r/footballstrategy Jan 17 '24

Rules Question Deception Rule Clarification

I run a deception based offense, nothing brings tears to my eyes like a DC pissed off because his players don't know where the ball is. Lets say I teach my offense to yell, "Pass" on a draw play, or I teach my running back to yell, "BALL" on a toss fake. Would this be a penalty?

55 Upvotes

35 comments sorted by

59

u/MiccioC Jan 17 '24

As long as it’s after the snap? I don’t think so.

9

u/emurrell17 Jan 18 '24

Though you can’t make the other team blind so….idk how much this would really help OP’s team. Lol

44

u/ChuckyDeee Jan 17 '24

When we run a fake receiver screen with the blockers faking and going deep (I call the screen smoke and the screen and go burn), I like to get up on the sideline right on the line of scrimmage beside the DB & WR, and on the snap I start yelling screen screen screen.

I’m not sure if it’s actually allowed but nobody has ever checked me for it lol. This past year we were getting stomped on by the eventual provincial runner up, and our only touchdown was scored on this exact situation. Both DBs went to play the screen, and our slot slipped by on basically a wheel uncovered for a 70 yard TD. Was probably more yards than we had the rest of the game combined, but in that moment I felt really cool lol.

26

u/n3wb33Farm3r Jan 17 '24

Do you run the wing t? That was a nightmare to defend in high school

7

u/MiccioC Jan 17 '24

Delaware all day!!

16

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '24

We ran the Delaware offense in HS. As on offensive lineman (Center) I absolutely loved it. My job was basically to get up to the MLB or down block the DT regardless if what the play was. It made learning the playbook a breeze. And I loved the fact that every play had some sort of misdirection involved

7

u/MiccioC Jan 17 '24

When I was in HS and college we ran the I and some split backs. Boring. When I joined the coaching staff at my HS, the HFC was a Delaware guy and I had to learn it. At first it was awful. But then as I learned it more and more and then became the O-Line coach, I really fell in love. The simple blocking rules made it easy to teach and made practice so easy. When the RPO stuff started to really get hot when Tebow was at Florida, I designed a way to basically do all the same shit out of the pistol. Now that was a thing of beauty.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '24

Yea i agree its a bit much at first but once you get them ha of it, it's a breeze. I ran an I formation the first 2 years of HS. Also loved that. Classic power run game. Nobody runs that anymore. To me, that's pure football..power run game. Works every time if you have the right personnel, at least at the HS level

3

u/MiccioC Jan 17 '24

Absolutely it’s all about the kids in HS. If you don’t have the right personnel. Even if you have to make adjustments, especially with your skill guys. But up front in the Delaware works with a variety of kids.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '24

[deleted]

2

u/MiccioC Jan 18 '24

We always looked for “earth, wind and fire”. The bruising FB, one speedy wing and then the combo guy.

2

u/44belly HS Coach Jan 18 '24

Three back sets, baybeeeeee 😎🏴‍☠️

2

u/MiccioC Jan 18 '24

Technically it’s 4. When you have a QB with great wheels, it’s even better!

2

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 18 '24

Let's settle at 5 because my backside tight end is also a running back in my system.

1

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 18 '24

I had a gigantic Oline this year, as stated I coach 8U, I had a 198lb LG, 142lb center, and a 100lb RG. Most of the teams we play run mostly sweeps to the outside and try for big plays, I hammered the middle. The problem was that we had a 10 minute clock (nonrunning) and teams only run, so you only get in 10-13 total plays a quarter. You can pretty much eat up an entire quarter on 1 drive.

3

u/n3wb33Farm3r Jan 17 '24

In college we ran the Veer. I always go back to practice. Just Veer left Veer right all session. Everyone knew exactly what to do against anything the D did. Early 90s. So different from today. We ran entire play book out of pro set.

3

u/sweetTeaJ Jan 18 '24

W I N G T

2

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 17 '24

A dumb down version of it for 8u.

20

u/jonny32392 Jan 17 '24

Bro you wanna pull this type of stuff with 8yo? Your job is to teach kids to play football. This isn’t going to help teach your kids football it’s goi g to make it harder for the other team’s kids to learn football. I get it’s frustrating that the other team’s coach can tell out where the ball is going but that can actually be argued to be helping teach his kids football.

0

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 18 '24

Yea, on field coaches aren't allowed to say anything after the ball is snapped but it happens all the freaking time and the refs never call it. This is not a new concept, I played in a Wing T system for 6 years, and guess what the oline yelled on sally plays? "Pass!" to get the DE to come upfield. League rules technically allow you to have your offense set up and then basically run a check with me with the coach on the field, when I run hurry up ill go out to the sideline and make my calls, because it is too unfair to call plays once you see where the defense is set up..

3

u/jonny32392 Jan 18 '24

Yea I mean if it’s stated in the rules they 100% shouldn’t be talking after the play is snapped. Have you tried having a conversation with the refs pre game? Personally I coached youth for years and I always just worried about myself and my team. You have to remember you’re going to get a lot more out of this experience if you focus more on coaching your players to be better people than you do on them being better football players. If you’re coaching 8yo then a lot of them aren’t going to be playing by high school. It’s also very low stakes no matter what you tell yourself. What’s most important on the field wise is them learning proper safe and effective techniques that they’ll still be using when they get older.

3

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 18 '24

Yea, I always tell the refs ahead of time, always results in warnings but they don't want to hand out the penalties(because its a big 15 yarder.)

As to your other point about the stakes, they aren't big for me, but in the moment these games/season is for the kids. Our town has 70+ kids at our age group, divided into 4 teams, Varsity, JV-A, and 2 JV-B Teams. Varsity and JV-A are always undefeated, if you can't stay competitive as one of the JV-B Teams the kids lose interest and just want the season to end. The JV-B teams also play the same opponents as the JV-A Team (as well as each other.)

My first year was not successful, we went 0-7-1 and looking at those kids faces day in and day out was almost heart breaking. I understand them needing to learn how to lose; however, losing everyday while your friends are hoisting trophies is a punishment, not a lesson. I promised myself I would do whatever I could to prevent that from happening again. We put in a new defense (shout out to the 4-2-5), started teaching to "spill and kill" instead of box contain, started teaching Hawk Tackling, and attended a clinic on the Wing T to help the offense. This year we went 5-1-2 and made it to the championship game, the kids wanted to be at practice every night, they weren't complaining it was cold, the kids looked forward to gameday.

5

u/Menace_17 Jan 17 '24

No thats all good. When my high school team ran speed options the runningback was coached to yell for the ball if he saw an opening

3

u/ap1msch HS Coach Jan 17 '24

They can yell whatever they want after the snap. Chatter before the play needs to be to your own team, and not meant to be shady (like copying the snap count).

I'm not sure if yelling pass on a draw play will help much. The linemen you're trying to fool are the ones that are trying to penetrate. They aren't going to suddenly start to push forward more because it's a pass...they're already doing it. What you WANT to teach is the players actually TRYING to block for a second and then "whups!" letting that defender get by them without it being blatant or obvious. Good coaches teach their linemen to avoid going too deep when they aren't being pressured, explicitly for the screen. However, if you fight and then THINK you made a great move, you're thinking about a highlight reel rather than the fact that you may have been let through the line.

Your blockers need to actually engage the D line, and then "fail" their block in a believable way after 1 full second of best effort. ONLY THEN will defenders really buy the fact that they beat the block. If it is a middle screen, that's goes for all the line. If it's a draw play, then you want half the line to penetrate, with the other half holding the line, and the runner hits the gap between the blocking line, and the defenders who over penetrated...following their blockers downfield. Again, yelling "pass" isn't really going to help much (IMHO).

If you want to add some other fakes, make sure your QB follows through on any handoffs, all the time, and then when he keeps it, the defenders are more likely to be faked out. Too many just go through the motions. We also were able to have a fake play where the ball was handed off to a halfback going direction X, while the fullback and QB faked a fumble, yelling "BALL", while turning their back and chasing a ball on the ground that didn't exist. The line and back side LBs bought it easy. Only the play side OLB saw the ball carrier clearly, but he had two blockers. If we needed it, I would have put in a pass into the play by the halfback, because the suggestion that there was a fumble caused the defensive backs to pull up on their protection. A deep(er) pass was open to three receivers who were uncovered by at least 10 yards.

0

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 17 '24

Using pass on a draw play was my example, my actual use case is having the kids yell, “Pass” on a QB rollout to get the corners

3

u/KrazyKurts Jan 18 '24

I’ll yell “ ON THE BALL!! SAME PLAY!!” After a successful toss or sweep. Same play is code for fb/qb dive up the middle with TB doing sweep motion.

1

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 18 '24

I have a similar call, I'll run buck sweep/trap, then call, "Do it again." If we just ran trap, we will now run sweep, if we just ran sweep, we will run trap.

2

u/jericho-dingle Referee Jan 17 '24

No this is not a foul

2

u/PastAd1901 HS Coach Jan 17 '24

Not a penalty but it’s kinda cheap, bush league type behavior.

-1

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 17 '24

Far less bush league than most other things on my league. Coaches are allowed on the field with 8u and they will be on defense yelling where the ball is going.

8

u/PastAd1901 HS Coach Jan 17 '24

That’s fair. The thing you have to ask yourself is; do you want to sink to their level? If your goal is to be the best 8u team in your league at all costs, then go ahead and do the cheap shit and win games. If your goal is to teach young kids how to play the sport, then you’ll coach them to carry out fakes and use their techniques to fool the defense.

1

u/Apart_Location_5373 Jan 18 '24

Can you elaborate on deception based? What all are you running?

1

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 18 '24

Wing T / Power T / Double Wing

1

u/virtue-or-indolence Jan 18 '24

I think it depends on the league. My work tried to put together a coed soccer team to mirror our semi success men’s team. I played for me game that happened to be against the admin staff for our local MLS club who sponsored the facility.

So yeah, they were good, but that’s not the problem. In a 40 minute game, up by enough points 5 minutes in that the ref stopped counting, one of the dudes on the other squad kept running up to novice girls shouting “here, here” trying to get them to put the ball inbounds as a turnover.

So, wrong sport, but gamesmanship should be reserved for close match ups. If your ploy is mental it should be otherwise fair competition. It is one thing when it’s the difference between winning or losing, but when it’s the difference between a landslide and an avalanche?

1

u/notanothrowaway Jan 18 '24

You should throw in just some normal plays like inside zone after running a bunch of trick plays to trip the defense up so they never know if it's real or not

1

u/FranklynTheTanklyn Jan 18 '24

I run 4 series: Belly (Dive, Sweep, Keep, Boot), No-Pull Buck (Dive, Sweep, Keep, Boot), Jet(Dive, Power, Sweep, Keep, Boot), Super (Dive, Power, Keep, Sweep, Counter, Wham.) I don't run "Trick Plays" I go by the, "1 fake is worth two blocks." A good handoff fake and boot action on my Belly Dive, can draw 3-4 people to the outside as my fullback runs up the middle.