No Huddle Offense

wrist bands with 2 columns, creating a chart. Put your plays in the boxes on the wristbands and call them from the sideline. It will be almost like the game battle ship. if you call 4 -4 the qb yells it out and everyone looks at the 4th play down and4th box over and that is the play you run. Obviously if you use thesystem a lot, a defense will catch on so start using another number at the beginning as a bluff. 2-4-4.

Coach,

I might be able to help. Email me at spreadcoach@hotmail.com.

Greetings all-

When I was coaching a local middle school 8th grade team whose high school ran the spread passing attack, I was told by our AD that it was "impossible to pass the ball at this age." Of course being a stubborn (born a taurus) person I went out and proved them all wrong by installing the same system that the high school was running AND doing it as a 5 wide no-huddle. Needless to say my opposition wasnt happy after we were done with them.

Having only 30 kids, but a lot of speed and a former Nebraska OL as my line coach, allowed us to have something that no one thought was possible. The coaching staff, all 2 of us, really believed in the passing game and allowed our players to belive in it too. That and having the HS coaches teach us as we went allowed us to run this high powered attack. The first year we kept it simple and had only 12-18 plays total (not counting formations and L/R) so as to make th elearning progressions easier. The kids are the ones that begged us to run no-huddle once they saw the other teams big players sucking wind.

Our no huddle was a 3x2 gun spread set with the team running only 3 plays (all passes) and the the whole team would jog into place before the ball could be set. The WR were taught to have 3 to the field and only the middle receiver had to make the adjustments. The players all knew the 3 plays by their code names (RAID, TIGER, & BANE) and would run the appropriate play. We would run approximatley 20-25% more plays than our oppenents by doing this, and the only running play would be a QB scramble off a broken play. In fact, we went 3 games without a run play and the QB was hot hitting over 65% of his passes. It was a very ball controlled passing game but the other team couldn't stop it. Average score was about 35-40 points a game and a margin of victory of near 20 points. Plus, all the players got to play in every game creating more enthusiasm for the game in our neighborhood.

Sorry about being long winded, but consider it first-timers syndrome.

Coach 4 life-

SOunds great1 what level were youlooking to do this at? I did this with 8th graders, with a few 7th graders sprinkled in, when i ran this. We have a unique system for calling plays and pass routes. My email is wheeler_keith_d@msn.com

A number of ways to get the no huddle in. I've used the following ways through the years.

first letter of play with #'s giving direction:
example: power=peperdine, purdue, purple, portland, ... you can use colleges, states, cities or colors which combined tends to throw things off. You do have to look at what you presently call your plays and change a couple if the first letters are the same. Used a 2 digit number for the direction - odd, even, etc.

portland 24 ... portland 24

word association:
example: hitch=ring, vegas, preacher, ... associate hitch with anything that has to do with marraige or getting "hitched" (wedding RING, quick marraiges in VEGAS, married by the PREACHER). Direction again with the numbers

vegas 31 ... vegas 31

numbers:
package your plays into a number system, not unlike any system. The plays are 2 digits which gives the play and point of attack. Basically you give your "hot and cold" call first which says which of the two sets of numbers you will use - the first or second.

red 21-42

wrist coaches:
I've used them and brought them back out this year a couple of times because a team had scouted us with two cameras and picked up at least some of our signals (one camera was on the play and one on our two signal callers on the sideline). The wrist coaches are cumbersome for me. I prefer not to use them. We had a system where we held up 81/2x11cards with numbers on them (the cards were laminated and put on a clip board with rings and tabs). They were color coded along with the wrist coaches. The thing about the wrist coaches is the cost and management of them through the season - keeping track of them through practices and games, washing them, mixing up the inserts, playing in the rain (can be quite a problem), etc.

Moral of the story is that you need to be careful of people picking up your signals. The better you do, the more people will look for an angle to defeat you. We're strictly no huddle now. The ironic thing is that our guys get confused when we do huddle.

The biggest benefit of no huddle for me though is practice. We can get alot of reps in a short period of time. We get a lot of our conditioning done through team (we do have different tempos). Lots of other benefits as well ...