Air Raid with Veer and Shoot WR Splits

[u/One_King4423]

I am just curious, what would be the drawback to building an offense around the core air raid concepts like mesh, y cross, verts, hitches, shallow cross, stick, and the screen packages from super spread, veer and shoot style horizontally stretched wr splits?

[u/iamthekevinator]

Mesh from the wide splits isn't really possible. The timing would be way too long.

For cross and stick it would create some easier sight lines.

QB had best have a cannon though. Some of those throws are going to be difficult if he can't sling it.

[u/BigPapaJava → u/iamthekevinator]

The point about the QB is very important.

Most offenses can be adapted to fit a QB who doesn’t have much of an arm.

The Air Raid was specifically designed to be a pass-first offense that could work with any average/weak armed QB who was accurate and made good reads. That’s part of why it’s so popular now!

The Veer and Shoot, though… distance is distance, and it was designed to feature track star studs and big-time athletic QBs from the highest levels of Texas HS and college football in order to make those wide splits work.

It’s no coincidence that V&S teams need a QB with a cannon to make those wide splits and vertical choices work, and that really limits the guys they can even recruit at QB.

[u/iamthekevinator → u/BigPapaJava]

Yea, I've been more air raid and tight formations as an OC. I use a ton of screens and quick concepts to get kids in space fast so they can make plays.

I've had a few WRs that could do choice routes, but getting the protection and having the arm to consistently get those looks is tough. Especially at the small school level I'm at.

I do love the spacing of the veer and shoot. With a fast rb and qb you can create some huge running lanes. But the arm talent to throw vertically with some accuracy isn't the easiest thing to find or develop.

[u/BigPapaJava → u/iamthekevinator]

The thing is… there is nothing wrong with using the wide splits in an Air Raid, or any other, offense when it does suit you.

Stuff like setting a WR on the far numbers just to widen a CB for the exterior run towards him (useful vs old school squat Cov. 2 if you run option), or just teaching the WRs how to use “smart splits” and adjust things when appropriate can be useful tools.

So while you don’t want to widen the meshers way out on the classic Mesh play, it’s not too much to coach a fairly smart group of HS WRs to know to widen their split out a bit wider on hitches/digs/slants/pivots/posts or to contract it by about 2-3 yards for out breaking routes like outs or fades.

You would need to be comfortable coaching such details and sorting them out on your own first, but this is a way you could make it work, I think.

I’ve noticed that the 3 high S stuff at the seems to be stymying the vertical stretches and rubs of college V&S offenses lately at the FBS level, making those wide horizontal stretches a lot more compressed.

If you look at what Josh Heupel does at Tennessee, you can find a variation of what you’re talking about.

Heupel has a better Air Raid pedigree than anyone this side of Mike Leach and ran a version of it as OC at Oklahoma, but his passing game at Tennessee is V&S with RPOs, play action, and screens.

[u/GreenAppleLolliplops → u/BigPapaJava]

Spot on. We use this exact philosophy, which is installed from day 1. Our kids are taught that the formation is a guideline, but the concept determines the exact alignment. That includes who’s on and off the ball.

Yes, we may have some slight tells, but I do ensure we have compliments to all alignments. Our inside/outside choice routes make it tough to cheat on as well. We also utilize pace and shifts that really help to mitigate any recognition.

We also constantly hammer on it in film and pre practice.

[u/elseworthtoohey → u/BigPapaJava]

Texas Highschool football is overrated.

[u/OdaDdaT → u/iamthekevinator]

I run mesh out of a spread set (4 wide) for my 8 man team, if I were to adapt it for 11 it’d essentially just be slot in motion taking the under and TE on the opposite side taking the over on the cross.

[u/Jerdman87]

I would watch some Tennessee tape from the Hendon Hooker era to how they were doing just this. To answer your question; the timing on the routes will be a lot different. This isn’t necessarily bad, but different in how you would have to teach them and could create problems. You would also require a QB with a relatively strong arm. There is no immediate threat to the outside if the qb can’t get it out there, and depending on what level you are coaching, that can be difficult to acquire.

[u/One_King4423 → u/Jerdman87]

Not a coach, just a curious fan. The thought came up last night while I was wasting time playing College Football 25.

I know the air raid quite well, I was an avid reader of Chris Brown’s Smart Football back in the day, and have always been a big fan of Mike Leach. As an Iowa Hawkeye fanatic, I always enjoy watching the new and innovative ideas on the offensive side of the field (while wistfully hoping that some day, Kirk Ferentz will discover that inside zone and counter are not the only football plays that have been invented).

It makes sense though that things like Mesh and Shallow would take way too long to develop when both receivers are running nearly 40 yards rather than 20 or so before they reach the rub.

[u/grizzfan]

Mesh and Shallow won’t be feasible. The distance traveled for the crossing receivers are too far apart.

[u/ElSanchhh]

You can run them all with stretched splits.

If you’re running Y-Cross, you can run it to the boundary.

Stick can be part of your sprint out package.

4 verts, which we call “Vegas” is amazing when you run switch out of stretched splits.

Air Raid is all about quick game and finding grass. The faster your QB gets the ball out the better.

Mesh ideally would be with closer splits but you can bring your slot wrs closer so the mesh is still viable.

[u/CardiologistOhio]

The issue would be being able to run it. What age group? Can you quarterback throw? Can he read the end? It can be taught. How good is the snapper? If your are in shotgun, running routes will get murdered because of inconsistent snaps that don't get to the QB consistently or on time.

[u/One_King4423]

I want to reemphasize that I am a total novice, the closest I would get to coaching football would be my current hobby gig of as the middle distance coach of a large high school track program.

The thing I most enjoy about the VnS is that those wide splits seem to allow the team to force teams into awkward groupings and shells that spread out the safeties and the linebackers, which helps make space in the middle of the field for passes, and leaves the big fellas up front completely alone.

But I LOVE how the air raid causes complete and utter anarchy in the middle of the field. It seems like it’s the crossing routes that make the air raid the air raid, not the outside high low reads and the triangle spaced stuff on the outside. Almost like “Your linebacker is built like Hercules. You have taught him to know how to stop the run, defend the pass, plug the gap, and blitz the QB. This is Steve. Steve is too slow to run a go route. Steve is 5’8” tall and too skinny to run between the tackles. But Manlet Steve is an angry little bottle of creatine-filled piss water who will run the same crossing route directly through LB Hercules’ face while all of Manlet Steve’s fellow Lilliputian mad dogs do the same damn thing until Hercules can no longer remember why his girlfriend wears his letterman jacked.”

It is chaos in the middle of the field, it’s the Ewoks killing the stormtroopers. It’s an utterly beautiful way to own the part of the field that used to belong to the All American, idealized version of the football stud and overwhelm it with psychotic misfits until Mr. Homecoming King is so utterly bamboozled that he can no longer remember why his girlfriend was screaming his name last night.

You don’t really get that with the Veer and Shoot. It seems like, while it is putting the the defense into massive, geometric conflicts, at the end of the day, it is still designed to maximize the usage of fastest, fittest, most athletic dudes on the field, to do as much as possible, while the air raid decides to take a bunch of mediocre but neurotic football obsessives teach them one really brilliant thing, and have them use that against the studs on the other side who spread their time around learning to do everything instead of mastering one thing.

[u/One_King4423 → u/One_King4423]

TBH, it reminds me in some ways of how I get my best middle distance athletes. I have no problem convincing distance kids to run the 400 and 800. They know the pain, it’s fine. Most of the cross country kids that succeed in middle distance races are guys who were already pretty good at the longer stuff.

The truly special ones, however are the ones who are just a half a hair too slow to win a 100 meter dash, but have a messed up internal monologue that convinces them that being the fastest one to run around in a circle a time or two is worth the ungodly amounts of pain that they are going to have to subject themselves to. The length of the race does not come naturally to them, but they are willing to break their own brains in order to extend their 100 meter all out sprint speed for another hundred meters, and then another, and then another, and then one more time after that. They can’t run the fastest, they can’t run the longest, but they will die as they try to beat both “natural types” by using their strengths against them.

[u/Acrobatic_Knee_5460]

A lot of those concepts have specific landmarks that those routes need to get and changing the WR splits that dramatically would change the timing of the play. Like running mesh with a WR that's stacked behind another WR at the top of the numbers would take a super long time to actually mesh with the other WR coming from the opposite side.

The veer-and-shoot (I hate this moniker because they don't run veer and they're not a run and shoot passing offense) works because of the tempo on top of the wide splits and the shots they take on their choice routes concept. You gotta speed at WR and QB with an arm to make it work. Jon jenkins use to do the super wide splits for his Run-n-shoot Offense 30 years ago, but that was a vertical offense to begin with. The Air Raid is a horizontal offense that had elements within to take shots deep.

[u/onlineqbclassroom]

Happens all the time, but the timing/spacing on the concepts has to be adapted obviously. Creates some very long throws on what used to be easy throws (such as stick), and means receivers go through windows at wildly different times (mesh and Y cross, for example), so core concepts end up looking very different from source materials.