Best of 2025 Re-Air — Dan Gonzalez, Josh Herring, Dub Maddox
In 2025, the Coach and Coordinator Network launched a new series, the Offensive Football Think Tank. Instead of focusing on clinics or breaking down plays in detail, this series explores how coaches solve offensive problems as they happen.
One episode stood out. Dub Maddox, Josh Herring, and Dan Gonzalez joined the discussion, making it one of the year’s most popular episodes. They focused on a common challenge for offensive coaches: creating a system that players understand, coaches can teach clearly, and quarterbacks can run with confidence, even when the game speeds up.
Rather than chasing the latest trends, the coaches focused on the basics: building a strong structure, teaching clearly, and keeping things simple.
Why Offensive Structure Matters More Than Play Volume
Early in the conversation, the group established a shared belief. Offensive structure is not about how many plays you carry. Instead, it’s about whether your players can execute what you call under pressure.
Dub Maddox put it plainly:
“It always comes down to: how well can we teach it?”
That idea guided the whole discussion. Maddox stressed the need to install plays carefully and do lots of walkthroughs. Furthermore, he cautioned against adding new plays before players master the basics. If your team can’t run core plays well, adding more only makes things harder..
For any coaching staff reviewing their offense, the question becomes clear: Are breakdowns the defense’s doing, or are players just unclear on their assignments?
Keeping Guardrails on an Expanding Offense
Josh Herring brought up what he calls “offensive drift.”
As coaches gain experience and face tougher defenses, they often want to add more options. Coverage schemes become more complex, and the playbook grows. However, this can hurt execution.
Herring summed it up clearly:
“Be as simple as you can without being too simple.”
He explained that you need limits, or guardrails, to keep the offense from becoming a collection of plays that don’t get enough practice. You need solutions that fit into a system your players already know.
Therefore, many coaching staffs set a limit on core concepts and remove plays when they add new ones.
Planning Protection and Outlets
Next, the conversation moved to protection and how quarterbacks make decisions.
Modern defenses cause trouble with blitzes and late shifts. Dan Gonzalez focused on establishing a shared language and planned outlet routes, rather than relying solely on QB improvisation.
He said:
“If you’re able to attain a common language, it gives you infinite power over those who don’t.”
As a result, quarterbacks play faster when outlets and progressions are clear before the snap. When everyone uses the same terms, adjustments happen smoothly.
Hence, teaching outlets as part of the play is key, not expecting QBs to make it up on the fly.
Keeping Offensive Identity With Roster Changes
Identity came up often in this think tank. At the high school level, where rosters change every year, the challenge is to adapt to new players without rebuilding the entire offense.
The coaches agreed: keep language and structure steady, even if plays change.
The best offenses have a clear identity, usually built around one or two main plays. Although these plays can change over time, the structure stays strong. When the identity is lost, teaching slows down, and players lose confidence.
Teaching: The Real Competitive Advantage
They ended where they started. They finished the discussion by returning to the topic of teaching. It’s rarely the scheme that makes the difference. Instead, it’s how clearly it’s taught.
Good teaching builds confidence, helps players make faster decisions, and reduces hesitation.
That’s why this episode is still seen as one of the best of 2025. The challenges it covers don’t disappear with new trends. Teaching under pressure, protecting your quarterback, handling complexity, and maintaining your identity are issues every coach faces.
As Think Tanks continue in 2026, this conversation will remain a touchstone—not because it prescribes plays, but because it reveals how experienced coaches reason their way to better solutions.
If you’re reviewing your offense this offseason, take this episode as a reminder: progress often comes from teaching fewer things better, sharpening your language, and ensuring your structure empowers the players who run it.
Think Tank: Offensive Structure & Teaching AI Companion
The Think Tank: Offensive Structure & Teaching Companion is a focused AI learning tool built from a single Think Tank conversation with experienced offensive coaches. It is designed to help coaches think more clearly about offensive structure, teaching, and communication, not to generate plays or replace your system.
This Companion works best as a reflection and problem-solving tool for coaches who want to improve execution, clarity, and consistency within the offense they already run.
What this Companion helps coaches do
This Companion helps coaches:
- Diagnose structural issues in their offense
Identify where complexity, protection problems, or teaching gaps are creating breakdowns. - Simplify menus without losing answers
Reduce volume while maintaining solutions versus pressure, coverage, and fronts. - Improve protection and outlet logic
Think through protection plans, pressure answers, and built-in outlets for the quarterback. - Build shared language across the staff
Clarify terminology, teaching cues, and common language that improves communication and consistency. - Translate ideas into teachable systems
Move from “good concepts” to installable, repeatable teaching methods players can actually execute.
What this Companion is not
To be clear, this Companion:
- Does not generate playbooks or design offenses
- Does not claim there is one “right way” to run offense
- Does not replace staff meetings, film study, or on-field teaching
Instead, it helps coaches think better about the offense they already run.
How coaches should use it
Use the Think Tank Companion to:
- Ask better questions about your current system
- Pressure-test your offensive structure
- Clarify teaching priorities for players and assistants
- Reflect on in-season or offseason decisions
- Improve how ideas are communicated and taught
This is a thinking partner, not a play caller.
Why This Matters Right Now
- Defensive pressure structures are more complex than ever
- Offensive staffs are carrying too much volume
- Teaching time continues to shrink
- Execution is breaking down under stress, not on the whiteboard
This Think Tank AI Companion exists to help coaches slow the game down, clarify structure, and teach offense in a way players can actually carry to Friday night.
About the Think Tank Coaches
This Companion is built from a Think Tank conversation featuring three coaches known for their clarity of thought, teaching discipline, and system-based approach to offense.
Dub Maddox
A long-time high school head coach and multiple-time state champion, Dub is known for building offenses that are structured, adaptable, and quarterback-friendly. His work emphasizes offensive identity, common language, and teaching systems that scale year over year despite changing personnel. Learn more from dub at r4footballsystem.com
Josh Herring
A veteran quarterback coach and host of Passing Lab, Josh specializes in quarterback decision-making, passing game structure, and teaching progression-based offense. His focus is on helping quarterbacks process pressure, coverage, and timing within clearly defined frameworks.
Dan Gonzalez
A longtime coach and consultant who works with programs across levels, Dan is known for systemizing the passing game — particularly around protection, outlet structure, terminology, and teaching progression. His approach centers on building language and structure that allow offenses to evolve without losing clarity. Dan digs deeper on the passing game on readandshoot.com
How to start using the Companion
You can ask a question at any time, but for the most useful guidance, be ready to share:
- Your coaching level
- Your role (HC, OC, position coach)
- The offensive issue you’re trying to solve
Starter prompts coaches often use:
- Where might my offensive structure be creating unnecessary complexity?
- How can I simplify our menu without losing answers versus pressure?
- What questions should I be asking about protection and outlets?
- How can I improve shared language across my offensive staff?
- How do I know when we’ve added too much?
Final note
This Think Tank Companion reflects how experienced coaches think, not a checklist of answers. Its value comes from helping you see your offense more clearly, teach it more effectively, and build systems players can execute under pressure.
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Related:
The Think Tank- Creating the Structure- Dan Gonzalez, Josh Herring, Dub Maddox
The Think Tank- Creating a Defensive Structure- Grant Caserta, Mike Fox, Eric Kasperowicz