Belly Option

The old Inside & Outside Belly series (as used by Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech with Frank Broyles at QB, AND, Jordan Olivar at Yale) differed in that SOME opened out with the QB, and SOME reverse pivoted.

The ones that opened out used the same footwork as the Wishbone Triple on the Inside Belly Option, and the Houston Outside Veer on the Outside Belly Option. The major difference was that they were "double options" & not triple options.

The ones that reverse pivoted to about 4 or 8 o'clock did so on the Ouside Belly option. They RODE the FB from their back leg to their front leg, then attacked inside shoulder of DE for pitch or keep.

TRY to locate Jordan Olivar's GREAT book on the Belly Offense.

Offensive football (the "Belly series")
by Jordan Olivar
Type: Book
Publisher: New York, Ronald Press Co. [1958]
OCLC: 1811939
Subjects: Football.

This is on "GOOGLE" under "DEC00": Check out the diagrams that will not show here:

What a great Christmas surprise! A couple of days before Christmas, I opened a large envelope from a college classmate and teammate named Harry Olivar. He's an attorney in Los Angeles, and his dad was Jordan Olivar, our head coach at Yale. Coach Olivar (his friends called him "Ollie" but I never had that privilege) died in 1991. He was a wonderful man and a heckuva football coach, and I asked Harry when I saw him at a team reunion back in October if he'd be good enough to furnish me with some biographical info about his dad. He agreed, but he's a busy man and couldn't commit to a deadline, so when I started to open his envelope, I didn't know what to expect. Once I saw what Harry had sent, though, it was obvious that I was on to something. It was a treasury of information, including some rather humorous stories involving a man I'd only known as rather olympian, very composed and professional in everything he said and did. Soon enough, thanks to the generosity of a son whose love for his dad is obvious, I hope to share with you a side of a remarkable man that I'd never seen.

Now, just to let you know a little something about Jordan Olivar and his brand of football, here is a sampling of his Belly Series...



A young coach who'd been hearing the term "belly" used and didn't know what it referred to, had the guts to ask me recently what it meant. (I guess it takes a certain amount of guts, because it's amazing how many guys won't ask these questions because they're afraid they'll look stupid.) This was an easy one for me, because this is what we ran in college. I wish I'd paid better attention back then, but I did save a lot of my game plans, and I do have the book my coach published.

The word "Belly Series" or "Belly-T" or "Belly Option" came about during the 1950's, when people began running an offense in which the QB would place the ball in the fullback's belly but hang onto it while the fullback cradled it for a few steps; then, he would either give it to the fullback - and then either fake to the opposite halfback off tackle or, occasionally, an fake an option - or pull it out of the fullback's gut and hand it to the opposite halfback (or run an option, or play-action pass, or counter) while the defense ganged up on the fullback, who no longer had the ball.

In the sense that the Belly was series football, with one play setting up another, it was not unlike what we do. A simple illustration of this series concept is shown above against a 50 defense, popular even then.

Shown on the LEFT is the basic Inside Fullback Belly play, whose purpose was to make the inside linebackers and playside tackle so fullback-conscious that they would begin to tackle him even when he didn't have the ball.

There were several ways of blocking the basic fullback belly, and it was the responsibility of the offensive tackles to recognize the defenses and call the most effective blocking against it. (The backside tackle made a "dummy" call to keep defenses guessing.)

Once the threat of the fullback was established, a great complement to it was the halfback off-tackle (RIGHT). Notice how this took advantage of a "50" defense whose inside LBer and playside tackle had begun to overplay the fullback.

The Belly Series was a very deceptive offensive innovation and in its early stages, until officials became accustomed to seeing it, there were a lot of touchdowns called back because officials blew the whistle thinking that they'd seen the man with the ball being tackled, while the real ball carrier was way upfield.

Coaches Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech and Jordan Olivar at Yale were considered among the leading proponents of the Belly-T. Both wrote books that would be very helpful to anyone interested in learning more about the offense.

The Belly Series is by no means dead; the inside and outside Belly are key components in the Delaware Wing-T, and around the country you can still find people who drive opponents nuts with it. I have a book of AFCA clinic notes from 1975 which contains an article by Coach Vince O'Connor of St. Francis Prep in Brooklyn, New York. It was entitled, "Twenty Years With the Belly Offense." I read an article in USA Today this past fall about Coach O'Connor, who is still coaching, still at St. Francis Prep, and still running the Belly. The winningest active coach in the state of Oregon is Dewey Sullivan, of Dayton. He is still going strong and still running the Belly-T. I played him a couple of times several years ago, and I can tell you that his teams were very hard to defend against. He bought a copy of my tape a few years back and paid me one of the highest compliments I've ever received: he told me that if he didn't run the offense he was running, he would run mine.

I run mine out of the I formation.
Example: "24 option"

phase 1=QB takes a deep hard step at 45 degree angle to the right, arms straight out for the "mesh"

phase2=ride the FB untill arms are paralell w/ LOS simultaneously bringing left foot even w/ the right and looking at the unblocked D-linemen depending on defense. The QB needs to make the descision to give or pull at this time.

pahse 3=run straight down the line (not bowing back) and run at the end (unblocked) , plant w/ outside foot (right) and go straight upfield.

I ran it when i was a middle school coach but you have to run it everyday and make sure that all three backs take the same steps every time. Make sure that the RB keeps pitch-relation (4 yds away, 2 back) at all times. I spray painted the paths on the field w/ a dummies for defense. Walk through, until perfect then jog through then full speed. Then introduce the reads walking half and full speed. Once they can do it full speed play games with live defenders/d-alignment to trip them up.