Coach and Coordinator Podcast Assembling Gap-Sound RPOs – Brent Dearmon, Head Coach, North Alabama
Today’s episode is from our archives and features Brent Dearmon from when he was the offensive coordinator at Arkansas Tech. Since that time, he’s gone on to do big things.
Coach Dearmon is currently the head coach at the University of North Alabama. Prior to his current role, he served as the offensive coordinator for Florida Atlantic in 2022 after spending the 2021 season as OC at Middle Tennessee. His previous experience also includes serving as head coach at Bethel University. In his one season at Bethel in 2018, Dearmon guided the team to an undefeated regular season mark. Bethel earned a number-three ranking while averaging 540.3 yards and the second-highest scoring average in the country at 55.0 points per game. He was named Mid-South Conference Coach of the Year.
Dearmon then made the rare jump from NAIA to FBS when he joined Les Miles' staff at Kansas in 2019 as a senior offensive consultant. Midway through the 2019 season, Dearmon took over as the program's offensive coordinator and led the team to a 24.1 scoring average and more than 400 yards of total offense per game.
Brent Dearmon has always been at the forefront of RPO thinking, and it’s become a big part of the offenses he has directed. In this episode (one of four with Coach Dearmon in our library), he talks about assembling gap-sound RPOs that attack the defense across the entire field.
Be sure to listen to the Winning Edge at the end of the episode for our takeaways and ideas for implementation from this episode.
Show Notes:
- Evolving the RPO
- Keeping a downhill rushing mentality, while opening up more to the pass
- Doing RPOs in a sound way, while protecting the QB
- The Hot Gap
- Pre-snap reads
- The benefits of Power built into RPO
- The Counter game
- Turning Buck Sweep into RPO
- The three questions Dearmon asks for every concept
- RPO and practice
- Coaches need to ask, "Who do you say you are?"
- Winning Edge: Takeaways and ideas for implementation
Follow Brent Dearmon on Twitter @BrentDearmon.
Related Resources:
Coach Dearmon’s Courses:
Identifying and Attacking Coverages with the RPO
Coach Dearmon on CoachandCoordinator.com:
Additional Coach Dearmon Episodes:
Our First Interview with Coach Dearmon
Creating a Common Language for Coaching
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