One-Back Attack: A Complete Guide to the One-Back Offense

Rating:
Summary: A mess
Review: Poorly written, at times incoherent, a mish mash of pieces that do not make a whole. If you want to learn to develop a one back offense 1.) get Coverdale and Robinson's "Bunch Attack" 2.) find articles by Ted Seay on the net and you'll be on your way.

Rating:
Summary: Detail on the spread attack and a resource worth having.
Review: While some of this material will be familiar to those who make a living from coaching on the gridiron, this book provides a well written distillation of that material into one readily available resource. Books published on a offensive system that is motivated to spread the field and committed to throwing the football, are rare so finding ones that are as well written as this one are worthy of praise.

Let me start with the negative on this book. The diagrams are at times unclear and confusing. Specifically player's assignments are not clearly explained: a block and delay route into the flat, is he hot releasing, does he have block or release into a route rules?? Its impossible to tell from the diagrams and the authors while describing the plays do not do a sufficient job of alleviating that confusion.

Also some early topics do not get enough detail. As example the authors "Hot" principles chapter was too thin and even after rereading it I was still a little puzzled even though it was not the first time I had heard of the triangular read concept. Also for an offense predicated on the ability to pass and send mulitiple receivers into the the secondary it does little to describe individual receiver techniques and releases.

Now for the good and believe me there is plenty of good in this book. It does provide great information on how this offense wants to attack defenses and why it uses different formations. It does a good job of relaying how to teach these principles to the most important person on the field the QB.

People familiar with Northwestern-Clemson-West Virginia attack will immediatly recognize some of the running game of this offense. Those familiar with the horizontal and vertical concepts of modern passing attacks at Purdue, Marshall and Florida will recognize the passing parts of this offense. The authors however do a good job of offering their own ideas and show how they try to implement all of the differing concepts into one cohesive offense.

All the time preaching as often needs to be reminded to coaches to only use what you can reasonably practice.

This book is not for the lower levels of football, it is geared toward the older athlete and those who coach them. However it does offer concepts to every coach to consider.