Evolution of Offense Pt.1
a. Running Game


The game: Football. The objective: to get the ball into your opponent's end zone. How to do it? Well that my friends, that is where it becomes interesting. 

Here on cfboffense, we will take a look at what different teams do to put points on the board. In this first segment, we will take a look at a simple play used by every collegiate and professional football team today - the inside zone.

The concept of an inside zone is very simple in appearance, but intricate in proper execution.

If an offensive lineman does not have a man directly on him, his job is to block ahead and to at least seal the "shade" of the defender on the play-side. If unblocked, the lineman takes a lateral step to the play-side  and it is then his responsibility to "chip and climb"- a term for chipping the defensive lineman on the man adjacent to him and then "climbing up" to track the closest second level man (usually a linebacker) to stop him from making the tackle. All of this mess for just one simple play. 





Let's take a look at an inside zone the way it would look like in the 80's to the early 2000's. This is an ace slot left formation, with the term "ace" meaning it's a single back formation, the "slot" an indication for a slot receiver  and "left" meaning that the strong side, which in a balanced formation is always to the tight end side, is to the left.

As you can see, it's a simple inside zone to the strong side with a double team at the point of attack. Now that we've got all of the explainin' out of the way, let's take a look at it.

As you can see, there is only one option as to where this ball is going. Everyone is blocking the man ahead of him, except the quarterback of course. Very simple concept, but clearly limited.









Now transition to modern times, where teams are trying to go as fast as possible while still trying to keep a high chance of success. People ask when and why the spread offense was invented; it wasn't really "invented" per se, but after a while, people started to realize that not everyone is born with size and strength. Some players put on this earth aren't very big or strong, but have speed. Imagine where a coach in the 80's would place a De'anthony Thomas; he's too small to play receiver, and at running back he wouldn't fit in the popular ground and pound style at that time. When people found out how to use these "little pissants" as Mouse Davis used to call them, that's when early spread concepts started to enter football. As the old saying says, necessity is the mother of invention. In football, this couldn't be more true. One great example of this is one of the key spread mottos - "if you can't block them, make them cover you". So let's take a look at this concept.

First of all, with this new wave of spread offenses, teams are not only spreading out by design of formation, but spreading out in spacing. Take a look at how the spacing of the offense for Alabama compares to the spacing of the offense of Baylor.

As you can notice, spacing helps with this spread concept, forcing the defense to cover more grass.

Back to the play

This picture on the right is the same play by direction and run concept, but there are new additions on what the receivers are doing. As you can see, the slot receiver on the right side is now running a "bubble" screen, where the receiver shuffle steps in a semi-circle towards the sideline. The play-side receiver on the left side is running a quick hitch. It is the quarterback's job to decide where the ball should go. If the corner on the "X" receiver is playing with a 10+ yard cushion, the quarterback can take the snap, take a quick play-step, and throw to the receiver. If there is no man on the slot receiver, the quarterback can take a quick play-step and throw to the bubble. If both of these options are covered, considering that the safeties are showing a simple cover two (like in the picture), the quarterback has the numbers advantage to hand the ball off to the RB. 

Take a look at a version of an inside zone with a quick screen

As you can see here, the inside receiver on the left side is covered so the quarterback hands it off. If the quarterback had the numbers advantage on the outside, he would throw to the bubble. If you haven't noticed already, modern spread football is all about numbers. 








The entire point of adding these new pieces to a simple run call is to make the defense cover more space. By forcing the defense to cover grass horizontally, the offense automatically gives them the chance to have the advantage in numbers somewhere on the field. The key is to be able to identify that mismatch in numbers and take advantage. Spacing from sideline to sideline is an important component of the spread offense. Now spreading the defense vertically? That's a subject for another day.

Hopefully this wasn't a waste of your time and you now know a little bit more about the X and O's of this sport. Stay tuned for more analysis, and as always, keep lovin' football.

-Thomas Fleming
twitter username thomasflem97
email thomasflem97@yahoo.com