Four Wides of Death (Part One)

Understand right here that I can't stand the Spread offense, particularly at the youth football levels. Other blog articles will detail my reasons for this intense dislike, but the main reason is because it's not well suited as a system for the natural abilities that young players have and the skills they usually already have developed when they first come to you. It takes a lot of practice at the mechanics, throwing and catching, just to make a reception possible, and that's not even considering the lousy pattern development some youth coaches do because they don't really understand how the defense covers the field.

Of course, the only thing worse than the way some youth coaches teach throwing, catching, and pattern running, is the way they teach pass blocking.

Despite that, I spend a lot of time studying the Spread offense because I see so much of it now at the high school level. This last year I attended a coaching clinic at NC State University that was just fantastic, particularly when the NC State coaches were speaking. There were a few coaches there who wandered somewhat off topic-- one coach spent more time explaining that he requires his players to take showers than he spent explaining his offensive system.

But then there was coach Mike Newsome, of the Butler Bulldogs, a 4AA North Carolina High School Championship coach, who broke down his four vertical system in astonishing detail.

I'm only going to give you the parts that I think will work for the youth game. Feel free to adapt this into whatever system you're running if it fits! If you're a Wing-T or a Wishbone coach, you probably won't be able to get much done with this formation and style of attack. However, if you're running Ted Seay's Spread Option Run and Shoot (SORS), or my Pistol for youth football you may find it useful.


The basic four vertical attack comes from the traditional "Doubles" formation.

I show it here against a common youth defense, the 5-3. If the 5-3 aligns in man coverage (which you can determine by sneaking in a little motion-- or by doing a comprehensive scouting report before you play), you need to ascertain two things: which of your receivers is faster than the man covering him, and which of your receivers can catch. If the world is perfect, these will be the same guy.

The basic 4 vertical play Coach Newsome runs is called "California." He simply yells a formation (In my terminology, this would be "Base" or "Pistol" if you put the QB back about four yards in a mini-shotgun look.), and then "California." Because the offensive players execute a defensive read, he doesn't particularly care if the defense hears the play call.

At the snap, the inside two receivers will adjust their paths to run down the inside of the hash marks, while the outer two receivers will run down the outside of the numbers. Assuming that the defenders are in man, it will look something like this:

I believe very strongly in giving my quarterbacks only a couple of reads so, I would probably make a call like "California Left" to make him look at his left hand side of the field. You can code this out: "California, Zelda!" Zelda featured the main character "Link." "Links" is German for "left."

This is just one corny example. There are dozens of others you can use. Yell a series of numbers out: "One thousand, two hundred, nineteen!" That's an odd number, and all the odds in my terminology are on the left.

Pick a receiver, throw the ball.

The next adaptation is when the defense shows a zone coverage.

When this happens, you need to spread the zones as far as possible apart. If you look at the basic Cover-3 shown, the free safety is on something of an island. When we're on offense, we like that sort of thing. If we can make sure our outside receivers stay outside the numbers, we force that free safety to stay in the middle of the field with no help from his corners. Our inside receivers fit nicely into the natural gaps in the coverage, and we need only flash our shoulder away from our intended receiver before throwing back to him and we should be able to get the safety to move as well. (A little play action will help this nicely as well.)

What if the defense shows a Cover-2 look? With more Spread offenses leeching down into the youth levels, we're starting to see more two deep and umbrella coverages.

Coach Newsome teaches his receivers to read the defenders. This is not difficult! Simply teach your players that if there is a defender in front of them at five yards past the line of scrimmage, that they should continue straight down the field until that defender turns his hips and then break inward!

We do have to worry now about the middle linebacker undercutting our routes. This shouldn't be that difficult if you rep it well. You have two receivers crossing behind the MLB. Pick the receiver you want to throw to and turn your shoulder towards the other one. When you see the MLB step towards your shoulder, reverse and throw to the open man.

This is somewhat more complex than the basic passing systems I routinely advocate in my writing, but it doesn't mean that it's not possible. If you're going to run a passing system, you need to rep these sorts of things constantly.

Here's a quick way to rep the receiver read. Have a defender hold a shield in front of himself so the receiver can't see his jersey. At the four yard point, have the defender drop the shield (There is now an ugly jersey in front of me: I cut inward) or maintain the shield (I see no jersey: I continue straight.)

For the quarterback, put two receivers about six yards behind a middle linebacker and spread out to about ten yards to either side of him. Have the quarterback practice pointing a shoulder at one receiver, and then snapping quickly back to throw to the other. As he gains proficiency, have these receivers jog towards one another, gradually increasing the pace until they are running at game speed.

There are dozens of other drills you can run to improve this simply play. If you've got a favorite, shoot me an email and let me know what it is.

Next week we'll continue this discussion with some insight into trips packages and pass blocking. I can hardly wait.

~D.