Double Wing Offense

I'm starting to study it now, but I don't know if I can ever see myself running it. There is a team in our conference that runs it, but they are the only team in IL that I know of. Elmwood-Brimfield, located in the general Peoria area for those of who familiar with IL.

Steve Calande has some excellent materials as well.
Colton CA is a USA Today top 20 team, they run it. Clovis East in Cal is in the Biggest Class and runs it well. so do others accross the country, its still a niches offense used by teams that usually dont have the size/ponies.
Here in Nebraska One team runs it in the Largest Class "A" and one in Class "C." The one in Class "A" struggles with numbers, but have made the playoffs a number of times, got deep once. The smaller school played for the State Title and lost in 2005, and go to State every year.
It's good for them because no one sees the offense, hard to prepare for, unlike the pretty same stuff they see week after week .

Its a growing offense ...Not sure why more big schools that have done nothing with more traditional offenses dont give it a try...Most often around here it seems that the guys that get big school jobs have college coaching experience so they run stuff that theyd run at college. ::)I think too that there are a number of other reasons that its not used as much in some parts of the country as it others. (I know of no high schools in Pa currently running full blown double wing toss offense)- Of course if it appeared on Tv with some college team running it, itd be everywhere. Just look at the explosion of interest in the single wing all of a sudden...Coincidence? NO, Florida ran a few sw plays and won the national championship...that makes it "acceptable" now right?

It is difficult to predict motivation. ;D
The schools that chose it in this part of the country did so because they were perennial losing programs, had nothing to lose. They probably stuck with it because they had success with it rihgt out of the gate. Both coaches were very confident, strong personalities. The one at the Class "A" school has strong Admin and community support, (great guy) dont know the other guy. he is business guy, non teacher, probably could take it or leave it.

Running something that no one else runs probably does take a bunch of courage and confidence. If you line up in the "I" and get beat with inferior talent you can always blame it on the inferior talent, a pure Jimmys and Joes thing.
However if one makes the decision to use something not many others are using, and he loses , the problem could be blamed on chosing the wrong scheme, hence blame the coach.

An example would be Raymond Central here, class C school had not won a game in 2004 lots of lopsided blowouts. A very good rookie HS coach came in with the DW, did a nice job, they won 2 ballgames and were Significantly more competitive, scored nearly 3 times the number of points as the 2004 teams. Not sure if these guys won a game in 2003 either. Several key fans and players didnt like the offense, the guy resigns, What did this team do in 2006? OFer went 4 wide, and scored just a handfull of points again. Raymond Central in Nebraska. The ofer coach is still around.
The guy that got the thing going and got em out of their slump and on the road to competitiveness coached for me for one year, and the guy outworks anyone, a beast, knows his stuff inside out etc. a shame really.

Markhams got 300 wins with it, and not at little schools.

Its important to understand that just because something isnt in fashion at the pro, college or "big school level" doesnt mean it "doesnt work". Lets not forget that there are a few coaches at Midland Lee who got to see first hand that the dw does indeed work.

I maintain that there is still a very large portion of this country that is basically ignorant when it comes to understanding of the dynamics of the double wing offense and all that you can do with it and all of the "advantages" that there are available to a team that buys into the philosophies.

Most likely, one of the biggest reasons is that the DW isn't featured on TV on Saturdays or Sundays. I truly believe that many coaches like to run things that the kids and fans can relate to. Things that they see on TV.

In the words of Mark Speckman "Anyone can be an All-American Faker - it's takes no talent, speed, or size." If you can't run over them, run away from them.

I dont think so.
Have you ever seen any of those Straight T teams out of Michigan carry out fakes? 20 Yds downfield with all 3 backs with cross arms per their "layered" handoffs. Its extremely difficult to kow who has the ball, some amazing rushing and scoring numbers.
Homer Smith is from my hometown ( Omaha ), Benson High School and is a wealth of football knowledge.

I remembered all of Constantine HS RBs wearing black elbow pads. That made it harder for the defense to see who had the ball when all of the backs carried out their fakes with their arms covering 'the ball.'

My personal belief is that "execution" is an oversimplification. If we execute straight dives, or whatever, all plays being vanialla, straight man to man blocking we wont be able to do anything vs a team that has us out athleted. If we we create two vs one, angles, numbers advantages and conclift by using schemes that make sense...AND WE EXECUTE THEM ...yeah, thats going to work. Just my two cents, SCHEMEs DO MATTER. eh, otherwise no one would be here on the net using the whiteboard or at clinics etc. Some say its checkers, I say its chess.

I would say so. The schemes have to do SOMETHING to put the kids in a position to be successful. The coaches have to make sure the kids can carry out the tasks they are asked to do. schemes matter, talent matters, coaching matters, execution of the tactics matter...

As to the above topic I would think each group of kids is different it is made up of a unique grouping of sizes, abilities, intellect, motivation and maturity. Each of us have certain constraints as to facilities, practice time, player numbers, size, speed, athleticism, asst coaches etc etc. Each system/scheme has its strengths and weaknesses. My job as coach is to figure out based on the unique grouping of kids I have ( or usually have), my constraints ( My favorite Offense is the Split Back Veer but with just 3 then 2 days a week practice time for youth coaches, I cant teach the Veer) and the strengths and weaknesses of the various schemes out there are the best fit for this unique grouping of kids given the contraints of the situation. Where I am at now we are in a rural area and are slower than our Big City opps. Every year we have been either the smallest or next to smallest team in the league. Vs our other rural opps we are OK numbers wise but when we play the big city teams we play teams that choose from 120-200 kids we play their best "select" teams with the 22-23 that show up for me, no cuts. So we are much smaller than them and much slower with a few exceptions. So we try to limit space in those situations.
When we do tackling drills, nearly all our kids can tackle in limited space-short close quarters tackling drills, same for blocking, But once we open up the drills and put space in the equation my smaller and slower players can not hang with decent athletes. Even with great technique they just dont get there. The other teams often try to isolate my weaker players by going trips and then we are 1-1 with their best player to the non trips side, they want one on one, they want space, if I had the players I would do the exact same thing. So when we match up evenly we are ok with space we run our regular stuff and even widen it out some with our spread running attack and coverdale mesh stuff. But when we dont match up which is quite often we limit space and run our regular SW stuff. We dont kick off deep to thier stud RBs because we have little chance of tackling them in the wide open spaces of a KO return or punt return, we squib it, and kick out of bounds on punts etc. We have been very successful using this approach losing just 2 games with my last 6 teams at the Youth level. I like all football, all the different schemes, Xs and Os tech etc but I have to choose the one that fits my kids and gives them the best chance to compete then coach the heck out of it so we execute said scheme perfectly. BTW we too found it on the internet then bought some books and DVDs ( thank goodness they are available they dont do any clinics around here and I cant afford to fly all over the country to clinics as I dont get paid to coach) I watched a group of very average small kids from Illinois running up and down the field against good or better teams and thought, you know my kids arent any worse or smaller than those kids, I think we can do that LOL and we were off to the races. Im the founder and funder of the org, so I dont have to answer to anyone if the offense doesnt work out, so that is a factor as well.

The local rural HS is not allowed to recruit and the nearest HS is 30 miles and there are restrictions.
Most teams that I have seen go to this dont have the players to begin with, and or because the school has a long reputation for losing. Kids dont like playing for teams that consistently lose or get blown out with regularity, they just dont come out or they play another sport, they dont like getting made fun of by their peers. I think a number of coaches have mentioned that here, the "making fun of" problem.
Ive spent time with ADs of some of these City schools and with the AD of the City School District, they claim there are many great athetes just roaming the halls, not playing football.
The best way they say to get interest back up and numbers back up is to win.
Example, Omaha Central High wins 2 consecutive HS State Basketball Titles, now the basketball numbers are through the roof. Millard North High, Omaha, continuous winner, over 250 kids playing football. On the other hand Omaha South, sames classification about 70 kids out for football, suiting up 28 kids for a varsity game., When they play Millard North its over 100 kids suited vs 28, South hasnt had a winning record in 20 years. When I went there, we consitently won and always had 150+ kids playing football. Whenever South wins 4 games gets on that cusp thier numbers rise.
Moral of the story, in HS best way to attract kids is win according to these ADs.
My guess is many coaches would love to have talent, but they also just love having "football players". Guys that want to win and play hard, play whats best for the team rather than that tiny sliver of 'talent" that has a trouble making player agent"dad" that makes life miserable for many coaches and the players around them. The HC for Omaha largest and most prestigous HS just took the job in 2006, he claimed the reason the team had such an abysmal record was that the former HC would "recruit" players and make too many promises and concessions. In spite of producting more DI talent than all the other schools in Omaha combined in the last 15 years, think Ahman Green and at least 7 former starting "I" backs for NU over the last 30 years, they havent won anything. He said the recruiting days are over ( with the exception of within the wals of the school) and the guys is a Shrine Bowl coach who will win there.
Much smaller scale had a chance to get a very good player, dad played at NU as a running back left early was drafted high and played for the Saints for 5-6 years, a real stud. Kid was extremely fast and quick kid, hes going to be very good. I could tell mom would be trouble, wanted to know what position, how many touches etc etc, wasnt cool with our weekly school grades accountability program, didnt get a good feel so gave her the number of another team.

As a SW coach that has also run "I", Power "I", Veer, Double Wing and even some Spread, that isnt my philosophy. Ive never put down another offense, hijacked a thread or even made a snide comment or joke about any other offense.

If Im better than the other guy we are gonna spread it out and play some one on one. we do when we have the kids. I run a this as our "spread" set: We will motion to trips and run some coverdale stuff etc
...............x.................x....x...c...x...x.............................x
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Problem is unless I have a "select" team I just dont have the players to run it. With just 22 kids sometimes we dont have a thrower, I cant send kids down to JV or Freshman, we play with what we get. If I consistently had the players I would look at a total different offense.