Whole, Part, Whole Teaching of the H Counter Concept

By Jacob Knight
Offensive Line Coach
Waverly High School (OH)
Twitter: @CoachKnight55

Introduction

At Waverly High School, we are a “hang-our-hat” on being an 11 Personnel offensive team that wants to establish our running game with an inside zone focus. When running inside zone, we do it almost exclusively with our TE on the backside of the run kicking out the backside DE. The counter scheme has become a great changeup off this run look. Over time, counter has become our staple run to counter the inside zone.

Concept Overview

We teach counter as a physical downhill A gap run play. We want our running back to stay in the A gap as long as possible. When we run counter, we typically run it from 11 personnel and with a TE. We primarily live in formations where our TE is aligned directly behind the tackle three yards from the ball; this is our most common formation. During the season, we found different ways to formation this run so we could appropriately tag RPOs with this. For example, we would vary the location of the back as well as mix this concept with jet motion.

To study game film of this concept against Even fronts, click on the video below: