“Good coaches know the keys to winning consistently in ever changing circumstances. They need great playbooks that exploit the strengths of their rosters. They need to select plays on the basis of their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses and the circumstances of each game. They must be prepared to adjust their game plans midstream. Players need to be flexible, too, ready to change on the fly in reaction to moves by their opponents. Teams that can accomplish these things, week after week of a gruelling schedule, emerge as champions.”

- Scott D. Anthony, Matt Eyring, and Lib Gibson, Harvard Business Review 

INTRODUCTION

Football is Like Business

Like business, American football is a complex game of strategy.  In order to win over the course of a season, you must win game after game, under constantly changing circumstances, and against multiple opponents.  You must consistently outscore your opponents by constructing an offensive and defensive strategy.

Winning Strategies

Constructing a winning strategy includes assessing your own offensive and defensive capabilities and how they match up against those of your opponents.  It requires choosing between a strategy that exploits your strengths and a strategy that relies on the element of surprise.  The advantage of a strategy that exploits your team’s strengths is that it allows your team to do what it does best.  The major disadvantage is that it is exactly what your opponent expects.  The advantage of a strategy that relies on unconventional tactics leverages the element of surprise, thereby catching your opponent off-guard.  The major disadvantage is that it forces your team to perform in areas outside their comfort zone. 

Planning

Strategy is the key to effective play in football and in business. Whether on offence or on defence, a team and its coaches must construct solid plans and make good decisions well before play begins, anticipating what their opponents may throw at them, in order to win each successive engagement, game, and season.  Yet they must remain able to adapt their predetermined strategy and tactics to suit the changing circumstances experienced during the course of a particular game.

Constructing a successful offensive strategy requires analysing your own strengths (your coaches’ ability to plan and read your opponents based on intelligence gathering, past engagements with your own team and others; your players’ speed, agility, and adaptability; the playing conditions on a given day, etc.) and your opponents weaknesses (the types of attacks to which they are most vulnerable; injuries that have taken certain key players out of play; defensive deficiencies which can be exploited, etc.)

When a team is playing offence, the goal is to invade the opponent’s territory and, ultimately, score a touchdown.  But even the best offences often fall short of this goal and are forced to pursue their next best option, to kick a field goal. There comes a time in the engagement when a coach must decide whether to push on towards a touchdown or sacrifice the uncertainty of scoring big for the lesser uncertainty, but lower reward, of kicking a field goal successfully. If the offence is unable to gain at least ten yards in three successive plays, and is not within range of kicking a field goal, they may elect to punt (kick the ball to the other team) to get the other team as close to their own goal line as possible and rely on their defence to shut them down.  This is the battle of field position or, in business terms, market position.

In football, like business, it is pivotally important that a team’s offence remain constantly aware of where the team stands within the larger battle, in other words, how much time is left to play in the game.  This is the challenge of clock management. If a team is losing late in the game, they want not only to score, but to score quickly.  Passing the ball is a faster way of moving the ball than running the ball, but it is also riskier.  This additional risk is worthwhile if you are losing, but not if you are ahead.  If it is late in the game and you are winning, you may employ a running strategy.  This type of strategy takes longer, therefore providing less of an opportunity for your opponent to score points when they regain possession of the ball.

Constructing a successful defensive strategy requires analysing your opponents strengths and anticipating their likely actions (for example, running in certain situations and passing in others or using one player as a diversion while another is the true threat, etc.). It also requires analysing your own exploitable weaknesses (the weakest points in your defensive line, the relative slowness or smaller size of your blockers, etc.).

Just as businesses must constantly protect their home turf or their market share, the basic goal of every football team’s defence is to stop the opposing team’s offence from advancing down the field, from gaining metaphorical ground in the marketplace.  There are many different philosophies on the best way to accomplish that goal, including which formation is the best.  A defensive formation can be defined as a predetermined alignment of defensive players on the field. These are some of the more common defensive formations used in the game of football today.

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