Sixpack34, I am not disagreeing with the premise that defense is a vital part of six-man. The fact that only six men are responsible for so much terrain compared to eleven-man demands a good defense be strived for. Nonetheless, if your primary focus is defense at the expense of offensive skill development, you are shortchanging yourself and your team.
Let me use a hypothetical. Let's say you and someone like a Clawson, a Campbell, a Lee or a Reed both have a team of clones. You and your opposing coach, one of the names mentioned, both have the same identical team, say the 2007 RS squad with Tyler, Mark, Shelby, on down the roster the same kids on both teams. You work on all the important phases of the game with an emphasis on defense and tackling, but not just that alone. The other coach who has the exact same players likewise develops his team and works on the same phases of the game, but does so in his own unique ways.
When you and that team play each other your team will lose most of those contests because of the overemphasis of tackling and defense, and lack of offensive development. Believe me, as good as Tyler and the rest of his teammates were on defense, they would not be able to stop a team of themselves with an emphasis on offense. Why? because a defense has to rely too much on reacting to the play of the offense. Like chess where white gets the first move, the offense also gets the first move. Anything you do defensively can be countered and exploited before the snap of the ball. You will have to have a good offense in order to force my players to play hard on both sides of the ball, that is your best chance.
In 2004 we won the state championship primarily because of our defense. The same is true with Throckmorton in 2005. But, in 2006 and 2007 we won due to our offense, not our defense. We had to outscore Rule to win because both offenses were too strong to stop consistently. In games like that good defense is demanded, however without a great offense we lose both years to Rule. Remember that they scored 58 and 54 points against our defense. And I promise it wasn't for lack of defensive devotion, or lack of tackling skill. When our guys hit you you usually went down, same with Rule's kids. But defense can and is developed without the same rigorous drilling our coaches made us do back in the day. But we couldn't score four times a game. If you put eight in the box against my high school offense to stop the wishbone...we were done. The only time we passed is on third and five or more, or against really weak teams like Kennedale, Ft. Worth Nolan or Joshua and we could afford an interception. Our minds were wrong back then. Our offense was underdeveloped despite having some dandy skill talent, but it was never utilized. And I guarantee we worked at least an hour a day on defensive drills and team defense, sometimes an hour and a half. And defense came first every stinking day, so we were half spent by the time our offensive segment began. But we could slobberknock each other and that 110 pound dummy.
I believe in defense, brother. If we hadn't have been good defensively, Rule would have scored a hundred on us; Throckmorton, Blum, Trinidad, Aspermont, Strawn and Calvert would have too.
If your kids can play defense they can play quality offense, too.
