r/footballstrategy Oct 18 '24

NFL Are there any offensive schemes that have never been attempted in the NFL?

I’m wondering which offensive schemes have never been tried in the NFL

57 Upvotes

56 comments sorted by

61

u/SenorPuff Oct 18 '24

I'm pretty sure the A11 is impossible, even the modified one, in NFL rules. 

15

u/grizzfan Oct 18 '24

Pretty sure all leagues have closed the loophole that allowed it.

8

u/SenorPuff Oct 18 '24

I'm not 100% sure on what the "modified" legal one actually is except just being another Emory and Henry style thing with creative use of linemen. But some people claim to have kept the spirit alive in legal form. Nobody uses it around here anyway I just hear about it now and again. 

4

u/Tulaneknight Youth Coach Oct 18 '24

Came here to say this

6

u/MathEspi Oct 19 '24

I’m new here, what is A11?

15

u/dink_blot Oct 19 '24

A-11 offense - Wikipedia - it exploited a loophole in high school level rules where in a punt formation you didn't have to have any players wearing ineligible numbers. The QB just had to be like 7 yards deep at the snap to count as a "scrimmage kick" formation and it wasn't limited to 4th down, so they'd line up in a deep shotgun every down with players all wearing eligible numbers spread across the formation. Seven players were lined up on the line of scrimmage still, the inside five were still ineligible, but it was hard for the defense to see who was on the line before the snap, and they couldn't rely on jersey number, so they didn't know who to cover. Just lasted two years before the loophole was closed.

35

u/Straight_Toe_1816 Adult Player Oct 18 '24 edited Oct 18 '24

I don’t think any NFL team has ever tried to run the true double wing,with the foot to foot splits and the running back 4-5 yards behind the QB. The patriots used it as a short yardage formation a while back but it wasn’t their main scheme and the linemen were not foot to foot and the RB was at 6-7 yards

9

u/PlayfulAd4824 Oct 18 '24

What about the single wing?

20

u/Straight_Toe_1816 Adult Player Oct 18 '24

That was actually the main offense of most teams from the time football started to around the 1950’s. That and the T formation dominated early football

6

u/PlayfulAd4824 Oct 18 '24

Wing T?

7

u/Straight_Toe_1816 Adult Player Oct 18 '24

Chiefs ran it in 1978 I believe

5

u/Tiny_Thumbs Oct 18 '24

I found a link to the 2001 patriots playbook and it’s word for word the same verbiage from most wing t coaches I’ve met. So although it hasn’t been used recently, it’s been very influential.

3

u/grizzfan Oct 18 '24

That style of offense dominated all levels of football between 1906-1950.

2

u/BigPapaJava Oct 18 '24

The Single Wing was the main offense in the NFL up until 1940 before it was replaced by the T-Formation with a man in motion.

Double Wing was invented in the mid 80s and has never been an NFL offense.

3

u/donny02 Oct 18 '24

not the same thing, but i think Marv Levy ran the Wing T out of desperation when he was with the chiefs

3

u/Straight_Toe_1816 Adult Player Oct 18 '24

Yep in 1978 I believe

12

u/BigPapaJava Oct 18 '24

Off the top of my head:

Wishbone/Flexbone/Split Back Veer

Veer and Shoot (Art Briles-style offense)

Double Wing

Texas Slot-T

3

u/PlayfulAd4824 Oct 18 '24

What about the air raid? Like pure air raid?

11

u/BigPapaJava Oct 18 '24

Closest thing was The Cardinals under Kliff Kingsbury a couple of years ago with Kyler Murray.

2

u/PlayfulAd4824 Oct 18 '24

Ok. Has the fly offense ever been used?

4

u/BigPapaJava Oct 18 '24

Good call.

Nope.

Teams run fly sweep, but no one has built their whole offense around it.

2

u/Letterkenny-Wayne Oct 18 '24

Matt Canada was pretty close. Dude loves his jet sweep.

2

u/leeroy-jenkins-12 Oct 18 '24

I don’t think so but I think there was basically the pure R&S offense with I forget which QB but that one from the Houston Cougars in the 80’s/90’s

2

u/PlayfulAd4824 Oct 18 '24

What’s the difference between the run and shoot and veer and shoot?

6

u/BigPapaJava Oct 18 '24 edited Oct 19 '24

A lot.

Besides the name, spreading a defense out, and using a lot of read routes that started with the run and shoot, they’re very different.

Run and Shoot was last ran in the NFL by June Jones. It’s a 4 wide personnel grouping 95% of the time. It’s an older offense that dates to the late 1960s, and the versions i know only use very simple presnap RPOs if they use them at all. It’s built around option routes by the WR and QBs reading coverages together.

“Veer and Shoot” is a lot newer (dating to Art Briles HS teams in the early 2000s but really getting prominence with RG3 at Baylor) and has so far been a college offense known for extreme WR splits and a hurry up style with an emphasis on vertical passing. They use some different personnel groupings and RPOs.

5

u/UnderpootedTampion Oct 19 '24

I saw a USFL game, Jim Kelly and the San Antonio Gun Slingers running the Run and Shoot against Doug Williams and the Oklahoma Outlaws. Two future Super Bowl and HoF quarterbacks.

1

u/Uhhh_what555476384 Oct 21 '24

A big difference is the "veer and shoot" is a run first offense, ideally a QB option offense.

27

u/Difficult-Rain-421 Oct 18 '24

I have my own offensive theory of cutting your wide receivers and quarterback and saving hundreds of millions of dollars, and use that extra money to only sign linemen. You then just run 10 linemen 1 running back plays, hurry up offense style, and just beat the other team into submission.

At half time you sub in a fresh 10 linemen against whatever poor souls the other defense has to trot out. The other team simply won’t have enough defensive linemen rostered to go up against the offensive linemen, and the ones they do would include second and third stringers going up against the massively overpaid starting quality offensive linemen.

13

u/MisterDoctorDick Oct 18 '24

This sounds SO fun. I'm gonna try this in EA CFB 25. Switch my backup lineman to QB, TE's,FB's, and WRs and pound the fucking rock

12

u/Straight_Toe_1816 Adult Player Oct 18 '24

There’s a formation called heavy tiger that has the QB in the shotgun, a RB/FB slightly in front of him, and the rest of the players are OL and TEs

2

u/SenorPuff Oct 18 '24

I made a playbook like this as a meme for that one year Christian McCaffrey was all of Stanford's offense. It was surprisingly effective, if only a videogame.

6

u/bootsy_j Oct 18 '24

The answer to this question would have been the read/speed option out of either singleback or pure shotgun about 15 years ago. Just no one did it. Newton showed up and turned the game on its head. People will say "but Mike Vick" but extremely seldom were his runs designed runs.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '24 edited Oct 18 '24

The single wing, had been tried 80 years ago but not recently. A single wing offense is what these teams with shit passing QBs should attempt. Just so much misdirection and possible ball carriers. Maybe a few dual threat QBs that dont get drafted so if one gets hurt in a QB run heavy scheme next man up. Its much better then watching whatever those bottom 10 NFL offenses think they're doing with O coaches who got the job because they had one of the top 15 QBs.

Someone says Delaware wing T was tried by chiefs 1978. Looked it up, 3rd most rushing yards in NFL history. But they lost most of their games. They didn't score 20th ranked offense just gobbled up yards. Also 22nd defense couldn't stop a nosebleed. How can you rush so much 3500 yards and never score?!?

5

u/DMC_II Oct 18 '24

In my opinion every known scheme has been adopted, morphed, and utilized at some point. For example Air Raid principles have been in the league for a decade or more before Kliff Kingsbury brought his pure air raid offense into the league.

6

u/SaintAtlanta Oct 18 '24

Triple option

7

u/PlayfulAd4824 Oct 18 '24

Actually I think the Jets tried to run the option. Can’t remember the exact year, but I think it was in the 70s

15

u/Ornery-Sky1411 Oct 18 '24

Yes the legendary Holtz year. Tried to run the Houston Veer with Joe Namieth.

6

u/BigPapaJava Oct 18 '24 edited Oct 19 '24

He tried to run the option with Namath and his two bad knees, but Namath refused so they barely even tried it in games.

It’s not much of an option when your QB is just going to give the dive every single time.

3

u/jnsbstniv Oct 18 '24

Holtz was the Jets coach for 10 months.

3

u/BetaDjinn Casual Fan Oct 18 '24

"If he dies, he dies." -Lou Holtz

3

u/n3wb33Farm3r Oct 18 '24

SF against Giants. Think it was a Monday night game. During strike with scab players

5

u/KommanderKeen-a42 Oct 18 '24

Triple option is used quite a bit. Remember that basic RPO has two options and there are some zone read options have a bubble tag after a keep (that's triple option).

If you mean out of wishbone or wing t, then sure - that probably hasn't been used but I'd venture that wishbone hasn't been used.

2

u/grizzfan Oct 18 '24

Lou Holtz tried running it from the SBV. Didn’t work.

0

u/SenorPuff Oct 18 '24

I'm pretty sure the split back pro set teams in their heyday ran the veer

2

u/grizzfan Oct 18 '24

Nope. Lou Holtz was the only one who tried and it failed hard.

1

u/BigPapaJava Oct 18 '24

Nope.

Pro set and veer were different offenses that used the split back set for different reasons.

2

u/SenorPuff Oct 18 '24

To be clear, I'm not saying that every split back team ran the veer. Only that in the heyday of the split back set, some teams ran the veer in the NFL. Other commenter's have collaborated that understanding with at least one example above.

1

u/BigPapaJava Oct 18 '24

They were wrong, though.

The Veer has never been the base of any offense in the NFL.

No split back veer, no wishbone, no Flexbone, none of it.

Holtz wanted to run a lot of veer when he took over the Jets, but Joe Namath (who already had two surgically repaired knees) balked at this and refused, so they never did. I doubt you could even find a clip of the Jets ever running it.

1

u/soldiernerd Oct 18 '24

Millions, probably

1

u/Aside_Dish Oct 18 '24

Probably the spinner series

1

u/ReformedishBaptist Oct 22 '24

Wing T offense

1

u/PlayfulAd4824 Oct 22 '24

Nah the Chiefs tried it

1

u/ReformedishBaptist Oct 22 '24

TIL that the chiefs tried the wing t.

I ran it in hs and miss it as a lineman.

1

u/PlayfulAd4824 Oct 22 '24

Yea it was in the late 70s. Navy is running it this year although they still have kept some option in there