“There are no disadvantages, unless you just don’t like to score touchdowns.”
– June Jones
Coach Mouse Davis: “The Best Offense”
“Our offense is the best offense that you could ever run. I am not going to try to sell you that it is the best. It is the best offense. If I were not running this offense, I would run the same offense that the University of Oregon runs. At one time, I almost switched our offense to the Wishbone offense. The Wishbone is a great offense. Why is the Wishbone a great offense? With the Wishbone, you can get by with an extra man against the defense. It works out that way.
It is the same way with our offense. We are always reading off what you do on defense. We get the chalk last. If you get the chalk last, you have a chance to win. Every defense you run has some weakness. That is all we are going to do to the defense. We are going to take the weakness the defense gives us.
Here is a key point about offense: you cannot be a master of all of the different offenses. You can be a master of one offense. I tried to be a master of our offense, and I tried to marry our run-and-shoot offense to the Wishbone offense. After about a week or two, we were bad. You cannot do it all. You can do what you decide to do well. If you have the biggest, fastest, and strongest team, like USC, you can do anything you want to do on offense. We would line up and knock you off the line, and we would run over you. That is not too bad of an offense. If we happened to have a player like Reggie Bush, I would toss the ball to him and let him do his thing. If we had a quarterback like Matt Leinart, we would let him throw the ball over the top of the defense.
We played USC when I was at Hawaii. That was a bad experience. It was the first game for Jerry as the defensive coordinator. It was the first game he had coached in 10 years. He came up to me and said, “I think I have USC shut out.” I said, “Jerry, you are nuts.” I told him all 11 of their starters will play in the NFL, and that has been proven. They are all in the NFL. Jerry thought he was going to shut them out. Ha! I asked Jerry this question: how many players do we have that will play in the NFL? He told me we had two players that would play in the NFL. My comment was, “They had better play real well today.” After the game, Jerry told me I was right. “Oh, really?”
You must believe that you can win, and you must have a way you can win. The nice thing about coaching in high school is that you have similar opportunities for playing against the same competition in your league. In Oregon, they have adjusted the divisions for high schools by size, and I think that is great. Now, everyone has a shot to win a state championship. You can lose a couple of games and still get back in the playoffs. There are some huge discrepancies in college football.
What is the best level to coach? What is the best football level to be a coach? Come on now! That is right, where you are now. Take your job, and make it the most important job there is. You can be big-time where you are coaching. That is where you are, and you should be big-time. You have your players, and you are big-time to them. You make that the most important job. Make that the job that excites you. That is what it is all about.
In our offense, “we have the chalk last.” The defense can play their technique perfectly, and we still have the chalk last. Every defense has a weakness. We are trying to take advantage of the defense we face. When we play a team, we say that they have the perfect coverage. We are going to take advantage of that perfect coverage. We do that by always having an answer on how to attack the defense.
The first time I put out videos on this offense, several high school coaches bought the tapes. Several of them purchased the video and told me they turned their programs around. Coaches write me telling me they have turned their programs around using this offense. I love it, and I hope they did turn their programs around.
Here is my deal to football. I want to help any football coach at any level. Some football coaches think they have secrets. Nonsense! How many coverages do we have? How many offenses do we see? Coaches need to help each other.”
– Mouse Davis