Sorry, guys...its been awhile.
School started, football got heavy into the season, and health issues reared their ugly head. Now things are good, I'm in the flow of things with school and now we have parent-teacher conferences (which equal a lot of down time since hardly any parents come to the conferences).
Update on my current team, Delphos Jefferson: We went 9-1 regular season and won the conference championship!!! The only loss was to a good Coldwater team (that will probably win state in their division) and we probably played our worst game in terms of execution (refs didn't help either, but not the biggest issue). We beat our undefeated rivals week 10 soundly and now play them week 11 in the playoffs. It will be tough to beat the same team twice back to back, but our boys are excited and ready for the challenge, especially since the game is being played at our place now. Wish us luck and hopefully we go the distance and get to the Shoe to win the big one!!!!
Now, what is this nonsense about a Wing-T offense running a spread package?!? I know deep down that there are probably plenty of teams that do this, but I also know a lot of people would look at me funny and call me a blasphemer. These two styles of offenses are on the opposite side of the spectrum of football, but both can be tied together to create an effective and dangerous offense.
I also want to clarify that I am not talking about running the Spread Wing-T style of offense. I feel that it can be a good offense, but I feel you lose the deception and speed to the hole that you get with under center and standard Wing-T. I also am not a big fan of the Pistol Wing-T due to the motion required and the mechanics of formations/plays. I have looked at both of these styles of Wing-T, but just do not get the same feelings I have for a standard Wing-T.
I am talking about having a base offense of Wing-T, but having a spread package that is easy to get into and can be run effectively to attack the defense.
At Delphos Jefferson, we run a pretty standard Wing-T offense, with only a few different tweaks to how certain base plays are run. So when someone plays Jefferson, they know they have to prep for Wing-T. The thing that I thought was a great addition and has been difficult for our opponents to adjust to is a simple spread package that can run by our base Wing-T personnel. We can run or pass out of the spread sets and they are true spread formations: 2x2 and 3x1 standard spread formations. We have about 5-7 pass plays and 3-5 run plays, with about 2 pass protections installed for the passing game.
The key to the success of this package is our tempo and our personnel being skilled enough to adjust to spread formations.
We are a up-tempo huddle team, which will break the huddle and snap the ball within 3-4 seconds. It dramatically affects how defenses play us, because they cannot switch personnel and align fast enough to keep up with our pace. With putting the spread package in, we can still break a huddle and get into our spread sets in about 3-5 seconds and get the ball snapped. Now, instead of just aligning to our base Wing-T formations, their defense has to get into spread mode and spread guys out. This leads to a very basic defense being run against us, with coverage being usually man and usually not much blitzing due to the DC not knowing if we would be Wing-T or Spread that specific play. So now teams have to spend all week trying to get use to our Wing-T offense, but must be able to adjust immediately to our spread game, which would require a lot of communication if they wanted to pressure us or get fancy with coverage. A big conflict that is there without us running a play!!! The ultimate goal of the Wing-T philosophy is already present before we even start the game...CONFLICT!!!
Our personnel is also a unique one that lends itself to being able to spread it out...not every team has that talent level or players that fit that scheme. Our QB is a solid player who understands schemes, our TE is a former WR, and our HBs are great athlete who can catch. That is what allows us to use our base Wing-T personnel for our spread personnel. The TE plays like a SE and our HBs are slot WRs. Our FB is our back in the backfield and is part of our protection most plays. The plays are limited and are very basic in design. So when it comes to our playbook, our players are not confused because our Wing-T plays are limited and simple in scheme and the Spread plays are based off of Wing-T run schemes. As far as passing, we run basic route combinations and very basic pass protections that are effective, but not taxing on our OL/FB.
I know some people might ask how we practice all that, but it really isn't "all that". We could not live off of just running our spread package, so that should tell you that it is basic. Our coaching staff has done a great job of balancing the time in practice appropriately to match our philosophy. Most of practice is dedicated to the Wing-T, but we have periods that we work specifically Spread or it gets mixed into periods with Wing-T. We also made sure that we installed everything at the right time during the summer and used things like 7-on-7's to work on our Spread package. As far as a run game, the schemes for Spread are the same as our Wing-T plays, just modified for Spread. I think this is the one area we need to work on making more effective and can rely on heavily as a curveball against better teams.
If you have the personnel to do it, running a Spread package out of your Wing-T offense is something you might want to look at in the off season. We just dabbed in it this year, but the positives are immense versus how much we have actually used it in games. We will probably look to expand it and integrate it more into our base game plan next year.
Good to be back, and expect more once my season ends (which hopefully ends in about 5 weeks with a D6 State Title!!!).
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