Every offensive staff eventually has to answer the same question: how do you build a passing game that gives your quarterback answers without giving him too much to think about? Pete DeWeese, offensive coordinator at Cambridge High School in Milton, Georgia, spent a session breaking down how he answers that question by blending two schools of thought that a lot of coaches treat as opposites.
DeWeese has coached both sides of the ball for more than twenty years, and he’s noticed that most passing games fall into one of three camps: gift reads built off soft coverage and RPOs, split-field reads that isolate one half of the field, or full progression reads that ask the quarterback to work through the entire field in a defined sequence. Each has its believers, and DeWeese has heard the arguments for all three.
Split-Field Concepts
Coaches who lean on split-field concepts like that they narrow the quarterback’s vision. A young or inexperienced passer can be trained to look at one specific defender or movement, find rhythm, and throw with confidence. Split-field reads are also easy to rep and easy to teach, and they let a staff dictate matchups — a Cover 3 beater on one side, a man beater on the other, with the quarterback picking his side before the snap based on what he expects from the coverage.
But DeWeese is quick to point out the tradeoff. Narrowing a quarterback’s vision can also create tunnel vision. When the defense changes the picture after the snap, or does something the quarterback didn’t anticipate, a passer trained to look at one half of the field can freeze instead of adjust. Sticking exclusively to split-field concepts can also shrink a team’s versatility, even if the menu looks big on paper. And DeWeese has lived the other trap himself: early in his career, he found that split-field game plans have a way of growing beyond what the practice schedule can support. The install looks manageable on the whiteboard, but the reps never catch up.
Full Field Concepts
On the other side, coaches committed to full-field progression reads argue that a well-designed concept can answer almost anything a defense presents. If the design is sequenced correctly, it teaches the quarterback a natural progression, and that means more reps on fewer concepts — which builds real confidence. The pushback DeWeese hears most often is about protection and processing: coaches worry they can’t hold up long enough for a full progression, or that a particular quarterback isn’t experienced enough to read the whole field.
DeWeese’s Answer – Do Both
DeWeese’s answer isn’t to pick a side. It’s to do both — and the way Cambridge does both is by pairing a split-field tag with what he calls a scan tag.
DeWeese defines a scan tag simply: any backside tag that brings routes into the quarterback’s vision after his primary read. Cambridge isn’t running ten pure progression concepts, and it isn’t running ten scan tags either. Depending on the week, the staff might carry five or six scan tags for the season and lean on only two or three in a given game, based on what the defense is showing, what the skill players do well, and what the quarterback is handling comfortably. The menu moves. What doesn’t move is the consistency the quarterback builds with those backside tags — he knows the spacing, he knows the routes that will occupy that space, and he knows how to move his feet and his eyes together to get there.
That consistency matters most against defenses that don’t sit still. Static, predictable coverages make split-field calls easy — the picture doesn’t change, so the quarterback’s presnap answer holds up. But DeWeese has also coordinated defenses, and he says the offenses that gave him the hardest time preparing were never the ones running the most stuff. They were the ones that stayed multiple while staying rooted in the same core system — enough variation to avoid being predictable, enough consistency that the players executed at a high level. When he moved back to the offensive side of the ball, that observation became his mission: build a system that could attack defenses the same way those tough offenses had attacked him.
Scan Tags
That’s the thinking behind Cambridge’s scan tags. They give the quarterback a built-in answer for when the defense changes the picture, without requiring the staff to install a second full concept. The install starts with the coaching staff studying tape together — DeWeese mentions pulling ideas from Bobby Petrino, Lane Kiffin, Dub Maddox and the Air Raid family, Dan Gonzalez, Josh Herring, and others — but he’s less interested in what those staffs are calling than in how they’re teaching it and repping it. From there, the concepts move into the quarterback room, though DeWeese is careful not to over-invest in classroom time at the expense of practice reps. The teaching has to be efficient enough to translate to the field.
“Success in this game doesn’t come down to what you do — it comes down to how you teach it and how you rep it.”
— Pete DeWeese
At the snap, Cambridge boils the read down to one question for the quarterback: do I have the math, or do I have the matchup, on my primary concept? It doesn’t matter whether the call is smash, sail, or a fade-out — the question is the same. If the answer is yes, the quarterback confirms the defense hasn’t changed after the snap and delivers the ball. If the answer is no — or if the matchup was against him from the start — he confirms that it isn’t shifting in his favor and works to his backside scan tag.
For DeWeese, that one question is the whole point of the system. It lets Cambridge stay simple on the front side of a concept while still giving the quarterback a real answer when the defense doesn’t cooperate — which, more often than not, is exactly when a passing game needs one.
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