BOB BEATTY
THE CHOICE ROUTE IN THE PASSING GAME
TRINITY HIGH SCHOOL, KY.
Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the St.
Louis Coach of the Year Clinic, and even though I
am from Missouri, it did not feel like home to me.
Kentucky has been very good for me, and I feel
more at home today. This is my second year at
Trinity High School. The city of Louisville has
welcomed my family and we feel at home here. I
want to thank my athletic director Dennis
Lampley for bringing me to Trinity. Dennis and I
share many of the same philosophies related to
coaching. First and foremost with philosophy is to
win. If you do not win, you will not be up here.
That is a philosophy that we share. Last week my
offensive coordinator Andrew Coverdale mailed
me a note that I thought was very interesting. It
read, "If you do not like losing, WIN!"
For you that have not been to Trinity High School,
I can tell you it is a pleasure to work at a school
that is so conducive to winning. We have a
tremendous facility including a 7,000-foot weight
room. It is well stocked, but that does not mean
anything if you do not have athletes. We have a
full time strength coach in Bob Maddox. We have
about 200 kids that come out for football. We
have a 17-person staff to work with. I welcome
you to come visit us and watch film, or watch us
work out, or just talk with our staff. You are
welcome to come by and talk football.
When I became a head coach five years ago I
decided I would make a commitment to being a
head coach. I sat down with my family and
discussed the situation with them. I told them I did
not know how long I would stay in coaching but I
wanted to make a commitment to be successful.
My family wanted to know what I meant by that. I
said my hobbies are out the door. I used to hunt
and fish. I do not do those things anymore. The
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bottom line is that football is a 24-hour job and
365-days-a-year job for me. It is a business for
me. Some of you may think that is crazy, but that
is a commitment I made. I think you need that
commitment to be successful. About the only
hobby I have now is mowing the yard, and my son
is old enough to do that now, so I do not have to
do that any more. I do not worry about going
hunting or fishing. I work on football. I know
some of my assistants do not want to spend as
much time on football as I do, but I expect the
same type of commitment out of them.
I can recall sitting down with Dennis Lampley in
an interview two years ago. I sat down with
Dennis and his son, Brad. We talked about the run
and shoot, west coast, and the passing game
offense. I talked about the passing game
philosophy that I have. Brad asked me what I
would do if I did not have a quarterback. I told
him we did not have to have a quarterback that
had a strong arm. I told him we could teach him to
throw the ball on time and that we would be ok.
He said what if you have a quarterback that
cannot throw the ball on time. I assured him we
could develop a quarterback that could throw on
time. Dennis said it may be a problem because I
am not sure if we have a quarterback.
So two years ago when I came to Trinity High
School and sat down to talk about our offense we
did not know who would be the starting
quarterback. We picked three players and dropped
them back 5 yards and ran 10-yard out routes. The
quarterback that could throw the ball accurately
and on time and had enough knowledge to know
when to throw the ball would be our starter. Our
starter threw for 2700 yards and 27 TD's. You do
not need a strong-arm quarterback to run our
offense. We were the AAA state runner up in
2000. The quarterback did not have a strong arm
and was not a great athlete. He was 6'1" and
weighed 170 pounds. He understood the system
and he could throw the ball on time.
The year before I came to Trinity High School I
had a quarterback throw for 2800 yards. This year
we had a better athlete at quarterback. He was
only a sophomore but he threw for 3100 yards and
39 TD's. I know the offense worked with a kid
that was not very athletic, and I know it worked
with a kid that was very athletic. We all know if
you have athletes, you will win 80 percent of your
games.
I am going to talk to you about the choice route
and the west coast look at the play. I will show
you the defenses we see. The defenses are pretty
much vanilla.
We premise our offense around the choice route.
It is called choice because you have a choice on
the outside. It is more or less a spring to the one
receiver side. A lot of coaches ask me if it is a 5-
step drop. I tell them I do not know. They ask me
if it is a rollout pass. I tell them I do not know.
The quarterback throws the ball when the receiver
is open. It may be on the fifth step and it may be
on a roll, or it may be on the eighth step as he gets
flushed. Ideally we would like to throw the pass
on five steps. It is a route that is conducive to the
90-Step game, or 3-step game. We do use the
three-step game down in the red zone.
The play is conducive to multiple formations,
which is the west coast end of the play. It is great
with play-action passing, and the bootleg game.
By the time you get through with the adjustments,
you can get about 27 formations with this route.
At times I will sit down with our offensive
coordinator and suggest that we have been too
complacent. "Here is the play, now give me 18
formations using this route." The key to the west
coach passing game is this. Who is on the outside;
who is in the middle; and who is on the inside?
We do not have a passing tree. We do not call out
to run pass 782. That is not our system. I do not
think the quarterback can picture 782 in his mind.
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That is my philosophy.
That is a memory route. We just have one
number. They must know from memory the route.
They have to know outside, middle, and inside.
Also, they have to know front side and back side.
It may sound complicated, but it is not. It is our
system and they must learn the system.
I think the choice route is an excellent short-
yardage route. It is a mid-range route and I think
you can go up on top real quick with the pass.
The scheme we run the play from does not really
matter. The thing that makes the play good is
because we teach the kids how to run the routes. I
will discuss this first before I start showing
schemes.
Our base is four wide. We may not open the game
in this set, but it is our base. That is the way we
teach it from in the very beginning. We start with
the X and Z Receivers.
The X end is going to run a 10-yard out route,
unless we make a different call. It is a 10-yard out
route that we want him to catch the ball at 8 yards.
If it is 3rd and 12 yards to go, we will call, "Choice
- Get the Sticks." The receiver knows to go to a
spot where he can get the 12 yards. It is that
simple.
If we run an out route, we are not going to convert
the route just because we get pressed. We feel the
corner will end up in one of three areas. If you are
stemming, that is even better because you are
moving, and that creates an advantage for us.
When you are moving, you have to move twice to
get back into position to cover the receiver. We
read your stem and react to the moves. If we are
pressed, we are still going to run our out route.
That is how much confidence we have in the play
as long as our quarterback and receiver are on the
same page.
The play is called much like you would call a pre-
read option play. The X end runs the out until we
tell him different. There are games we will allow
the receiver to make a choice with the
quarterback. We do that a number of ways. It can
be called from the coaching staff. We can have the
receiver tap his helmet. He can switch his stance,
looking at the quarterback and making eye
contact. If he does not look at the quarterback, the
quarterback knows he is going to run the out
route. There are a lot of ways to signal the
quarterback.
If we give him a choice, we only give him three
routes. He may run an out, slant, or a go route. We
have more than those three, but going into a game
we never gave him more than three routes.
The offensive coordinator relays the play to me
and I relay it to the quarterback. I will call out,
"Choice route - stay in it." It is like a pitcher and
catcher where the pitcher waves the catcher off. If
we call "Stay in it," we do not want the
quarterback to change the call.
The way we teach the play is to get the defense on
the inside hip. We may not get the corner on the
inside hip, which means we are going to come off
the route. But we have several techniques to get
the defense to move inside. We may have to cut
our split down to get the alignment we want but
the quarterback and receiver see the same thing.
The quarterback takes five steps. He must be
ready to throw on time. I do not have the running
back blocking right or left in the protection
because we do not know the protection. We will
not know the protection until we get to the line of
scrimmage. A lot of time, the play calling is very
lengthy. That may be the down side of the west
coast offense.
BASIC CHOICE - OPEN TRIPS
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Here is a typical play for us. It is our basic choice
with open trips. "Right-Out-Z6-H-Flat-Choice."
That may sound long to you. But when you know
the system you know we are telling all the
receivers what to do. In those words I just gave
you include the protection we want to use on this
play. We may move the backs around, or we may
slide the line left or right, or we may cup block.
Let me talk about the drag route by the H back on
the left side. It is important to split 3 yards from
the offensive tackle. This is very crucial. This puts
the defensive end in a tough position. It gives the
H back enough room to escape to run the route. I
have the basic route set up how we would run the
play against man coverage. We tell the H back to
release off the ball, come up and drum roll with
the feet, stick the foot, and run away. If we faced
zone coverage we would change the route. We
would settle in the runway if it closes. We settle in
the first window, and then he slides to the next
window. It is much like a basketball slide to get
there. That is all the drag is. If we face man, we
tell him to keep running. If it is zone, we want
him to look to settle in the windows.
Next is the inside route for the Y receiver. It is the
middle route. It is the most important route. I
would like to tell you I developed some of this on
our own but it did not happen that way. I did bring
this play with me when I came from Kansas City.
When I was coaching at Blue Springs, I had a
quarterback that broke six or seven national
records when he was a senior. We knew he was
special because the University of Houston was
recruiting him when John Jenkins was at Houston
Jack Pardee. They would not give us much
information when we talked with them. We sent
them tapes on our quarterback. He invited us to
visit in Houston. He was a lot more willing to
share information with us after he saw our
quarterback. We spent a total of 10 days with
them in Houston. John Jenkins brought in Mouse
Davis and I got to sit with those two coaches and
listen to them discuss the passing game. I learned
more in 10 days than I did in 10 years before that.
That is where I got this route.
This route is the read route. This play makes us
the passing team that we are. The bottom line in
the run and shoot is this: "Where you are on
defense, we aren't." That is the premise of the
offense. As the Y receiver releases, we do not
want contact with the under defender. We tell him
to escape contact. If we do get contact, we tell the
receiver to shove him into the route. We are not
just interested in beating the underneath defender.
We want to escape him. The defender we are
concerned with as we sprint away is the free
safety. We want to remove the free safety from
the middle of the field, hopefully. If we do not
remove him, we are still ok. He reads his
landmark at 12 yards. We say 10 yards is too
shallow, and 14 yards is possibly too deep.
As the Y receiver escapes the underneath
defender, he eyeballs the free safety. If the safety
goes high, then we are going to speed break the
route and get in the vision of the quarterback.
Here are the coaching points on the route. If the
receiver gets lazy and does not take it flat, he will
only do it one time. In our 7-on-7 drills, we tell
our free safety to take away the Y receiver’s key
so he will quit running a poor route. If the receiver
gets too high, he loses his key. When he comes
back to the huddle, there is no sympathy for him
from me. If the safety is playing high, we run a
speed-break route and get into the vision of the
quarterback. Keep in mind we are only sprinting
to a point inside our offensive tackle.
Let's talk about the route if the free safety is
removed. I will show you play action in a minute
where we can make that safety move. We tell the
Y receiver he has 2-and-2 yards within which to
work. He is working 2 yards inside the hash mark
and 2 yards outside the hash mark. That is his
window. He can open his hips slightly. He is
running the seam-read route. He wants to get the
outside hand up so the quarterback can see him.
We want to throw the ball deep.
Here is the progression on the read. The seam
route is the number one progression read, the Y
seam is number two, and the H receiver on the
drag is number three. The backside receiver is the
fourth receiver. Is he probably going to get the
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ball? The answer is no. If the backside receiver
does not run his route properly the safety could
drift over and make the play on the seam route.
His rule is this. If we get soft coverage he wants to
sit down at 8 yards. The hash mark rule is this. He
cannot cross the hash mark to the inside. We do
not want him in the way of the seam route. We
have hit the backside receiver for big plays in the
last two years when the quarterback gets flushed
and is scrambling to find an open receiver.
Nothing changes when we run the 90 game with
the play, except the routes are cut in half. The out
route now becomes a 5- or 6-yards route. The drag
route is run in a hurry, the seam route is run at 7
yards, and the go read route breaks off at 5 to 6
yards. If they have seven rushers coming after us,
we pop the pass in a hurry because they have no
free safety in the middle of the field. It is a great
90-action pass.
PLAY ACTION "CHOICE" - OPEN TRIPS
Now I will show you how the west coach phase of
the play comes into play and how we get into
multiple formations. We have enough personnel
groups to run just about any formation. We have
so many of them we break it down where we have
so many per game. This is what we call our 11
personnel. It means we have 1 tight end in the
game, 1 back, and 3 wide receivers in the game.
Realistically, not a lot changes here except the
fact that we had a different type of athlete running
the drag route. He is bigger and more aggressive.
He is meaner than hell. He is looking to hunt
defenders to hit. We would like for him to get
open.
BASIC "CHOICE" - TE TRIPS
We do see a different defensive front with the
tight end on the field. If the defense does not put
another defender in the box, we are going to think
about running the football. Realistically, nothing
changes on the play. As intelligent as our young
quarterback is, as a sophomore he did not know
what each player was running on the route. But he
did know he had a player on the out, on the drag,
and a receiver on the go read, and a receiver on
the backside that is going to sit down to the
outside. He may not know who is going to run the
routes, but he knows that someone is going to run
the route. That is the west coast end of the play.
He may not know who is going to be in those
areas, but he does know there is going to be a
body there for the route.
If we get a two-safety look, nothing changes at all,
except we need to find the near safety as opposed
to a one-safety look. We see that look often.
To switch things up, we can run from the wing
formation look. This is not much of a change but
it is enough to get defenders to turn their head.
We may have a better route runner at H back than
we have at the Y position. The same situation is
true if you have four wide outs and you have a
small back in the H back position, he may not be
physical enough to run the drag route inside. We
may want to substitute a larger player in the H
position.
In the west coast offense you must know who is
running the different routes. That is what that
offense is all about. This means the Y receiver has
to learn to run those different routes.
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MIDDLE & INSIDE SWITCH - WING SET
I want to give a lot of credit to our assistant for
their job on teaching these routes. We have
meetings before practice on offense everyday. We
are out of school at 2:40 pm. We start meetings at
3:00 pm and end at 3:20 pm. Then the players go
out and walk through what we are going to run
that day.
We also have a meeting on game day. We cover it
on the overhead projector with them. They cover
this in the classroom, and then go out on the field
and walk through our script of plays that we are
going to open the game with. We script the first
15 plays. Our players feel real confident in what
we are going to do in the game. It is using
different people to get different match-ups in the
game.
Another set that I like is from the two-back set.
One reason I like this set is because we do not
have to change personnel groupings on this set or
the wing set. However, we may want to make a
change in personnel if we feel we need to make a
change.
The one thing that makes it tough is that the H
back must learn eight different positions on the
field. He must be a special athlete. He must know
what to do from a slot, out, outside, wing, wide,
wider, under, and over. We know that is a lot of
positions to learn. It takes a lot of reps to learn
this, but it is not really that difficult to learn. It is a
system.
 The progression is the same. We look for the seam
read first, the go read is second, and the drag
third. If the quarterback gets flushed, we do not
want him looking for the drag at first. We are
looking for 12 yards first on the play.

You could run the wide receiver on the bunch

from outside without motion. He would have to
get to the drag faster. We tell the receiver to get
from point A to point B as fast as you can. But,
with short motion, it is a lot easier to settle down
and find an open window.
MIDDLE & INSIDE SWITCH - TOW BACKS
When we run the play action, the fake to the
Here are the coaching points on the play. The H
running back forces the linebacker to step up, and
back must not give the quarterback a "no read."
this gives the H back a window for the
This means the H cannot hesitate on the route. If
quarterback to get the ball to the receiver. It is not
he is going to be wrong on the route we want him
much of a fake but it is enough to give the
to be wrong at full speed. If he gives the
receiver additional room to get to the open
quarterback a false read and we get the pass
window.
intercepted I am not going to blame the
quarterback. I am going to get on the receiver. I
Another set that I like to run the play is from the
do not think our quarterbacks are perfect, but I do
counter-bootleg action. Our quarterback runs
not want the receiver giving a false read by not
about a 4.7 for the forty. He is a tall kid, so we get
going full speed on the play. It is amazing how the
him outside on the bootleg. You can run the play
H back can come off the ball and hide himself on
from anywhere on the field. You can run it from
the play. He has a rub with Y running the drag
three wide or four wide. You can run the play
route. It is a good play.
from a lot of different personnel groupings. You
can bring the guard out for protection for the
The next set we used on the play was from the
quarterback. Sometimes we pull him out, and
bunch set. We used short motion on the play to set
sometimes we do not pull him. It depends on the
the bunch set. It is not really complicated once
front we face. It is a great bootleg play.
you know who is going to be on the inside,
middle, and the drag. The whole idea on the
bunch attack is to condense the pack down, and
then explode out of the bunch. As the year went
on, we got a lot better on this set.

CHOCIE - COUNTER BOOT - WING SET

Another set that I like on the play is our isolation

action. We do not run the isolation very much. It
INSIDE and OUTSIDE SWITCH - SHORT is a zone action isolation play. If you get a free
MOTION safety that commits to the run, the H back can run

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right by the safety man. There is no change on the
read on the progression on the play.
CHOICE - FULL-FLO ISOLATION BOOT -
TWO BACKS
We did something this year that we really liked.
We got it from the Denver Broncos. On
Wednesday night after practice, this is what we
do. We review our game plan from Monday. On
Monday we have a ton of stuff in the game plan.
Tuesday is what we call frustration day. We throw
so much at the players I am frustrated at the
players after practice. The offensive coordinator is
frustrated because we have too much in the game
plan. This is what we want. We start throwing out
some of the game plan on Tuesday. We polish on
Wednesday and we may throw out a little more.
remind me of what Coach Shanahan of the
Broncos said. "They expect you to throw the
football." I told Andrew we were going to run the
isolation play. We ran the isolation and gained 29
yards on the play. This is where the script can
work for you. When we get into the red zone we
come off the script. If we are in our backed-up
offense, we are going to come off the script. If it
is 3rd and 1 inch, we are not going to throw the
fade. But I tell our receiver and backs to believe in
what we call. To us there is no such thing as a bad
play. If we call a fade route on 3rd and 1 inch to
go, we expect the offense to complete the play.
That is our offensive philosophy.
Do we have any questions? You may ask how
many formations we are going to go into a game
with. It depends on how comfortable our kids feel
with that route going into that game. It is one of
our base routes. Last week the question was asked
as to how many times we were going to run this
play in a game. We may run it four or five times,
but we are not going to give you the same look
twice because that is the way the system works.
Let me show these routes on the tapes. It has been
a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you.

Between the Wednesday night practice and

Thursday morning, the offensive coordinator
would write down the 15 plays he wanted to script
for the game. I would write down the 15 plays that
I wanted. We did not share these plays with each
other until Thursday morning. It was amazing
how many of the same plays we had on the
scripts. I may say to Andrew, "I like your opening
play better than my opening play." It may be the
other way around. Most of the time we would
agree on about nine of the fifteen plays most of
the time. We both had a few plays that we wanted
to do that were a little different, but most of the
time we agreed on the game plan. We felt this
made us a better football team.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by

our game plan. Let's say it is 3rd and 7 to go in the
middle of the field. The script called for us to run
the isolation pass. Andrew would come to me and