Message boards are full of so-called experts who never played or coached the game at the high levels. I’m one of them. CanesInSight is blessed to have Mike Zuckerman, a ten-year college coaching veteran, take us to Football School. He will join the show regularly to provide insight on terms we use every day, but may not fully understand. Zuck, a Miami alum, spent seven years in UM’s football program in various roles and, for the past three years, served as the linebackers coach at Utah State. During his tenure, Utah State had an 11-win season, won the conference, and produced 2023 first-team All-Conference LB MJ Tafisi. Zuck has taken a leave of absence to return to civilian life, which is a blow for Utah State but a blessing for Canes fans.

Today, we’re talking Air Raid. Miami fans know that offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson comes from the Air Raid Tree, and that Air Raid teams typically throw the ball. But what does the term really mean?

“My introduction to the Air Raid actually came when I was still a student assistant at Miami,” Zuck said. “At one point, we had all the plays we had run in one year on a whiteboard. Matt Mumme, who's the son of Hal Mumme (father of the Air Raid), came and visited us because he was friendly with the offensive coordinator. He looked at our board of concepts and was blown away and was just like, ‘How do you run all this? I don't understand.’”

Zuck, who had previously only coached in Pro-Style systems, said the experience opened his mind to a whole new way of thinking about football.

“There are certain plays which are staples of the Air Raid. But really, it is more of a philosophy that they're going to run a core group of plays. do things a little bit differently than other people. They're going to throw the ball around a lot and they're going to execute those plays at an extremely high level because they're only going to do a little bit and they're going to be really, really, really good at those few things.”

One of the central tenants of the Air Raid, he explains, is that their coaches have no allegiance to tradition. Some Air Raid coaches don’t even have their teams stretch before practice.

“Their whole thing is they were going to do it their way. They didn't want to do it anyone else's way. That's kind of, to me, the Air Raid philosophy.”

Of course, there are specifics in drills and routes. One drill is called the “noose drill,” where a receiver is trained to catch the ball and go straight upfield. Also, instead of training their quarterbacks to go through progressions based on the safeties, or right to left reads, the quarterbacks go through a “pure progression” of option 1 through option 5.

Not all Air Raid systems are created equal. Dana Holgorsen, who served as a mentor to Miami OC Shannon Dawson, was one of the first Air Raid guys to start using more tight ends and diversity in the run game. There was also a change in pace.

“Having been a GA at Miami when we played West Virginia in the bowl game, they were huddling a lot more when they'd been all up tempo, spread out, no huddle. A lot of that, I believe, is just because they were trying to slow the game down a little bit and maybe protect the defense.”

As a defensive coach who has had to prepare for Air Raid teams, Zuck is well aware of the problems the system presents to a defense.

“The biggest problems they present is that if you sit in one coverage, they have an answer to it. They execute really well. So if they know exactly what you're doing, they know all the little tweaks within their offense to attack you. As a defensive coach, you could tell when someone really had a well thought-out system and when someone was just running plays. If we played someone who had 9,000 different plays in the breakdown and did a million different things, that to me was an advantage because I don't think guys have ways to tweak within their plays when you're running so much. The beauty of the Air Raid is that they can make all these little tweaks within their passing game.”

Zuck broke down several staple plays of the Air Raid passing attack that he has also seen on Miami’s film: Four verticals (with several options to sit down if the CB is playing deep ball), mesh, stick and snag. On the video above, he breaks down these concepts in detail with visuals.

So how Air Raid is Miami’s offense? Zuck said it depends.

“I would say in general, when you watch Miami, their pass game is Air Raid. Most of the concepts are traditional. If they're not traditional, they don't do a ton else. Where they've branched out is their run game is very Pro Style. The run game and the play action off the run game, that is not traditional Air Raid. I think that's where you see kind of the mesh of a Pro Style and Air Raid with them.”

Zuck continued, “the power runs, they're running the play action shots. That's not traditional Air Raid. But in terms of when they just drop back and pass the ball or their screen game, all that stuff is kind of traditional what you'd expect.”

One thing you won’t see on Air Raid teams is a lot of dancing at the line. This is one reason Air Raid teams typically stay away from recruiting the 7on7 circuit.

“You watch these kids in seven-on-seven or these videos where they make a kid fall, like doing like nine thousand different dance moves at the line. The Air Raid is all timing. There's no time to be dancing at the line of scrimmage.”

Zuck expects Miami to further tweak their version of the Air Raid to accommodate their new quick-thinking, rocket armed QB, Cam Ward.

“[Washington State] was more of your traditional, no huddle, go fast. So he's used to catching the ball and getting the ball out immediately.

Stay tuned for more Football School with Coach Zuck on the CanesInSight Podcast, which is now daily.