New football offense

Basically the team lines up with a center and two tight ends in the traditional "offensive line" spot. Three receivers right, three left and two quarterbacks in the backfield. On any given play, five of them can go down field, but who knows which five.

Click the link for more info and video of it. Would you like to see a college or pro team try this?

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=825031

 

Just watched this yesterday. The A-11 offense. Looks incredibly complicated. If one WR goes out that isnt supposed to, its a penalty every time. I have to also imagine it is very difficult on the refs.

 

I'd think the problem there is that the tight ends would have to have linemen's numbers for it to not be an illegal formation. That would then force them to report as eligible receivers, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the offense.

It looks like something Mouse Davis would have cooked up. And who can trust a guy named Mouse to draw up ball plays?

 

Actually they all do report as eligible. You just never know who is going out for a pass or from where. Or if one of the quarterbacks is going to run it.

 

Of course, you could do what's stopped practically every variant of the run-and-shoot.

Blitz like mad.

Then it becomes Find the open man. In two seconds. Before we tear your head off. (apologies to whoever wrote that during the Redskins last Super Bowl win.)

 

You'd have to have an extremely well-coached team to try this at the high school level, or have the patience to spend a couple of years ironing out the wrinkles. And you'd need a lot of good speed guys. Pretty risky, but if you had nothing to lose, why not?

 

This is basically a six-man football offense with 11 players. Except in six-man everybody is eligible.

 

I see something like this in the indoor football league I've covered the last two seasons. They play seven a side, so there's no one to pick up blitzers. They're the quarterback's responsibility.

By comparison, give me Arena Football League any day of the week.

 

Am I missing something? If you line up in that formation, how are you ever going to have a center eligible to catch a pass?

 

There is no way he can be.

 

There hasn't been a major innovation since the invention of the forward pass in 1906. No one would be nearly intrepid enough to run this -- unless everybody else started doing so.

 

I don't know about where y'all are, but I have no confidence in the high school refs here to get it right ... ever. If a team used this formation here, I'm pretty sure they would get flagged every play, regardless of whether they committed a penalty.