Offense/Defense Poll Question

We've been coaching 7th and 8th graders for the last 5 years in Southern CA. I have coached all levels in high school before that. This year we finally won it all -- We had a great group of kids and a dedicated group of young coaches.

Offensively, our system allows us to be very multiple, but in general we are a 2 back team that uses zone and power schemes, similar to those described so well on this board by Coach Oneback, with many different variations of the 2 back alignment. We also run 1 back and 3 back sets depending on the opponent/situation. Our running game is actually very simple, but we use a lot of formations (including overloads, shifts, motions, and different personnel groupings) and vary our splits/alignments a great deal to create assignment conflicts and mismatches for each specific defensive front and secondary that we play. We use slide protection in all of our passing series' (based on our zone blocking techniques and just passive technique for drop back and agressive technique for play action). Because our running game is so simple to teach, we run few plays and just work on a lot of repetitions. On the other hand, we spend a lot of preparation time customizing our passing attack to take advantage of each individual opponent's weaknesses, so our passing game is rarely the same from week to week. This year, we began the season about 60/40 run to pass, which was a nice mix, but by the end of the season our running game was clicking so well that we were closer to 80/20 run to pass. We outscored our opponents 400-94 over 13 games this year and finished 12-1.

Defensively, our system also allows us to be very multiple. We base out of a 4-4 cover 3, but we can very easily get into almost any other formation (our favorites are an odd 4-4 that looks like a 50 cover 3 with the weak end walked off, a 4-3 cover 2 against more pass oriented teams, and a 6-2 against 3 back formations). Our primary goal is to make the opponent do what they don't want to do, so we will use their tendancies to develop adjustments the kids can call on the field, which makes our defense rarely look the same from week to week. This allows us to get more people to where we think the point of attack will be. We always design the adjustments, however, so they are sound in case the opponent tries to break its tendancy. We always call a base defense, which our kids will run if the opponent does not go into one of their primary tendancies. We shut our opponents out in 8 of our 13 games this year (including the semi-final (28-0) and final (24-0)). (Sorry about all the stats. I don't usually like to toot our own horn, but we had such a great year, I just had to throw them up there.)

I want to extend my deepest appreciation for the willingness of every coach on this board to share with the rest of us. A lot of our success this year was attributable to ideas that took shape from reading the info on this board and e-mailing back and forth with individual coaches after reading their posts. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and wish you all the very best of luck in the coming year.