What I’ve Been Reading: The Perfect Pass

Not many books make me want to spring into action, but reading The Perfect Pass by S.C. Gwynne made me immediately want to start watching some videos, doing some research, and drawing up plays. That’s because it concentrates on the development of the forward pass in football, but in particular the Air Raid offense, which was originated by Hal Mumme. Mumme had some influences (LaVell Edwards at BYU, Bill Walsh of the 49ers, etc.), but he synthesized a lot of different passing concepts into what has proliferated across college football. Even though Mumme couldn’t keep his own success going, Mike Leach (currently at Washington State) coached with Mumme and a lot of successful teams (Oklahoma, West Virginia, the New England Patriots, etc.) run Air Raid concepts.

Hal Mumme is such a strange case study. I knew of him back when he was coaching at Kentucky, but even his record-setting offenses didn’t win a ton of games. Despite his influence on the game of football and allusions to his system constantly, he has faded into obscurity. Even after reading a book about him, I don’t really know what the guy looks like (I’m about to Google it). But based on some of the things I read, I’m interested to tweak some of our concepts and practice techniques, because they make a lot of sense.

I also recommend:

• Swing Your Sword by Bruce Feldman and Mike Leach: This is a great resource on Leach, though it concentrates heavily on the troubles he encountered at Texas Tech.
• Talking Football podcast with Coach McKie: I’ll be honest that I find Coach McKie to be a little bit annoying, but I like the subject of his discussions. He’s a high school offensive coordinator who loves and runs the Air Raid, but he talks to a lot of different coaches about various offensive (and some defensive) philosophies.

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