Balanced offense means equally well, not equally often

In football, you hear coaches, fans and media members talking about a balanced offense as it pertains to running and passing the ball.

The question is, do they mean equally often or equally well?

When a football team relies on the run to gain yardage, some people like to assume that team is not adept at throwing the ball. The same holds true in reverse. It’s as if there’s no in-between.

My belief is that too many fans, at all levels of football —with a shallow knowledge of the game — see the idea of “balanced offense” as throwing the ball, say, 25 times as well as running 25 times or throwing for an equal number of yards (plus or minus a few) as rushing.

I would contend that being balanced is not about how often you do both (run and pass) or what is the yardage distribution between run and pass — it’s about how well or efficiently you do both.

For instance, let’s say a team runs 25 times for 130 yards. That’s five yards and change per carry. Let’s also say they threw 25 times and completed 10 passes — that’s under 50 percent. That’s not a balanced offense.

It means you were good at one but stunk at the other.

Example No. 2, let’s say a team rushes 50 times for 275 yards and completes 7 of 10 passes. Too me, that’s balanced because they did both well.

Since the NFL has become so quarterback-driven, the idea of “run to set up the pass” is an outmoded idea. To a lesser extent, college football has become that way. High school, however, for the most part is the last bastion of “run sets up pass” because there are simply not many elite passers at that level.

“Run to set up the pass”  has mostly been replaced by “pass to get the lead, run to seal the win.”

The college game, however, has more of a mixture of such philosophy because there are teams that run a pro-style offense with dropback passers, and there are teams that run offenses that involve the quarterback running the ball.

As for the high school game, the run sets up the pass because after all, a high school team running a West Coast Offense will be the exception not the norm.

Balanced is when both phases, run and pass, are effective weapons. The ability to force a defense to play you honestly (defend both run and pass) is the key to a successful offense. Teams with poor offensive showings usually have no balance and the defense loads up to stop one phase.

In a nutshell, quantity of pass/run ratio never matters. Quality matters much more. You also have to take into account that the style of game is much different, not just in terms of skill level. Another reason why high school football still leans in the direction of “run sets up passes” is also because it takes much longer to master the art of pass blocking than it does run blocking. Granted, run-based offenses in high school like the triple option, the Houston split back veer or the wing-T might involve some angle blocking as opposed to straight ahead blocking, and run blocking is also based on a lineman’s weight distribution going forward.

Pass blocking, however, involves a lineman retreating before striking his opponent. While run blocking takes skill as well, most every offensive line coach I have talked to at every level would tell you that pass blocking takes much longer to master than run blocking. Anyhow, that’s another discussion for another time.

Sounds simple to me — maximize your strength and minimize your weakness.

If it works, go with it.

Exploiting your opponents weakness is a good idea on the surface but it’s hard to do if your talent won’t lend itself to doing such.

People want to see their team win games. That means you do what gives you the best chance to win. On the other hand, the more things you can do well, the better.

Not ‘often,’ but ‘well.’