Although Hawaii recently changed its name back to the Rainbow Warriors, leaving it as the Warriors keeps the title short. Detroit's original blue color is called Honolulu Blue.
The Core Formations: Single Back Spread with a TE
This offense can be run entirely with 11 personnel, which is one running back, one tight end, and three wide receivers. Although it is not run out of the shotgun as Pat Kirwan suggests is optimal, it could easily be run from that if I had the plays in the playbook. In any case, these are the three main formations:
The reason we use three wide receivers is to force the defense to match up with us by going small. Defenses will usually go to their nickel package by substituting out one linebacker for an extra cornerback and guard against the pass:
Bush is supposed to help with this burden. In its nickel defense, Chicago played the pass Sunday.
"We definitely felt like that was an area we could take advantage," Bush said. "When we have them in nickel — their nickel personnel — and there's six guys in the box, we've got to take advantage of that. We felt like we had to do a better job this week and take advantage of that and that would force them to be honest."Jim Schwartz would go to this 11 personnel package even if he had several good tight ends. When asked why Joseph Fauria was not on the field more, he said:
"I think that everybody's role is going to change from week-to-week and things like that," Schwartz said. "We used a lot of three wide receiver personnel and it only keeps one tight end on the field. That's no reflection on him. He wasn't benched or deemphasized. We wanted to keep them in nickel packages and I thought our offense did a good job."
Thus the reason we use a tight end is that it allows us to have four primary receivers in the formation while retaining an edge against what should be a six man front. The selection of 11 personnel allows us to apply conventional spread offense theory to open up running lanes while keeping enough size in the box to take advantage of them:
(U)sing a tight end in spread personnel accounts for two valuable advantages:
1. It changes the structure of the defense: No longer can that safety/linebacker play in space, which is exactly what he wants to do. Now he’s forced to cover down on a bigger, stronger opponent giving you leverage to get to the alley.
2. It provides for an instant mismatch in the run game: Many of these hybrids don’t like to get their hands dirty. These types, who usually weigh in the 180-210 pound range, are forced to balance up and fit in the framework against bigger tight ends.
If we were using a pure run and shoot formation with double slot receivers, we would get the running lanes but not the ability to exploit them fully. According to Mike Canales of XO Labs:
“Teams are going to give you a six-man box, regardless of what you’re putting on the line of scrimmage. Handling that overhang player with a six box is a bitch. You can’t stay in 10 personnel with no tight ends because those slot receivers aren’t big or strong enough to handle safety types one-on-one, so you need to get into 11 or 12 personnel to force the defensive coordinator’s hand.”
This is a Run First Offense
Oregon under Chip Kelly was a high tempo offense that ran plays rapidly and spread the field by lining up their personnel in ways that forced the defense to cover the whole field:
"We spread the defense so they will declare their defensive look for the offensive linemen," Kelly explained at that same clinic. "The more offensive personnel we put in the box, the more defenders the defense will put in there, and it becomes a cluttered mess." Twenty years ago, Kelly's high school coach ran the unbalanced, two–tight end power-I, so he could execute old-school, fundamental football and run the ball down his opponent's throat. Today, Kelly spreads the defense and operates out of an up-tempo no-huddle so he can do the exact same thing.This is what we are trying to do as well. Unlike Kelly, who was lining up 5 offensive linemen and splitting out four wide receivers all over the field, we're not expecting to always see a single high safety with five defenders in the box, but the concept is the same:
"If there are two high safeties [i.e., players responsible for deep pass defense], mathematically there can only be five defenders in the box. With one high safety, there can be six in the box. If there is no high safety, there can be seven in the box," Kelly explained at the 2011 spring Nike Coach of the Year Clinic. The easiest case is if the defense plays with two deep defenders: "With two high safeties, we should run the ball most of the time. We have five blockers and they have five defenders."Old school "hat on a hat." If the offensive formation has one blocker available for each defender near the line of scrimmage, we will take that matchup all day long and continue to run the ball. Instead of looking for five on five, we are using a tight end usually packed in with the rest of the line. We have six, so that means we have one hat for each of theirs as long as there's no more than six in the tackle box.
During the Saints-Eagles Wild Card game, Philadelphia went to nickel personnel to challenge New Orleans to run the ball. As seen in this clip from NFL Turning Point, they did:
The primary rushing plays for this offense are a zone run package with some straight ahead dive plays. From the Ace Slot formation, we run Inside Zone to the front, Zone Weak to the back, and have a Dive play and a Counter play:
From the Ace Y-Trips, we have the HB Stretch (Outside Zone) to the frontside, Zone Weak to the back, and again a Dive play and a Counter play:
This lets us run the entire base rushing package of strong zone, weak zone, counter, dive out of both TE tight formations. The Ace Slot Y Flex formation that splits the TE out from the line as a second slot receiver only has a dive play. If we were to add a fifth rushing play to the package, it would most likely be a draw play, which is available in all three formations.
Numbers advantage outside
The other side of the coin is the passing game. If the defense wants to load up by bringing a safety down near the tackle box for run support or to show blitz, we want to be able to punish them for doing so. The focus of the passing game will be to exploit a stacked box or blitzes with accurate short to intermediate range passing. The most important pass plays are these three:
In each of the three formations we are using as the base offense, the corresponding pass play above is the one we call when we need to pick up a first down: Curls in Ace Y-Trips, TE Post in Ace Slot, and Slants in Ace Slot Y Flex. These plays are all intended to pick up 8 to 12 yards on the primary route. The best of the three is the Curls play, which will be explained in the future.
The passing package is rounded out by four verticals plays in all three formations as well as the quick audible passes in the Ace Slot (Slants) and Ace Y-Trips (Stick) formations. While there are other good pass plays, those six are the only crucial pass plays.
