Spread and two-back marriage

When we play spread teams that go down under center into the I, our eyes usually light up.


I think since you have worked in the I before, your greatest focus should be on run blocking from a 3 point stance. At the high school level, there seems to be a big adjustment for the offensive line to become as aggressive as power oriented teams, also a lot of the running backs have a hard time running more downhill (they tend to dance a lot).

I'd think you'd really have to focus on the attitude it takes to run a 2-3 back offense. That starts in the trenches, and moves into the style of the backs. A good fullback goes a long ways, and if he instills that attitude you have you will probably be successful.

We ran the Gun I formation alot this year we used it in adition to our normal two back gun set.

We ran our normal spread plays (IZ, OZ, Zone Read, Dart, Counter)

Because USUALLY (keyword there), when spread teams try to play in the "power sets" they are playing into our strengths and something that we can usually do better than them.

I guess this happens because they don't rep this stuff as much, don't work on that type of running style with the backs, and don't spend much time with the offensive line regaining that very different personality especially with the run blocking. When they pass out of these sets(if they are spread team rarely under center), we usually bring a lot of pressure because the drop back passing game takes time to adjust to, and inside brings pressure relatively quickly to what the QB is used to seeing.

We defend the spread fairly well, but obviously, every time a team lines up and tries to play your type of football (especially when they spend a lot of time in something else), your confidence level that you can out execute them goes thru the roof.



(this being said, recently a lot of spread teams have began to break the non-physical stereotype, i just think that it is a little harder to teach that mentality from the spread---not impossible)

When they can spread the ball out and retain that aggressive/old school football personality you have the best of both worlds. A spread team with the attitude of a Single Wing team, scares the living bejesus out of us and a lot of staffs.

We run both spread and I formation. The way I set up practice is that we run our I formation run plays during our Inside run period. At the same time, we running our 7-on-7 spread plays. Since our runs plays can be run both out of spread and I (inside and outside zone and wrap), there is no additional coaching. During our team periods, we run period of spread stuff and one period of I formation stuff. This past season, we had two backs with over 600 yards rushing. One was our I formation back and the other was our Spread formations back. It is very nice, because if one isn't working in a game, we can go to other. So far teams haven't been too successful at stopping both.

This will be our 3rd two back set for the up coming year. I think this will put a bind on the D because you can run to the stregth and weakside.

We run both the two back look from the spread and from under center and had no real difficulty switching back and forth. I think the fact that we put equal emphasis in practice to both looks helps along with the fact that we are more of a spread run team than pass, helps with the lineman's run block mentality. We will also run our same plays out of the spread that we do under center like the power, trap, stretch (outside zone) and options. We keep the blocking the same for the line and it is on the backs to make the adjustments depending on their alignment. We will also use the offset I and a one back set in the spread with motion to get the second back involved in the play. Our goal is to give defenses multiple looks to prepare for, while allowing us the maximum amount of reps with essentially the same plays. It worked well enough for us in our first season last fall that we plan to contiune the combination this year.

toprowguy,

What else are you planning on running from that formation? I am looking at running some gun spread, but don't want to waste a couple of pretty good fullbacks.

I think that you may want to look at some old Florida State and some current University of Georgia playbooks they do a good job of incorporating the spread and two back stuff in there offense.... A book you may want to look at in Coaching Footballs Fastbreak offense or something like that it outlines florida states attack when Mark Richt was the OC there pretty good stuff from what I have been told.....All and all though coach you can definately run the both a 2 back and spread attack. Formations aren't what gets tricky its the number of blocking schemes you have if you run IZ, OZ, Counter/ Power, and Trap. You have 4 blocking schemes well some would argue 3 but four at the most, with the zone nothing changes but what the backs might do same with the counter/power stuff, Reguardless if you are under center or in the gun..... Just my opinion.

Exactly, minimizing blocking schemes is the key