Attacking pass coverages

Question
Coach,
    I have been coaching high school football for about 3 years now.  We are a veer team that throws the ball about 7-10 times a game.  These are usually play action posts or streaks.  I have noticed that we always run into a good defensive team in the quarterfinals and our season always comes to an end.
    Unfortunately, the coaches I work with know nothing about passing the ball and how to attack defensive coverages. (they are old school smash mouth coaches) I was wondering if you could give me any ideas on how to attack these coverages from a spread formation.  Any help would be appreciated.
    We are breaking away from our school system to form a smaller independant community based school system.  We expect our roster to drop from about 80 players to 40.  We are thinking of going to a spread type offense because we will be undersized next year.
    Thanks
Dave

Answer
Dave -

Thanks for writing.  The first thing, and most often overlooked thing at the high school level is exactly what you mentioned.  Coaches!  What are your coachs' strong suits versus what are you looking to run scheme wise?  All too often, high school coaches will install an offense first, then worry about what players and coaches they have later.  Well, this makes no sense at all, and usually results in a disaster of a season. If you were building a car, would you chose a Hummer's body when all you had to assist you were 3 mechanics who specialize in mopeds, and an engine from a 1973 Pinto?  This is no different.  To properly change and install an offense, the FIRST thing is to match it with the players you have this year, and for the next couple years at least.  Second, who are my asst. coaches?  What do they know?  Specialties of each? Can they effectively teach high school players a completely new style of playing in less than 6 months? If none of them are spread, throwing the ball all over, type coaches (including an ex spread offense QB) you could find yourself in big trouble.  THat would be my first thing for you.  IF this is the move, it might be a long off season for your current asst. coaches.

SCheme wise, it would be really hard to say considering each team's talent is a little different.  Without knowing who you have, type of players, type of schemes, defenses you play against, it would be pretty worthless for me to give you any tips.  Although they all seem the same, these spread offenses are usually different in a lot of ways.  All depending on their individual players' strengths and weaknesses.  Look at Florida as a perfect example. Same offensive coach when Leak is in as when Tebow is in right?? But how different is the play calling and scheme?  The change in QB completely changes the scheme of the offense, even though it is all the same players and coaches.  This is why it is very important for me to know what you have before I could assist you in designing a possible attack for a spread offense.  Say I design a pass-first mentality, but you have a talented running QB who isnt very accurate.  That will do you more harm than good.

If you come up with any specifics for which youd like some honest opinions on, I would be glad to help you make a sound decision.  Please feel free to do a follow up and let me know.

Best wishes with your decision and your season.

Coach Perl