I will present an offense that I dreamed up for American Football that I think is nearly omnipotent as far as offenses go.
Before getting into diagrams that I hope I can pull off in a text format, I would like to state that I searched the NCAA and NFL rule books available online (2006 editions) to verify that what I am proposing is actually legal.
There are two things that a football fan might object to and they are the two things I scanned the entire rule books for, reading and re-reading in detail the applicible sections to make sure.
The first thing is this: ANY player on the offense is allowed to receive a backwards pass or sideways lateral (just as long as it is not a forwards pass).
The second critical thing is this: There is no rule determining the eligibility of a player to throw a forward pass; therefore, All players must be eligible to throw a forward pass, provided they receive the ball legally.
Now, soon to the diagrams. (I will have players not eligible to catch forward passes handling the ball, which is very atypical in American Football).
This is my main offensive formation (It's a bit more difficult to accurately describe this with the text limitations than I thought it would be):
4 players.....|| 3 players ||......4 players Left Sideline || Midfield ||...Right Sideline WR_Q1_G_______[C]__________G_Q2_WR _______WR________________WR________ ________________________________ ___________WQ1_____WQ2__________
[C] = Center, Q1 & Q2 (ineligible receivers) = Quarterbacks 1 & 2 G = Guard (offensive lineman size, kind of) WR = Wide Receiver WQ1&2 = Wide Receiver / Quarterbacks (The Center is also my 3rd quarterback and this will give me 2 blockers, 6 ELIGIBLE receivers, and 3 quarterbacks).
The left and right wings of this offense are spread out as far as possible, meaning the formation stands right near the sidelines of the field. The 3 players in the middle are pretty much in the middle of the field.
At the Start of the Play, the Center snaps the ball diagonally to either WQ1 or WQ2 - usually it will be predetermined which one, but how the defense aligns can change this.
There are no set plays, for the most part. There are set tactics such as - if the defense aligns with 4 players on each sideline to match my players, I am going to take advantage of a 3 on 3 match up in the middle of the field. (In this diagram I will ignore the 8 players on each sideline)
_________X1______X2________X3 ________________[C]________ ___________________________ ___________________________ __________WQ1___________WQ2
When the ball is snapped, say to WQ1, player WQ2 runs diagonally to the left (behind the center who is moving backwards). X1 is likely going to be running as quickly as possible towards WQ1, exposed with no blockers and holding the ball. X2 is likely going to be running towards him also, going past the center on his left. X3 determines what happens next. If X3 does not follow WQ2, but instead attacks WQ1, I have a touchdown by lofting the ball over the X1 & X2 to WQ2 who will have no players within 20-30 yards of him laterally and no one between him & the end zone. If X3 does follow WQ2 on his diagonally route, WQ2 will block the nearest player X1 or X2 while WQ1 runs to his right - probably not for a touchdown, but I think a 20-40 yard gain because one of X1 & X2 got blocked and the other is now forced to change direction almost 180 degrees - which can not be done before a good 5-10 yard gap is placed between him & WQ1. X3 must change direction, but can take a downfield angle (he's running to his right and can turn to his right about 135 degrees to take a pursuit angle if he noticed what happened quickly enough.)
OK. What if the defense puts 4 or more players up against my 3 in the middle of the field to stop this? (This is probably what will happen the first time the formation is seen). In my opinion, they are in deep trouble because that means I now have a 4 on 3 player advantage on one or both sidelines. Here is how I will take advantage of that: (Say I have a 4 on 3 advantage on the left)
_________X1____________ X2_____________________ _____________X3________ WR1_Q1_G_______________ _________WR2____________
X1 is probably a Safety, X2 a corner, & X3 a linemen or linebacker - I'm not sure what he will do, but it will be "G"'s job to deal with him.
WR in this formation is going deep every play. WR2 is going to run an intermediate route, a 10-15 yard out, in, or curl - something like that. G will block X3 if X3 attacks.
Q1 is an ineligible receiver - for a forward pass. At the start of the play, Q1 will:
__^__ WR1_(Q1)_G_^____ _____\/_____WR2__ _____\/___ _____\/___ _____q1__ ---------------------------------WQ1
Run backwards (to position "q1") to receive a lateral from WQ1 who got the diagonal snap and immediately pitched the ball slightly backwards far across the field.
What happens next depends upon whether X1 & X2 decide to abandon coverage on WR1 & WR2 to attack Q1 or if they decide to maintain coverage. If they drop coverage, Q1 throws over top of them for a touchdown as the nearest defender will be X3 - probably 5-10 yards behind them & probably engaged with "G". The next nearest defender is 20-30 yards away at midfield and will have to be a track star to catch them.
If X1 & X2 maintain coverage, Q1 does not throw the ball, but runs upfield in the now vacant 10 yards of space with all 3 nearest defenders being blocked (WR1 & WR2 will know that if their defenders run backwards the set play will be for Q1 to run; therefore, they level the defenders when they turn to block). I think this one could go for a touchdown as well, but a 10-20 yard gain is also probable - It's still a very good result.
The last aspect to this system is the downfield lateral.
I have noticed that very few defenders maintain coverage on an area or player once the ball crosses the line of scrimmage. I will have players trailing the ball carrier in 3 lanes on the field. The center in the middle w/ WQ1 forming up as a blocker (or visa versa) and 4 players on the far right side of the field. Also WQ2 is deep down the middle of the field available to cut off defenders at his discrescion. If defenders swarm to the ball carrier, a lazily lobbed lateral back across the field scores a touchdown in most cases as I image them.
Lastly, If the defense does not much attack, but instead drops 7 or 8 people to defend my 6 receivers (I will have on the left side WR1 & WR2 running a short route & a long route on the left, WQ1 & WQ2 in the middle running a short & long route, & WR1 & WR2 on the right side running a short and long route), I think the 7 or 8 defenders are still at a disadvantage against the ball carrier just running downfield as there will only be 1 man for them to beat & they will be blocked (dropping 7 or 8 into coverage means that I will have one area on the field where I have: a defender, an offensive linemen, and the ball carrier.). This defense is actually, in my mind, one of the safer strategies against this offense, but I see it giving up 5-20 yards every play as well as there is the running threat as well as 3 simultaneous difficult to defend routes in 3 different areas of the field (the short routes) with only 2 extra defenders to help, so 1 person (at least) should come open pretty quickly.
With this offense, I had also planned to platoon the wide receivers and force either the platooning of their corresponding coverage players or said players exhaustion - and if not that, A deep pre-snap drop by defenders resulting in a quick 5 - 10 yard gain just by the WQ1 firing the ball out to them immediately (& they better not miss the tackle - or that's possibly another TD.)
(The End).-- Zimmy, Apr 21 2008 (?) June Jones and Bob Davie break down the Run and Shoot http://sports.espn....&categoryId=3386579 [jaksplat, May 08 2008] swinging gate http://en.wikipedia...(American_football)kind of similar to this play [jaksplat, Mar 09 2009] I appologize to people not that familiar with American Football. I would have tried to explain concepts a little more like I did in my last football idea, but I thought it would be too much to read.
I tried to contact the head coach of Rice University in Houston to talk to him about the idea of this offense, but I got no response.
I was kind of disappointed as Rice has Texas and Vanderbilt on the schedule this year, so I figured if I could get this system to work and use it to blow out both teams as well as the other 10 teams on their schedule (well 11 teams with the CCG), they would be legit for a National Championship shot.
If I could convince the coach on the system, I wanted to recruit non starters from their soccer, rugby, and basketball teams to help run the system - as I thought they would have a perfect feel for the fluidness of the system.
Any thoughts on this system? (I know it's a bit of reading).-- Zimmy, Apr 21 2008 I contacted a local university as I am not qualified to be an offensive coordinator and I don't think an assistant offensive coordinator's salary is larger than what I make now, also considering the brief longevity of most coaches tenures.
I was hoping I could break my way into it part time. (Oh, well).
One last thing, there are many, many other situational things you can do in reaction to the defense that I didn't mention for simplicity.-- Zimmy, Apr 21 2008 wow! I coudnt understand most of it but nice concept(+)-- crash, Apr 21 2008 When I saw the title I thought it was going to be some sort of "I can't believe it's not butter!" idea.-- hippo, Apr 21 2008 I was definitely thinking food also. Different though. +-- leif980, Apr 21 2008 I was sure it was something British!-- blissmiss, Apr 21 2008 Kind of reminds me of an extreme version of what Mike Leach does at Texas Tech. I think this could work and would be interested in seeing how a team would go about defending it. [+]-- jaksplat, Apr 21 2008 [jaksplat], That reminds me, Rice's first game is against SMU who is now coached by June Jones (formerly the coach of Hawaii). I mentioned this to them in the email.-- Zimmy, Apr 21 2008 Real revolution will probably spread itself.
The offensive line guard seems a little weak.-- RayfordSteele, Apr 22 2008 To explain previous annos, I should mention that I changed the title of the idea after their annos. If my memory serves me correctly, the original title was "Spread Revolution". Which an American style football fan would probably get. My appy-pologies for being cultural centric, though.-- Zimmy, Mar 08 2009 Sorry, I just don't understand this. I live in the UK and simply can't visualise this. It all sounds good...-- Germanicus, Mar 08 2009 It seems the safest defense to this would be to rush one and drop the rest into coverage (as you have said). I would have the defense playing to bump receivers coming across the line to disrupt their routes and timing. This would still let a nimble quarterback scramble for yardage, but he would likely get injured if this formation was used extensively. Hard to find 1 good quarterback (especially a scrambler), much less 3 or more. This offense could be very effective initially, but teams would eventually recognize and plan for it (like the wildcat formation in recent years). It would be interesting to see the evolution of the type of player (smaller/quicker vs. larger/stronger) teams drafted that used this formation often.-- saprolite, Mar 08 2009 This offense is now baked. Boise St just scored a 2 pt convesion with it a few min's ago. The ball carrier was untouched!-- Zimmy, Sep 04 2009 sweet! grats and have a bun for your troubles [+]-- FlyingToaster, Sep 04 2009 They tried it again, but had bad execution and failed this time.
The defense lined up 2 on the left, 6 in the middle, and 3 on the right.
The obvious thing to do would be to fire the ball to the deep man on the left and have him run it in behind the 3 blockers, but they slowly lofted a pass to the right side deep man - slow passes will not work in this scheme.-- Zimmy, Sep 04 2009 I can't understand a word of this, but it does make me wonder why there aren't more sports-related ideas on here.I thought this was going to be to do with nuclear weapons.-- nineteenthly, Sep 04 2009 And I was expecting something like "404 file not found".-- normzone, Sep 04 2009 should let them know you're available for consultation.-- FlyingToaster, Sep 05 2009 [Flying Toaster], I certainly did! No word back yet, though.-- Zimmy, Sep 11 2009 So... not about nuclear subs then.-- wagster, Jul 09 2010 I can envision a book: "Unorthodox Football". I could see a real market for such a book. The place to pilot things like this is in high school or college - probably high school.-- bungston, Jul 09 2010 //With this offense, I had also planned to platoon the wide receivers and force either the platooning of their corresponding coverage players or said players exhaustion - and if not that, A deep pre-snap drop by defenders resulting in a quick 5 - 10 yard gain just by the WQ1 firing the ball out to them immediately (& they better not miss the tackle - or that's possibly another TD//
And people get ratty at scientists because we use technical terms. Tsch.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 11 2010 //people get ratty at scientists because we use such technical terms// what is it that scientists do anyways ?-- FlyingToaster, Jul 11 2010 //what is it that scientists do anyways//
We play.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 11 2010 What do scientists do?
Get Mad, I guess.
Oregon lined up in this tonight, but motioned out of it.
I think they had an easy 2 pts if they would have lined up the middle 3 correctly.-- Zimmy, Sep 12 2010 The attack point for a defense is a fixed point. What I am doing here is nullifying the attack point.-- Zimmy, Dec 05 2011 random, halfbakery