This conversation seems familiar and may have been discussed on this board before and not in reference to any one program, especially Willard, but to high school football in general.
The great X's and O's vs. Jimmy's and Joe's discussion. There are coaches at the high school level who are strictly ______________ (fill in the blank with pro style, wing T, spread, option, veer, splitback double tight end, pistol, five-wide and heck, this is Southwest Missouri, let's add The Mauk Family System as a style) coaches.
There are coaches who have a preferred system and that's what they are going to run.
Then there are other coaches who have a preferred system that they can adjust to the available talent.
Then there are coaches who are so flexible and have such a deep playbook, they could literally switch styles from year to year depending on the talent and which system the players adapt and execute the best. Face it, any program could have 200 different running plays, but why dump such an information overload on high school student-athletes when chances are the staff is going to call the same four plays on game night with the only difference being personnel, formation and direction.
During my days with in sports media, I promised the coaches of the games I covered I would never question their decisions about what system they run, why they did or question their play calls after a game. Now, I have asked coaches about certain plays that worked the best and why it was successful in order to add it to a game story, but I never felt like it was my place to question a coach why he made the decision he made, plenty of other people (parents, fans and now social media pundits) do enough of that, they didn't need me adding to it.
Additionally, coaching staffs see all the offseason work, work in the weight room, reps at summer camps and reps in preseason workouts ... their evaluation of available talent is greater than anything I see in 2+ hours of game reps on Friday night. Kind of difficult to question those who see more than I do.
It is easy to second guess ... I look at teams like Lamar and Seneca, especially this year, and see four or five receivers who would be match up problems for most any opponent. Philosophically, the spread system is designed to exploit matchups and get athletes in space with the ball, the concept that my third, fourth and fifth best receiver will be better than your third, fourth or fifth best cover guy. But Seneca and Lamar are power run schemes that control the ball and then add that to a solid defense and it will win a lot more games than lose. No need for either program to get away from the bread and butter that makes them successful.
It's kind of like growing up watching Pittsburg State run the splitback option against opponents for years ... it was a thing of beauty and they did it so well. Now, they have adapted over the years to incorporate elements of the spread into the run game. They still run the ball and prefer to do so, but they have different skill sets that allows them to exploit matchups based on the opponent and the opponents scheme.
