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I'm a big fan of Matt Sumstine's Aloha Clinic videos. He's the one who really got me thinking about a lot of what we put into our game the past few seasons, including the mechanics we're talking about in this thread -- working with a 10-15 yard cushion behind the ball carrier as a wing, using cross-field mechanics, etc.
The one thing that's "controversial" that I'm a really big fan of is his recommendation of putting 3 (of the 5) officials across the goal line on a free kick instead of the usual 30, 20, G configuration. I was watching his video describing this (and apparently this *is* the state mechanic in places, Arizona being one of them) and the *next day* we had a scrimmage where a kickoff went out of bounds near the goal line on the L's side and there were two officials completely looking away from the 22 players on the field. Time to consider changing things a bit, I think.
It really is easy to start three officials at the goal line as long as the kicks are reasonably deep (to the 20, which they are in most JV/Varsity games) and then all the officials can look through the runner to pick up illegal blocks and the like. Any kick that comes back beyond the 35 can be picked up by the LJ and the BJ and anything that's deep, well, that's covered by the 3 officials just like we would on a scrimmage play.
How many of you (as L) start on the 30 and feel like everything just flashes by you as the kick goes past you?
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