Exploiting Defenses with the Tover Formation (Trips with Tackle over and TE Weak)
There are a few things that Defensive coaches hate. One of them is tight ends and another is unbalanced formations. These are two things that are relatively easy for offenses to add, but cause the defense to make major changes to account for them. When they are combined, the whole defense can be sent out of wack and have problems aligning soundly.
Exploiting Defenses with the Tover Formation (Trips with Tackle over and TE Weak)
By adding a Tight End the offense can force the defense to account for another gap on the line of scrimmage. This can change the rules of the defensive front and how they fit into the coverage. Something as simple as a Wing putting his hand in the ground can have massive impacts on a defense and cause them to change and adjust their alignment, which in turn affects the secondary.
Unbalanced formations can do the exact same thing as Tight End but have the added effect of taking the secondary into a new coverage. At our program we refer to unbalanced as when a Tackle comes to the other side of the line and a Tight End takes his place. While this doesn’t seem like a huge issue on paper, in a real game it puts two of the best blockers for the offense next to each other, normally against a rolled down linebacker, or a defensive end who is now playing an interior gap.
We combine both in our Tover Formation. In Tover our Tight End will replace the Left Tackle and the Left Tackle will align outside of the Right Tackle. We keep our Y (normally our best Jet Runner and overall athlete) off the line on the weak side. This creates an even passing formation while presenting an unbalanced running formation. This causes major problems for the defense to align to.
Related Content: The Jet Sweep Play in Youth Football
Jet Sweep
Our base play out of this formation is our Jet Sweep. We have an extra blocker on the wide side of the line and two receivers wide. This gives us a huge numbers advantage and helps ensure that our Jet runner will reach the edge to gain yards.
Power
Once we have had success running our Jet Sweep defenses tend to overload the edge in an effort to combat our Jet Player getting outside on his run. Our solution is to take advantage of them overplaying the outside run and have our two tackles block down instead of reach blocking the defenders. This creates a perfect surface for us to run our Power to our F.
Related Content: Utilizing the Hammer Package for Short Yardage
While this isn’t a base offense for us, it does create some major problems for the defense to adjust for. The result is a complete package that presents major match-up issues for the defense.
