Running the Spread Offense System
Running the Spread Offense System
by Coach Bill Riffey
I would like to start by saying that for the first 10 years I’ve coached youth football I’ve always ran the Wing-T Or Double Wing Offense. Last year I was the Offensive coordinator for our 8th grade team and the head coach for our 9u team. The head coach of the 8th grade team wanted to run our local high school offense to prepare our kids for high school. So I studied the Spread Offense, the O that I thought hmm maybe I could run it with my 9u team. The results exceeded my expectations. We took every snap from the gun and while we struggled for the first couple of games with the snap it ended up being our strong point. Below I’m going to go over terminology, formations, and a few plays we run.
Download: Spread Offense Playbook
Terminology of the Spread Offense
The hole numbers are even on both sides of the OL. We use Dallas/Texas to determine which side the play is going. Dallas being on the left and Texas on the right. By doing this it allows us to change the play at the line of scrimmage. Our run game terminology is kept simple as well. We use a zone call for our zone read plays. Example, “Dallas 44 zone” would tell everyone that we are running zone read to the left. Now if the defense was to load up one side of the ball or if we see a blitz to the call side we would call check Texas to get the play going the other direction. The formation call will always be first in the play call. Our trap, jet, and toss are basic like in any other system. The pass plays are called using a number system. 90 series will be our quick game and 80 series will be our roll out game. We use rodeo for rolling out right and lasso for rolling out left.
Formations
Trey Right
Doubles
Fox Right
Empty
Solo
These are just a few of the formations we ran last season. We are going to expand the playbook this season including new formations and screen plays. Below are some plays we are going to utilize:
Shovel Pass
Jet Sweep With Counter Look
QB Trap
Outside QB Trap
Zone Read Play
These are just a few plays that we run out of the spread. These plays can be ran out of multiple formations. Be creative with your alignments and use your formations to get the mismatches your looking for. I would encourage all youth coaches to consider the spread as a system and not just for a few plays mixed in. Running a spread system takes a lot of patience and dedication from the coaches, but once mastered can be hard to defend!
