Shock to the System Wowed by The Wildcat, Spread HD and A-11

[G08]

Shock to the System
Wowed by The Wildcat, Spread HD and A-11? You ain't seen nothing yet. An offensive revolution is coming to the NFL. Can anyone stop it?
by David Fleming



At first glance, Steve Humphries' apartment, near the Presidio of San Francisco, hardly seems like the place to launch a football revolution. There's the wine collection and the Pates Baroni print. There's the radio tuned to NPR. There's the cat, Armani, who likes to hurl himself across the dining-room table, which is covered by enough Mac equipment to start a graphic design boutique.

Searching for a corkscrew, Humphries digs under the debris that surrounds his computer: black-and-white photos of football players in wool jerseys and leather helmets mixed with futuristic-looking playbook pages full of crisp graphics. He promises with a laugh to straighten up the place before the historical society starts giving tours to fans. It was only last Jan. 5 that Humphries, a 42-year-old mortgage broker who doubles as a prep assistant coach, realized just how badly the NFL could use a little of his messy inspiration. That day he watched the Steelers all but concede defeat while clinging to a 29-28 lead over the Jaguars in the AFC wild-card game. On a third- and-six at its own 26, Pittsburgh didn't throw, didn't even hand off. Instead, coach Mike Tomlin had gimpy Ben Roethlisberger run a timid bootleg. It fooled no one. Jacksonville, predictably, got the ball back and marched down the field for the winning score.

After the loss, Tomlin, one of the game's brightest young minds, said he'd call the same bootleg again if given another chance. "They got to him, too," Humphries thought, shaking his head in disgust. In his mind, the Steelers had exposed the risk-averse paradigm that's choking off offensive innovation at football's highest levels. Anyone with a fantasy team can tell you scoring remains strong in the NFL. But what passes for bold and fresh these days—Miami's direct-snap Wildcat scheme—is a prehistoric relic invented by Pop Warner himself. Bill Walsh's West Coast, launched in the early 1970s, is the last offense invented by a pro team. How's that for progress? "We are in the most boring, stagnant era ever," Humphries says, uncorking a bottle of red wine. "And you start to think, how much more conservative can we actually get before we ruin football altogether?"

Seven months before that Steelers game, Humphries stood in front of a dry-erase board hanging in his cat-scented apartment. In a fit of imagination, he and his buddy Kurt Bryan, an insurance salesman who triples as a novelist and football coach, invented what may be the antidote for the NFL's offensive ills. It's called the A-11: an überspread offense with virtually no offensive line, 11 potential receivers and backfield choreography that resembles Princeton basketball's motion offense. The two would-be Lombardis dreamed up the scheme for a small, Oakland-area school called Piedmont High, where Humphries serves under Bryan. In less than two years their mad creation has kicked off a genuine football uprising, transforming an obscure Northern California team, and hundreds more just like it across the country, from pushover to powerhouse.

The A-11 isn't close to legal in the NFL, and probably never will be. But the ideas behind it—two QBs are better than one, what occurs before the snap is just as important as what occurs after it, physical limitations can be shattered by ingenuity —look increasingly to be football's future. Maybe its savior. "The A-11 isn't just new and cool," says Humphries. "It's needed."

More than any other sport, the NFL is mutant, connected to its forebears as humans are to amphibians.In the late 19th century, American football evolved out of the European sport of rugby, where the original ball was a Danish soldier's head. It didn't take long for our game to become equally barbaric. During the 1905 college football season, 150 players were seriously injured and another 18 were killed on the field. Spurred by President Theodore Roosevelt, rules changes were introduced to open up the game and reduce the carnage. Among them: A neutral zone was established at the line of scrimmage, and lethal mass formations like the flying wedge were outlawed.

Fast-forward to the 1930s, when the game was a low-scoring and sadistic sport that critics called "paid punting" and "a bloody, brutal, disgraceful affair." Facing fierce competition for entertainment dollars during the Depression, the fledgling NFL shrank the ball's circumference from its original 27 inches to a more QB-friendly 21, made passing legal from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage, established hash marks to keep the ball in the middle of the field, and enacted the first roughing-the-passer rule.

Now flash to 1977. Two years removed from a recession, pro football was being squeezed, as zone schemes, new pass-rush techniques and increased athleticism had reduced scoring to its lowest point in 35 years. Right on cue, the league made it illegal for defenders to contact receivers more than five yards off the line, offensive linemen were allowed to open their hands and extend their arms while pass-blocking (read: hold), a seventh official was added to monitor pass interference downfield, and referees were instructed to stop play when a QB was in the grasp. Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, an assistant coach named Bill Walsh had been developing something called the West Coast offense for almost a decade. Behind this quick-strike system, which perfectly exploited the new rules changes, Walsh would go on to win three Super Bowls in the 1980s for the 49ers. And at the time of his death, in 2007, his West Coast philosophy was close to ubiquitous in the NFL.

Which brings us to today. Last season the Patriots set the NFL scoring record with 589 points. But it's a marketing marvel set atop a house of football cards, since nearly a third of the league didn't score half that amount. Unlike Bill Belichick, most coaches—bound by paychecks, fan pressure and parity—have little room for offensive error, let alone innovation. That's why their playbooks are barely distinguishable from the ones Paul Brown first handed out in the 1940s. "When it comes to new ideas, I wouldn't say the NFL is risk averse," says former Ravens coach Brian Billick. "I'd say it's downright paranoid. You want something new? Sure, go ahead and try something. Make one mistake, and your ass is out on the street."

With offenses standing still, it's only a matter of time before defenses close the gap; witness how the Cover 2 has largely neutralized Walsh's creation. As scoring plummets, you can bet the league, once again facing scary economic conditions, will react as it always has—with more offensive-minded rules changes, followed by new schemes designed to take advantage of them. "The game will always evolve," says Falcons president Rich McKay, co-chair of the NFL's Competition Committee. "The only question is, What's next, and when is it going to happen?"

It may be sooner than you think.

In June 2007, Humphries and Bryan set out to create an offense that evened the playing field for Piedmont—which, at half the size of the other schools in its athletic division, hadn't won a title in 32 years. Inspiration didn't come easy. The two men were boxed in by field dimensions that hadn't changed in 94 years, even though players keep getting bigger and faster. Offensive pioneers like Sid Gillman and Don Coryell had stretched the game vertically as far as it could go. Walsh had pulled it to its horizontal breaking point. "It felt like a thick, hardened crust had formed over the game," says the perpetually scruffy-faced and scratchy-throated Bryan, 44.

Ready to quit, Bryan was reading the fine print of his California high school federation rule book when he landed on the "scrimmage kick formation rule." "Oh, my god," he said to Humphries. "Look at this."

Normally used for punts, the rule stated that as long as the player receiving the snap was seven yards behind center, any teammate wearing the jersey of an eligible receiver (between Nos. 1 and 49 or 80 and 89) was permitted to go downfield. Bryan and Humphries had already been noodling with a 3-3-3 superspread base formation that had two sets of three receivers flushed out wide in "pods" close to the numbers, with a center inside flanked by two tight ends, in addition to two QBs in the backfield. Now the scrimmage kick formation rule was saying they could potentially send any of those 11 players out for passes. "There was this lava flow underneath the modern version of the game," says Bryan. "All it needed was a little pinprick to erupt."

Insert the A-11. With two easy presnap shifts as the play clock winds down, the Highlanders can go from a superspread vertical pass look to a tight power-run formation to an unbalanced heavy look with five receivers grouped 10 yards to the right of the hash marks. And with two QBs and several players in motion, things get really tricky once the ball is snapped. According to Scientific American, the typical offensive formation has 36 postsnap scenarios of who can take the ball from under center and where it can go. Bryan and Humphries discovered a way to increase the permutations to an eye-popping 16,632.

"The game will always evolve," says the Falcons President. "The only question is: what's next, and when is it going to happen?"

It's driving defenses crazy. One opposing coach said he had no idea where the ball was going 70% of the time. It's also producing results. Using the A-11, Piedmont dropped its first two games in 2007, then won 15 of 20 while qualifying for both the 2007 and 2008 state playoffs. During a five-game winning streak this fall, the Highlanders averaged 43 points per game. They did it with just two players over 225 pounds and a quarterback who barely measures 5'10" and 150 pounds.

Bryan estimates that in the past year several hundred high schools across the country have adopted his offense. And, more interestingly, this high school scheme's success is drawing the attention of the pro game's top-paid minds. "Who knows?" says Chiefs offensive coordinator Chan Gailey. "Maybe we'll all end up spread out all over the place in this A-11."

At the moment, NFL rules stand in the way. There's no scrimmage kick exception on the books. And as a result of arcane regulations, any lineman reporting as an eligible receiver has to sit out the next play—unless there's a break in the action, like a team time-out—before coming back in as an ineligible blocker. It's called the No Fun League for a reason.

Still, Tennessee's coaching staff has considered at least one modified application of Piedmont's creation, for third-and-short at the goal line. Here's how it would work: The Titans have two backup tackles take the field, report to the ref as eligible receivers, then position themselves at either end of the line. As long as the Titans have seven players on the line of scrimmage, those tackles are free to receive the ball downfield. And if the offense doesn't score, the backups simply leave the field, as required, while the starters return for a field goal attempt or another shot at the end zone.

Curiously, Titans coach Jeff Fisher, the other co-chair of the NFL's Competition Committee, says he has no interest in modifying the rules to allow for a full-blown A-11, because it would alter the game too radically. No matter. Bryan and Humphries have twisted and bent the fundamentals, philosophy and geometry of football. Once you do that, there's no turning back. Says Gailey: "I may be old and set in my ways, but I know this: The game will always change in a way that makes it more exciting."

It's not hard to see where this evolution is headed. During the past half century, NFL players have been slowly spreading out from center, with the tight end morphing from a sixth blocker to a hybrid wide receiver. As a result, the tackle now often finds himself alone on the line's edge. And the farther that tackle continues to spread out from the ball, the more likely he'll morph himself from a sedentary blocker into a hybrid, giant tight end.

His pass protection won't be missed one bit, either. Imagine a world in which an NFL team, inspired by the A-11, uses two quarterbacks at the same time. Set up seven yards behind the line of scrimmage, they could both take snaps, act as decoys and shuffle the ball back and forth, so long as there is no more than one forward pass. Even the quickest unblocked defensive lineman can't move 25 feet to cover multiple throwing targets in less than two and a half seconds. Good-bye Shawne Merriman, hope you do well in MMA.

And we're just warming up. If scoring begins to decline, McKay says the Competition Committee will move swiftly to add even more protection for QBs, the lifeblood of the NFL's multibillion-dollar business. The league might start by widening the neutral zone at the line of scrimmage to slow the pass rush, or increasing the field dimensions to create more space for receivers. And since it's already illegal to hit a passer above the shoulders, below the knees, into the ground, while he's in the grasp or after he releases the ball, it's only a small leap for the NFL to make them off-limits altogether, like the punter. Seems ridiculous, but so did the forward pass for 30 years of the game's history and so did five-receiver sets for 75.

The proliferation of the spread-style scheme in high school and college means there are fewer classic pocket passers in the pipeline. When the well finally runs dry, NFL QBs will naturally evolve into smaller, more durable runners who can handle the physical pounding of the game and throw when they have to. Assuming the NFL creates special roster exemptions, teams might sign four of these new prototypes (think: Tim Tebow), platoon them two at a time like tailbacks or hold one out for safe-keeping until November. Instead of banking everything on one $12 million star, teams will pay four passers $3 million each. And with tougher QBs and less economic risk, they'll be free to run wide-open schemes, like the run 'n shoot, that expose passers to more hits.

Even if the NFL never makes all 11 offensive players eligible, the league might very well reduce the number of players required on the line of scrimmage from seven to six, allowing an extra player to go downfield. As a countermeasure, defenses will develop the first full man-on-man schemes. Both developments will immediately tilt the game toward smart, fast and smaller players.

And that will be the real game changer, because average-size teenagers will once again dream in earnest of going pro, like they did 30 years ago. Pee Wee and high school roster sizes will explode. Scouts will have to camp out in the smaller college divisions they typically ignore. And, most significantly, the NFL will move at a pace commensurate with the players inheriting it: the current generation of fast-thinking thrill-seekers, kids weaned on the Internet, iPods and Madden, kids who run the same belly-read option shotgun offense in Pop Warner that was once thought to be too complicated for college players. "There's a loud minority in football that says the A-11 is the devil," says Bryan. "But that's what they said about the forward pass. Old-timers can grumble all they want. In five years, they're going to look like the flat-earth society."

Until then, for a glimpse into the future there are always the pioneers at Piedmont. On Oct. 18, the Highlanders traveled to Albany High for a must-win game in the North Coast Section playoff race. Albany's field features an elevated monorail track running down the length of the visitors' sideline. Every 18 minutes or so, games are greeted by a train from Bay Area Rapid Transit screeching by in a metallic whir.

Clinging to a 38-30 lead, and facing fourth and five at midfield with four minutes to play, Bryan didn't think about punting or, worse, that Steelers bootleg. Instead, he opened his A-11 playbook and called for Base Stagger 193 Slant. Wideout Joey Andrada, who got a free release at the line thanks to the all the typical presnap theatrics, caught a quick hitch, shook his single coverage and raced up the sideline for a 50-yard score to ice the game. It was the start of a five-game winning streak for Piedmont that would end in late November in the first round of the state playoffs.

As the team mobbed Andrada in the back corner of the end zone, the monorail started to hum a few feet away. Moments later, the BART train shot past in a blur of silver and electricity.

The entire stadium seemed to stand still and watch as it raced, unimpeded, into the future.

[G08]

I thought that was a tremendous read and really makes you stop and think the last time any true innovation came to the offensive side of the ball. The wildcat, and that really wasn't much of a deviation when you consider eligible men, blocking schemes, etc. I don't think the A-11 would be something that I'd *want* to see in the NFL (16,000+ possible scenarios is insane), but being a fanatic of offenses in general, I'd certainly like to see something new enter the league.

[G08]

The Ball Stops Here
Don't bring your high-tech offense around the Steelers. They're not in the mood.
by David Fleming
The Mag: Steelers D Cover Shoot

Want to know more about offensive innovation in football?

Walk inside the Steelers' training facility and you will find five Lombardi Trophies shimmering in a glass case outside the executive offices. But if you continue deeper into the building, you'll come across a lesser-known relic that's just as significant to this year's defense. It's a floor-to-ceiling black-and-white photo of the first points ever scored by Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl—a safety by the Steel Curtain in a 16-6 win over Minnesota on Jan. 12, 1975. At the bottom of the picture, Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Lambert growls into the face mask of a prostrate and clearly frightened Fran Tarkenton, the Vikes' elusive quarterback who was supposed to be unstoppable.

The picture is a reminder that when it comes to offense in the NFL, nothing can ever be considered invulnerable or innovative until it's survived the Pittsburgh D. So before declaring Piedmont's A-11 or any other offense of two QBs and a spread formation the next big thing, we gave the Steelers a crack at stopping the future in its tracks. As you'd expect, linebacker and MVP candidate James Harrison, Pro Bowl safety Troy Polamalu and the rest of the NFL's top-ranked unit attacked the assignment with Blitzburgh gusto.

DICK LEBEAU (coordinator):
There has been a change in the entire philosophy of football—you can hardly watch a high school game today without empty backfields, spread-out receivers and teams throwing 70% of the time. It's been quite a trip to see the skill and speed of the game evolve like this.

CASEY HAMPTON (nose tackle):
My family was here for the Dallas game. It was 3-0 in the first half, and we're fired up on the field thinking we're doing a great job on defense. And my family is up in their box complaining, saying the game is boring. We can't win. Everybody loves this crazy offensive stuff.

TROY POLAMALU (safety):
A high school uses two quarterbacks? Imagine for a second having Tom Brady and Peyton Manning on the same team, running this offense.

LEBEAU:
I'd pray for divine intervention.

POLAMALU:
You can always hit offenses out of their schemes. So we'd play man coverage on the outside and put two beasts on either side of the line and blitz 'em from the edge on every downyou hit 'em, get the quarterback hurt. They start running out of quarterbacks, they won't play it anymore.

HAMPTON:
Pressure busts pipes.

HARRISON:
Yeah, this A-11 sounds dangerous to me. Dangerous for offenses. Guys spread out like that? All you have to do is shoot that big gap? I would love to see that in the NFL.

AARON SMITH (defensive end):
But the more you spread out, the more you change the angles of the game. They spread you out and let the athletes play and try to take the meat and the hitters out of the game. If it continues to go this way, you're gonna see the bigger guys out of the game for good.

JAMES FARRIOR (linebacker):
If you can't attack it, it neutralizes everything—your pass rush, everything. So you'll have to match everyone up man on man, and if your guy stays in, even out by the sideline, then you get to go attack the QB.

SMITH:
Man on man? That's basketball on grass. You'd have to play this soft read-and-react, then when they do run the ball, you'd get killed because they'd catch you on your heels.

BRYANT MCFADDEN (cornerback):
Man on man? Farrior gets hit in the head too much. You'd have to play some kind of zone, a Cover 4 or even two deep safeties. Have everyone play an underneath zone, a Cover 2 mentality, keep everything inside and underneath. If you're too aggressive and blitz everybody, the quarterback's too deep, you won't be able to get there in time, so someone's gonna leak through eventually and be all alone downfield.

SMITH:
More than zone or man, personnel would be the hardest part. I mean, who do you send in? All linebackers? Extra corners? Smaller defensive linemen? This really creates mismatches, because let's say you put a 300-pound defensive lineman in there and the guy he's over goes out for a deep pass. Is that 300-pound guy gonna drop 25 yards into coverage? So you'd have no idea who to send in or where to even line them up. No clue.

FARRIOR:
It's evolution. One of those kids in that offense is gonna grow up and be an NFL coach one day, and he'll have this system in the back of his head, waiting.

POLAMALU:
I always wonder if older players, from 50 years ago, could have imagined a five-receiver set with an empty backfield. So you never know where this could go.

DESHEA TOWNSEND (cornerback):
Yeah, I would never say never with this. It would be something great to see a team mass-report as eligible receivers for a play in the Super Bowl. And once someone does it there, you know the NFL—it will be everywhere.

[gaba]

Wow, that's some seriously interesting stuff. I can't really understand it without seeing it in action. Maybe I can find some videos. Sounds kind of cool though. Even just in a very simple way, imagine a team where everyone is assigned an eligible number. You never know where they're gonna line up out of the huddle. You could put in three or four tight-ends all the time and the other team would never know if you're gonna go heavy and stack the line or spread out 5 receivers. It makes me kind of dizzy just thinking about it.

[gaba]

Okay, so I'm kind of obsessing about this tonight. It's really gotten into my head. The center can accept a handoff provided he turns 180deg from the line of scrimmage? So is the center sneak legal? Could another lineman accept a handoff? I'm envisioning a pulling guard taking a handoff... is it possible?

Also... what are the rules about numbers? I know the NFL requires linemen to wear ineligible numbers but what's the rule in college? Obviously there's a loophole to be exploited in California high schools. What if you lined up in a normal looking offense but just had everyone in an eligible number? Could you do that?


Alright, so these are kind of rhetorical questions. I'm just kind of thinking outloud here. Still, it's worth thinking about. If you could line up 11 players in eligible numbers you could have something that looks like a normal offense but the left guard and tackle are actually playing a little too far off the line and are eligible receivers. (Someone would have to "accidentally" line up on the LOS to make up the seven required.) They could start the play like a screen pass, block then release, but instead of just blocking for the receiver they would BE the receiver. The linebacker wouldn't even know to defend them.



I think I need to get some sleep. This is probably going to sound like drunken ramblings tomorrow. The idea of an elible lineman that's NOT announced to the entire world before the play is kind of exciting though. Sure, it could never work in the NFL but you could do some fun stuff in the high school and maybe even the college ranks.

[Otis Day]

Here is a little video of it. Pretty interesting stuff. The shows some failures as well as successes of this formation. Might have to try this out next year.

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=825031

[Otis Day]

A site where some plays are diagramed:

http://www.sciam.com/slideshow.cfm?id=f ... AE59A39179

[gaba]

Cool stuff. Thanks Otis.

[gaba]

F*&K YEAH!!! Now I get it. (The video helps.) It looks like our old 50 series. We didn't line up like this of course. It was a middle screen where the entire line released and blocked upfield. Every play looks like it develops from this type of play. It worked AMAZINGLY for us. Looks really cool. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it.

[G08]

I don't think it'll ever get to the NFL unless some rules are changed, but I love innovative minds.

[gaba]

It could be used every once in a while. Not as a primary offense of course, but it could still work. The NFL rule working against it is that any player reporting as eligible must sit out the next play. Just put in a whole new line (special teams), everyone reports as eligible, and then go back to the starters. You just can't do it twice in a row.

[gaba]

The NFHS changed the SKF rule to say that on 1st, 2nd and 3rd Down, an offense must have at least 4 players wearing # 50 - 79 on the LOS, and only the Center can be wearing an Eligible jersey number, except for on 4th down, then all players can be wearing Eligible numbers, etc.

http://www.a11offense.com/

There's still a few teams petitioning to keep it alive, but it looks like the A-11 might be dead already.

[G08]

You really took to this scheme, huh gabs?

[gaba]

It interests me. I actually think it might be a little unfair and I'm not particularly upset that it's finally been outlawed... but it still interests me. It seems to me that (even with the actual A-11 scheme gone) we really could be looking at the future of the game. It's kind of like being there for the introduction of the forward pass, or being there when the first nose guard dropped back to play MLB. I think there are some pretty brilliant ideas that could really change the game.

The idea of using two quarterbacks could be really cool. I like the idea of having a guy like St. Clair out on the field lined up at tackle, then just shifting a player or two and making him a TE for a play. I don't particularly like that EVERY player could do that, but having a couple that could be eligible or not could be interesting.

Imagine for example, that the numbers 90-99 become "semi-eligible." (It doesn't have to be those numbers specifically but just for example...) The rules could allow only two of them on the field at one time and only one would be eligible depending on the formation, but you may not know which until the ball is snapped.

On the other side of the ball, it's exciting to think of the challenge of coming up with defense that could counter the A-11. The league seems to be going to the 3-man front a lot lately. This type of offense could potentially make a 2-man front possible, employing big 3-4-style linebackers instead of DEs and linebackers that excel in pass coverage. Three DBs play zone deep and the LBs play man-to-man while the two big pass-rushing DTs (Warren Sapp or what we dream Tommie might be) face what amounts to a blitz on every down.


It's not even really the A-11 that's so interesting. It's the evolution of the game that really gets my mind racing. The game is barely recognizable as what it was when the league began almost 90 years ago. Imagine what it could look like in another 90 years.