Quads Based Offense Weaknesses?

If your blitzing 6 guys, and you've got 5 dbs that can shut down my receivers, forcing my QB to throw into a tight area no matter where he goes with the ball, then kudos to your defense. ill assume that my receivers can take your corners. we only need one guy to get open to complete the pass, and with the relatively quick drops anyway, there will be few instances when no receivers will be open. The stack we use with our receivers makes it very difficult to apply a tight press coverage on EVERY receiver. Plus, when we ran the offense occasionally last year, we made good use of rocket screens to the single receiver side in order to deter the use of 6 men rushing our QB. Hell, I WANT you to blitz me with 6 guys, because if one of your corners makes one mistake once during the drive, then we score a touchdown, or at least a first down. I think your giving high school or college DBs too much credit. No team in our division can do what you just outlined, to be honest with you.

So, with the relatively small splits in our o-line, if you can sack our QB or force a bad throw every play in a cover 0 look blitzing to the outside, then its safe to say your team is better is far superior to mine.

Am i off in this analysis?

Interesting that you mention the Florida-FSU matchups of 1996. I actually saw the second one (52-28 Florida victory) on ESPN classic not too long ago, and while i cant speak to their first match-up, Florida SCORCHED FSU all game long. FSU tried time and time again to put pressure on Wuerfell by blitzing 6 and 7 guys, and time and time again Wuerfell would cycle back 2 or 3 steps, and throw a lofty ball (at times off his back foot) to open receivers running both laterally and vertically down the field. Interestingly enough, UF didn't use too many WR bubble and rocket screens, but i think if they had, its very possible that they would've put up even more than 52 points. In that game, when Spurrier decided to go away from his deep route combinations and make use of more short routes with the occasional fade, it really became a debacle, as it was very clear that FSU had NO backup plan at all for countering Florida's explosive offense.

Perhaps the most telling thing about this matchup, was that Wuerfell didn't really have to ever throw into too many small windows at all, most times, his receiver would have 3 or four steps on the trailing DB (which is probably why he could get away with throwing off his back foot at times). Plus, I understand that before we even install this system (which will be similar in some ways to the Satellite Express offense used bby Mississippi Valley State in the 1980's) we'd have to adequately prepare our QB's for pressure, and get them ready to make quick reads, and take advantage of the holes that will inevitably be in a defense that's running anything similar to a Cover 0 look.

I completely see how your defense was able to take advantage of an opposing team's offense that used these formations only once or twice a game. Baylor tried the diamond 4x1 quad formation a couple times this year, and it looked like garbage. The key with this system, as with any pass heavy system, is repetition. If this offensive set was only used twice in the game where your teams played against one another, then i think its safe to say that a very insignificant amount of that team's practice sessions were spent on using that particular package. Our QBs are drilled from a very young age on how to deal with pressure like the kind you described above. We teach our QBs to look forward to playing against 6 and 7 blitzers, not fear it. We make it very clear to them that while they may take a couple hits, the blows to the defense's moral when they see our receivers running up and down the field scoring points on them, is of a far greater impact on the outcome of a game than the hits they may take. It's all in the mindset, IMO. So, while some QBs fear the blitz, we try to develop a culture in which our QBs invite the blitz, knowing that they'll be well prepared for whatever an opposing defense can throw at them. As a matter of fact, in using the heavy passing Spread style offense we currently run, a pretty significant portion of our practice for our QBs is spent on simulating a defenses pressure. We've searched far and wide to find what we deem is a pretty effective system of drills that adequately prepares our QBs for throwing a decently accurate ball under significant pressure.

I also believe that a quads based air offense is similar to an option based ground attack in that, if run correctly, it can equal the playing field against superior opponents. Size and speed advantages that the defense may have can be negated due to us forcing the defenders to play in space. Couple that with the quick release nature of our offense in general, and i feel that any defense would have a difficult time effectively executing a heavy pressure scheme against us. Plus, i've always felt that any defense that's rushing 6 and 7 guys will have GAPING holes in its coverage. When a defense resorts to that, they're hoping that they can intimidate the QB and force him into a rushed and ill-advised decision. If the defense succeeds, what I find usually happens is that the QB will end up making the windows he's throwing into smaller than they have to be. Each passing play we run is set up so that our QB goes through a base progression of 3 receivers that is the same regardless of the coverage or blitz package the defense is showing us. Our QB reads the safeties pre-snap, and the linebacker's roll or buzz of the coverage post snap. All of this is simplified by the way in which we run our passing plays. Each receiver is making his break just as our QB is moving from his previous target to his present target (and subsequently, to his third and fourth targets), as such, in theory, our QB will always hit the WR just as he is making his break (or a little after depending on the coverage).

Now, im not saying this system is perfect, as im sure despite this, our QBs will have (and have had) some growing pains, as is inevitable with any QB in any system, but through the culture we develop with our offense, our receivers, and our QBs from day one on the practice field and during off field study sessions, we know that we will have them as prepared as possible for anything they'll see at the freshmen, JV, or Varsity level of highschool competition in regards to heavy pressure blitz packages.

Does this make sense?

Question 1: This is a good question. Generally we put our best athletes on the offensive side of the ball, and play them exclusively there. We don't have the most talent, so we focus on scoring points more than stopping peolpe. Not sure if this is the best idea or not, but hey, I'm not the head coach. To answer your question though, yes, our offense does have the time to focus on the timing, blocking, and execution necessary to make our no-huddle system work.

Question 2: I live in Maryland, so the weather isn't terrific (ala California, Texas or Florida) but its good enough to run  the spread passing system we've been running. As such, weather isn't to big of an issue.

Question 3/4: For a downhill running attack, we can use QB inside zone runs, and to get our best athletes involved in the running attack we can emply the pistol formation. That being said, we passed the ball around 65% of the time this year, and if we use this offense we'll probably end up passing 80%.

It's intersting that you mention the K.I.S.S. method, because we think exactly the same way with our passing system. We only have around 14 passing plays (not including PA Zone Reads, and Screens) that we use from a plethora of formations. We'll probably stick with this system because, with the use of quads formations and the endless possibilities that come with stacking our receivers, we can use the same 14 plays from about 8-9 different formations.