TiminSWFL

I wanted to post an update after the season ended last Friday. I decided to go away from the no-huddle offense about midway through the season for 3 reasons- 1) we were not getting any advantage with the hurry-up as the teams were ready for it, 2) some of my players were still having a hard time remembering the plays leading to wrong routes or having to show them the play from the book, 3) the other teams had learned the plays from running them the last 3 seasons and adjusted so it just wasn't working as well. So we began huddling and I added some additional plays from the forums here. We ended up 6-1 after the switch and after changing my defense from a 2-1-2 to a 1-1-3 in the playoffs, we dominated both of our playoff games and won the championship. The championship game was unbelievable, we were ahead of the previously unbeaten team 52-8 by mid 2nd half by virtue of 6 interceptions. So my conclusion is this offense is good, but in a league like ours, where most of the coaches return every season, it may need to be supplemented once the other teams adjust.

Here is a video from our game last Friday of the X Bubble play that almost went for a TD because the receiver correctly took it outside:

Hi calewine, I am coaching 9-11 so I do not see much M2M. In a game last season when we saw it we ran alot of X/Zover and Sour/Saint Louis (outside run) to the side of the field opposite of the WRs and they really couldn't stop it. If you want to pass I would design some type of crossing pattern where a defender would likely get picked off his man. We had our first game of this season last Friday and it was a big success again running this offense. We were up 40-7 at halftime so I stopped the hurry-up in the 2nd half to try and keep from running the score up. This was despite the fact that my players are still learning the plays and I would frequently have to tell the QB to wait and show or tell them what to do. We had a great defensive game as well with 4 picks although I have not implemented the disguise of my defense yet that I showed a couple of posts up. This may be the best overall team I have coached yet as I don't have any real weak players. Tim

Kodiakid, Thanks for the replies, lots of good info there. Two things I am changing this season- 1) Less emphasis on reading defenses to pick the play (which slows us down), focus more on playing fast, 2) Spend more time working on defense which was good but not great last season. You mentioned that defense looks at formation to predict plays. The inverse is true as well- good coaches look at the opposing defensive setup to call offensive plays. I am going to try and throw a curve at those coaches this year. I feel like no matter what defense you pick, a good coach will know the weakness of that defense and adjust and call plays to take advantage of those weaknesses (I do). So I am planning on showing one defense and at the snap convert to a different defense. I have loaded an example on youtube showing lining up in a 1-3-1 and at the snap moving to a 2-1-2: By waiting until the snap, the opposing coach will likely be watching his players and the ball and may not realize that we are not really playing a 1-3-1, and continue to call plays that work against a 1-3-1. I have tried to minimize the amount of movement- only 3 of the 5 defenders move and to the closest position from where they initially line up. Those 3 players are my strongest defenders also and should have no problem with the shift. My plan is to teach them the actual defense first and add the shift/disguise after they fully understand the defense. What do you think of this idea?Tim

Thanks again Coach Hebert for those two plays. I designed a similar play to the X/Z cross for a 1-3-1 defense that we were seeing a lot. I like your play better though with the crossing routes. We ended up 2nd place in the regular season with a 6-2 record and lost in the semifinals of the playoffs. My team had 5 nine year olds none of which had played in that age group before and a 10 year old that never played flag fb before. So against the better teams some of our players were a head shorter than theirs, and that ended up making a difference. I am still a believer in this offense and will be using it in the spring season which starts in Feb down here.

Thanks for the suggestions Coach Hebert. I did design a play for extra points somewhat like Laser No Yo-Yo but it is designed for a wide receiver on the out not the Y center as the kids playing the Y position on my team do not have great pass catching abilities. That play worked better on extra points in last week's game, but we still are perfecting it. I also had a play like the Zebra last season but took it out as it just did not work that well and we even got a safety against us once when the runner tried to fake the defender too much. It sounds like you are executing it much better than we did. If you can't run the ball, it is makes things much harder. We work on the Bubble a lot to make sure we complete it most of the time which can back the defenders off opening up the run. The Bubble-go is hard to complete even if they are wide open because it is a long pass. We have had success with that using a slower receiver that has very good hands. The defenders do not pay much attention to him when they see his lack of speed yet he has had a couple of long touchdowns when he got way behind the defender and made the catch. The other play to try when runs are not working is the Flood, looking to hit one of the two shorter routes. It is a play that can be ran over and over just thrown to the player they don't cover. We are now 3-1 and tied for 2nd in a 10 team league and play a team we are tied with this week. My QB from last season plays on the other team, so he will know most of our plays (just not when they are coming), so this will be an interesting game. Let us know how things are going with your team throughout the season. Tim

We lost our first game last week 60-53 to the 1st place team. Obviously we are going to work on defense. But one problem we ran into is the opposing coach very quickly started calling out our plays- he would see me put up 1 finger and call out this is play 1 and then when we ran the play, he called out remember play 1 is an inside run. So in order for them to not learn all of our plays we had to huddle for most of the game. I thought about going to an audible numbering system at halftime, but the kids were not comfortable with it so we will work on it this week in practice. I will simply call out 3 numbers but only one of them is the play, and if somehow the other team figured it out we could switch which number is the play even during the game. One question I would ask for those running this offense is which play do you run for extra points? The other team was much better at converting extra points than us even at the 10 yard (2 point) spot. I run the flood play some and also the Y shovel, but I am thinking about putting in a special play just for extra points, especially 2 point conversions. The Y shovel is usually only good from 5 yards out.

Hi Wazu, I am starting to plan for our first practice next week for my new 9-11 team and just saw your post. On the Bubble routes, if the WR is lined up on the LOS and at the snap turns toward the QB and starts backing up, he should be beyond the LOS when the pass arrives. He is backing up in a direction roughly 45 degrees between going straight downfield and straight towards the sideline, so after 2 or 3 backward steps he should be over the LOS. You can run it as a lateral as you described, I would pick one or the other and do it consistently. I was also thinking about play calling and came up with the idea of numbering the plays 1 thru 5 and just hand signaling. For example, left hand number 1 would be laser, right hand number 1 would be razor. Any play over number 5 I would huddle to call. I am a believer in the fewer plays run correctly are better than more plays, so I hope to not have to huddle often. The male name idea would work, but I think they would figure out after a few series you were calling plays and then it would be no different than the actual play names. Tim

Hi Wazu, I am not the author of the plays, but I did run this offense last spring with success- an undefeated season in 7-8 yo league, so I wanted to try and help with my experiences. Play calling: I did call out the plays at the line of scrimmage, but not so loud that the opposing coach could hear. At times if I thought the other team might know the play names I would tell my team the play by running out to the WR and whispering it and doing the same with the other players. This happened more in the playoffs where teams were seeing us a second time. I had to decide was it more important to keep the play a secret or to play fast. First play: We are allowed to move around as long as we are set at the snap, so we would line up in base, then move the WRs to spread. The problem I had with this was having a difficult time completing the hitch pass if the defensive corners did not move out. Even on this short pass it seemed about a 50/50 chance the receiver would not hang on to the ball. Scrimmage: Either I would tell the defenders to play honest as if they did not know the play or I would huddle or whisper the play to the offensive players. If I was working on the no-huddle/tempo aspect as opposed to learning the plays then I would be more concerned that we were running the right play quickly and not care if the defense stopped the play. 3-1-1 Defense: We never saw this defense last season. All teams played a 3-2 or 2-3 or similar (2-1-2). After seeing our plays they would put their best defender at nose making the razor/laser more difficult. Because of this I added some plays where we faked one play and ran another- e.g. fake laser run Z-bubble. Drills/Practice: I used the drills in the No-huddle manual but then spent time running no-huddle practice specifically working on tempo. I would script out a bunch of plays and run one play after another and have my assistant set the ball 5 yards forward after each play. It is difficult at the younger ages to keep the kids attention if you do not plan out the practice well. The other thing I did was add some additional plays from this site during the last half of our regular season after we had played the better teams. I felt like they knew our plays pretty well by the end of one game and would be able to stop them easier the second time around. It did pay off- we were down 2 TDs in the championship with 6 minutes to go and managed to score on 2 of the new plays we added after they were stopping the no-huddle plays. Tim

Kodiakid, I wanted to give an update and endorsement for this playbook. We have ran it for 3 games now in a 7-8 year old league and it is working great. We won the first game 57-0 (I was trying not to run up the score but we had 5 picks and even my weaker players were running for long TDs). The second game we won 33-12 although we were missing 2 of my best 3 players. Last week we played probably the best team in the league. After getting ahead early, we threw 2 pick sixes and got behind by 3 TDs. We got back to within 5 points and then got a pick 6 ourselves with 2 minutes to go to win 41-39! One thing I noticed in that game is the other team adjusted well to our running game. After moving down the field early, they put their best player on the center and he was jumping out on our running plays. Although my RB sometimes got by him, he was slowed down enough that we didn't get too much yardage. I am thinking about adding some wrinkles to counteract that if we play them in the playoffs. For example fake X-Bubble, and run Razor (delayed). What do you think of that idea? The only play I have added is a long pass play from the Spread formation where the 2 outside receivers go long and stay near the sidelines, QB/RB fake Laser, and the RB goes straight down the middle of the field deep also. The center also runs an out pattern to the right. Most teams play 2 deep so they can't cover all 3 deep patterns. I have a QB with a strong arm and after running the ball a lot the first few series this play usually gets a TD. Game 4 of 8 is tonight against another team that is undefeated. Tim

Kodiakid, Thanks for sharing your playbook. I am implementing it with my 7-8 yo team and I think it will work very well. My question is on which plays(s) do you use the Tight formation? It seems like the Sour/Saint Louis could work well if the corners follow X and Z in. Also you mention you had the least points allowed on defense and you give some good defensive drills and pointers. Could you share your defensive setups and where you play your stronger and weaker players? Thanks, Tim