Offense against 4-4 AND 5-3?

Something to get them out of that 8 man front. Also 3X1 formations will make them have to adjust to a 52 and 43.

Our league is what I jokingly refer to as small school football at it's finest--everyone runs some form of full-house backfield offense and 4-4 or 5-2 (not really 5-3) defense. Against the 4-4, I love the option game (Midline, ISV, OSV) plus fullback trap. Passing game wise, try to pick on those OLBs with cover three concepts like curl/flat. Spread them out (2 x 2) and pick on those backers as well.

Don't have as much experience against the 5-3, but generally against odd fronts I like traps (still only have to block a few defenders), sweep, and anything that will spread them out formation wise.

The question might should be, do you wanna "see" the 44, 53 or 62 in their purest form?What kind of offense do you know best coach? If you like to spread it out, you should never see these defenses as they were intended to be run? We ran the dbl tight I and the pro I, cause thats what I knew and could teach the kids .We expected to see a balanced up form of either of these defenses and ran our basic plays to the most favorable locations, either built in weak spots(good blocking angles/bubbles) or player mismatches. Again, it just depends on what you feel confident in running and teaching the players at your level to execute?

I spent most of my time coaching youth/ms kids also coach bruce. I agree, its a different game strategically,than the higher levels. We had little scouting, no game film of future opponents, really very little idea of what we would face from week to week till the game was underway. So, our main objective in practice(besides basic fundamentals), was #1.- "learn to do what we do well", or learn to execute the few plays we had "very well", against the few possible fronts/coverages we expected to see? If you use the "toolbox" analogy, we had a small tool box with just the basic necessitys, (big hammer=inside power game, small hammer=inside counter game, big screwdriver= outside sweep, small screwdriver= boots and reverses, and a few pairs of pliers=assorted playaction passes to zones in range of our qb's/tb's arms, lol!) #2.- Then, try to be flexible enough in your thinking, to take advantage of any "mistakes" the defense may make by misalignment,(not always an exact science, lol!) Hope this helped you some?