, he gave this pro tip: If a linebacker has a staggered stance, he is probably going to blitz.

Why Buck Series?

Roger believes this series forces defenses to cover all areas of the field on each play. Coach Holmes runs counter criss-cross (XX) off buck sweep, so he has inside/outside options on both strong and weak side. His keys to the buck series are:

Backs must carry out fakes
Timing is essential in the backfield
Each player has a block on each play
You need all four plays in the series
Most important – You need blocking variations for each play, week to week. He claims that when Michigan invented the Wing-T, they pretty much only saw a 4–4 or 6–2. Defenses have changed, so must our blocking schemes.

Alignment Rules

Coach Holmes has:

Fullback with heels at 4 yards. He prefers a 3-point stance. “Put his hand on the ground so its like he has a rocket up his ass.” Love it.
Halfback (dive back position) is behind the tackle at same depth as FB
Wingback has his inside foot at 1 yard out / 1 yard deep from the TE. He tilts his WBs.
The QB stance should be staggered with the pivot foot slightly back. He should extend his arms to get distance away from the center, allowing more spacing between the offensive line and QB for pulling.

Plays in the Series:

Buck Trap
Buck Sweep

Drills

He likes to run a 5 yard box drill with the running backs, setting up cones in a 5 yard by 5 yard square. The backs run along the outside perimeter, making a 90 degree cut outside each cone with their outside foot. Go clockwise and counter-clockwise to work on cuts in both directions.
He also runs the common buck sweep drill with guards and the backfield but includes the C and FB so that he can work on the “switch” call. Run with your 1s and 2s, and have the 2s be the corresponding defender for their position.