As a coach, it’s easy to fall in love with the X’s and O’s. Recently, I’d been trying to get my team to run the Princeton Chin series. It’s a beautiful, flowing offense when run correctly, but with my roster which is a mix of absolute beginners, recreation-level kids, and seasoned club veterans, it didn’t hold up in live games.
No matter how well we drilled it in practice, it just didn’t translate. The boys were playing like robots, throwing passes to spots where the ball was “supposed” to go rather than reading the defense. The result? Turnovers, frustration, and eventually, our better players abandoning the system entirely to play 1-on-1 isolation ball.
We had a playbook, but we had zero execution. Then, a Sunday tournament game forced me to completely change my approach.
The 5-Player Sunday Strategy
Last weekend, we showed up to a game with exactly five available players. Two were true post players, and a couple were relatively new to the game. We were up against a very good, deep team with 11 kids who loved to press.
(Side note: A massive shoutout to the opposing coach, who saw we only had five kids and graciously called off the press. Coaches who prioritize kids’ development and fun over running up the score are exactly what youth sports need.)
Knowing we couldn’t run our normal 4-out offense, and knowing my kids couldn’t survive a track meet with zero substitutions, we completely stripped the game down to the studs.
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The Offense: We scrapped the complex series in favor of a 3 out pass and screen-away offense where the post players would work with each other to screen and rotate on the high and low post.
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The Transition: I designated the perimeter players to get back on defense after every shot, leaving the big guys inside to handle the rebounding.
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The Defense: We dropped into a simple, fundamental 2-3 zone. No gambling, and no lunging for steals. Just solid, positional defense.
I honestly didn’t think we stood a chance. I was wrong.
By simplifying the game, the boys were finally able to execute at a high level. We weren’t doing anything tricky or special; we were just doing the basics incredibly well. We didn’t win the game—the boys simply ran out of steam in the final minute against a fresh rotation—but we kept it remarkably close until the very end. I walked off that court beaming with pride.
The Denver Broncos Epiphany: Mastery Over Volume
Reflecting on how beautifully the boys executed that simplified game plan, my mind immediately went to my roots as a Denver native and a lifelong Broncos fan. It reminded me of something Mark Schlereth, former offensive lineman for the Denver Broncos, said about those legendary 1997 and 1998 Super Bowl-winning teams. They had a very limited playbook; in fact, he joked that they only had 6 plays. I dug a little deeper into Mike Shanahan’s coaching philosophy from those championship years, and the parallels to what we experienced on the court were apparent.
Instead of a playbook with 200 plays run at 50% efficiency, Shanahan built his legendary offense on the concept of “mastery over volume.” Shanahan’s operating principle was to do the little things the right way, and if you did that, the big things would take care of themselves. Here is how the Broncos executed the ultimate KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle:
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One Foundational Concept: The entire offense was built on the “wide zone” (or outside zone) run. The offensive line flowed one way, and the running back read the defense to find a crease.
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The Illusion of Complexity: Shanahan built a web of plays—inside zone, bootlegs, play-action passes—that all started with the exact same blocking principles and looked identical to the defense at the snap.
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Formational Disguise: They might have only run a handful of core concepts, but they disguised them with constant shifts, motions, and formation changes.
Because the offensive linemen only had to master a few blocking rules, they executed them flawlessly. It accounted for the unknown, neutralized the defense, and the results speak for themselves: Terrell Davis rushed for 1,779 yards in ’97 and an MVP-winning 2,008 yards in ’98, leading to back-to-back Lombardi Trophies.
The Final Buzzer
The key takeaway for me as a coach was this: Simple is good. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your offensive scheme is if your players are thinking too much to play hard. I would much rather have one offense and one defense that we run to 95% perfection, than a massive menu of options that are all executed at 75%.
When you keep it simple, players stop acting like robots. They stop thinking, start trusting, and finally begin to just play the game.