There are a number of rookie coaches out there that need help creating offensive playbooks. In large part, this is why I created this web site.In 1999 I discovered that I was to be the head coach of the Kodiak Lions three days before the practices began. I was supposed to be the defensive coordinator.

I spent three sleepless nights doing frantic research on the Internet. I discovered a large number of web sites that were willing to sell me playbooks. I only found a few coaches that were willing to put their programs on the net. All of those were high school level, and none were going to be effective in the youth game with an entire team of rank beginners. A coach with enough experience might have been able to simplify one of those high school playbooks, but I didn't have that knowledge or expertise at that time.

Finally, in a blaze of stupidity, I decided to create my own playbook. The playbook, with a few modifications that I discovered during and after the season, can be viewed and copied elsewhere on this site. With it, you'll find a newer playbook, recently created, that shows a number of things I've learned since that first playbook. The difference between those two books is embarassing, and even the second playbook isn't somethig I would run now.

You're welcome to run that system. Perhaps, like some other youth coaches, you'll be good at it, but after the season ended, I decided to never make the mistake of being unprepared again. Over the past few years I've put in a fairly exhaustive study of youth football, offensive football, and youth offensive football. Here are my thoughts on the I-formation as a base part of your offense:

Do not run the I-formation as a  beginning coach. Honestly, I wouldn't run it even as a veteran. There are some coaches that swear by the I-formation, but in my opinion, it hampers your offense considerably because it requires a feature running back, or a great offensive line. If you have an average back and/or an average line, you're dead and buried. At best, you will have an average team.

Has any coach every opened his season with the words, "Kids our goal this year is to be average! Now get out there and be mediocre!" Criminy, I hope not!

The I-formation also requires far too much one on one blocking for my taste.

The I-formation is typically used as an addendum to the Spread or as part of a "multiple" offensive system like the one developed by Gene Cox in Florida. Some very green youth coaches are even so predictable as to line up in the I-formation to run between the tackles, and then adjust to a split backs look to run outside. This is simply poor coaching.

I recommend that you look for a system that has been proven to work in the past, but is no longer in fashion. There are several, from the Single Wing invented by Pop Warner, to the Notre Dame Box (T-Formation), and others. Look for systems that give your offensive linemen a mechanical advantage over their defensive counterparts. For example, the Double Wing's most famous play, an off-tackle, can place nine blockers on four defenders against certain defensive fronts. That's better than a 2:1 advantage in favor of the offense.

One on one blocking at the youth level is at best a tie. That means you don't win, but you don't lose either. If the next Walter Payton is on your team that can be all you need, because once he sees a crease, he's gone for six.

Unfortunately, the odds are extremely low that you'll have that kind of talent, so look for ways to maximize the talent you do have. Offensive systems that give you a chance to down block, kick out, trap, and double team are the systems you should be most interested in. If you are lucky enough to get the next Emmit Smith, he can only do better in a system that gives his blockers an improved chance to seal off the defense.

Another complaint about the I-formation: it's designed for one feature running back. You're going to have between 18 and 30 kids on your team. Don't they all deserve a chance to play, and maybe even carry the ball? Try to find an offensive system that spreads the ball out among your players. This not only may help you discover a rising star when timid little Joey turns into a game day maniac, but it also keeps the second and third stringers happy, because they'll have a better chance to get some carries in. The Wing-T offense run by youth coach "Dum Coach" is a prime example. In his first five plays, five different kids get the ball. Those are five kids that have something to tell mom and dad over ice cream after the game.

One of the reasons I do not like the I-formation is because it has almost no misdirection. With the exception of a tailback cutback, the QB keeper, and a flanker/split end reverse there is no way to trick the defense. By way of comparison, the Wing-T 30 series can give the ball to any of three different backs by using the same backfield motion on every play. This means that the defense is never sure just who has the ball. That defensive hesitation can make an offense with average talent into a scoring machine. (This is why the Wing-T is so hard to stop, and is still in favor at the high school level after nearly sixty years.)

There are further reasons not to run the I-formation at the youth level. Every offense has one or more "lines of force". Take a look at Figure 1, the Wing-T's base "100" formation:

Figure1: Wing-T 100 has five lines of force.

Now draw a line that intersects any two offensive backs, like the wingback and the fullback, or the fullback and the tailback. Notice how many angles you can draw? These lines are the lines of force. They represent the most effective points of attack for that offensive scheme.

Look how many the Wing-T has, and then take a look at the I-Formation in Figure 2:

Figure 2: I-Formation has only one line of force.

If you draw that same line through the offensive backs, you notice that it goes in only one direction: straight up and down. It is virtually impossible, with average talent, to get outside the tackles using the I-formation. If you have a significant speed advantage over the other team, you can do it... barely.

In 1999, I had both speed and the other trick to getting outside: a pitch to the tailback who ran towards the flanker's crack block. Would you believe we got less than a quarter of our yardage from that play, despite having the fastest ball carrier in the league? It is hard to get outside with the I-formation. Invariably the linebacker was able to fight off the flanker's block, despite his full speed run and great angle, and make the tackle. Why? Because the HB had about 80 miles to go to get outside, and the flanker just couldn't hold his block that long. (This is also why you don't see that I-formation pitch sweep in the NFL very often. A 180 pound receiver trying to block a 245 pound linebacker for more than about 0.1 seconds is going to get someone hurt.) Against every defense with outside linebackers, both of those backers are going to be closer to their sidelines than the tailback is. Either the tailback needs a bite from a radioactive spider, or the flanker's crack block needs to put the linebacker in a coma or you're not getting outside. Period!

The best possible way to get outside with this offense is by using the option. The I-formation is a great system to run the option out of, because it gives you a dive back that can hit either side of the center, and a pitch-back in proper pitch relationship right from the snap.

Before you go running off to install the I-formation and use the option, think of this: the youngest team I know of to use the option is an eight-year-old team in Minnesota. Their coach has been coaching for 26 years, and using the option for twenty-three of those years. (By the way, he runs the Veer.) Consider this as well: in the Wing-T, Double Wing, and other youth offenses, any kid can be taught to take a snap, turn, and hand off or pitch. In the Single Wing, he doesn't even need to do that, he takes the shotgun snap and runs to the hole most of the time. An option quarterback, on the other hand, has to be carefully trained from the opening day, and if he breaks an ankle, your entire offense just got thrown in the dumpster! Since running a successful option offense requires that you run the option 70-90% of the time, you are in a world of hurt if you lose your starting quarterback. 

Analy High School, a very good option team near where I live, lost their starting tailback with a knee injury two years ago, and got knocked out of a division championship because of it. The quarterback and backup tailbacks just never got the timing down to be quite as effective as the starting tailback was. Picked in the preseason to go 10-0, they instead finished 5-5.

The I-formation is an extremely difficult formation to run misdirection out of, and misdirection is incredibly effective at the youth level. Most I-formation misdirection is limited to tailback cutbacks, and/or the flanker reverse. Because all of the offensive backs are lined up in a straight line, you can't make them intersect for fakes. This effectively deletes one of the best ways to move the football in the youth game.

Plus, my experience and research suggests that at the youth level, you'll get farther using stuff your opponents haven't seen before. I can also point to one of my opponents in a martial arts tourney about ten years ago. He used Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, a style I'd only read about, and he beat me bloody. I couldn't figure out where the hell his attacks were coming from. This works in football, too.

Using something new is a significant advantage, but I don't mean making up a cockamamie offensive system on your own. I mean finding one that's no longer in use, but was proven to work for many years, like the Single Wing, Lonesome Polecat, Short Punt, Notre Dame "T", or other offenses of the 20's and 30's. There are coaches out there that haven't even heard of these systems, much less have ideas on how to stop them.

I was lucky. I had both the line and the backs to make the I-formation reasonably successful. I've done a lot of poring over my old team since the 1999 season ended, though, and I'm convinced that if I'd heard of the Double Wing before the season began, and I'd installed it, we'd have had no squeaky scores like 7-0 or 14-13. With the same talent, we should have scored 21+ in every game we played, plus, we'd have been better defensively because we'd have kept the ball out of the other team's hands a lot more. With eight minute quarters, if you can spark a ten minute drive and score, you can really put a bind on the other team.

Some coaches know enough about the I-formation to be able to teach it and be successful. They can teach the one-on-one blocking and make it work.

Unfortunately, for most rookie coaches, the I-formation is the worst possible choice. For one thing, it's common, and therefore every defensive coordinator knows how to stop it. Second, the unbalanced backfield and uneven front requires the greatest number of 1-1 blocks of any offense I've seen. That's great in the NFL, where your players are in the top 1% in the world, but Anthony Munoz didn't sign up for my team last season. You should always try to get your players an advantage at the point of attack: get them a double team, a down blocking angle, a trap, something to make their blocking easier. This isn't impossible in the I-formation, but it's, to quote Eric Cartmen, "Hella tough."

Third, the I is really kind of boring. Honestly, the TB is going to get the ball about 75% or more of the time, and the linemen are going to block straight ahead 75% or more of the time. Most football coaches at almost every level use the I-formation as an addendum to a passing game, which also typically has limited success at the youth level.

The system doesn't lend itself well to pulling linemen, because the inside game requires line splits, so pulling a guard leaves a five foot wide hole in your offensive line. Linemen get bored easily running this system, and start thinking, "To heck with it, I can take this next play off and no one will notice." This spells disaster for your offense! 

The pros use a blocking scheme called the "zone" to make the I-formation effective. Remember that the NFL and large college game puts inordinate stress on the passing game. In order to practice the hundreds of passing plays and reads that they need, they simplify the running game down to literally three basic plays most of the time. These plays are the inside zone, the outside zone, and the stretch. They will be detailed in another article, but suffice it to say that the offensive linemen block in a track and the ball carrier runs at 3/4 speed until he sees a hole to cut into. With exceptional talent, these plays can be effective, but they are extremely difficult to coach, especially at the youth level.

Even the misdirection plays I mentioned above: the QB keeper, flanker reverse, and tailback cutback,  were rare calls. How often do you want to risk your main snap-taker by calling the QB keeper? I called it eleven times all season.

A good option quarterback may carry the ball 65% of the time or more, but that's a different beast than a basic I-formation scheme. The option quarterback is really a second tailback that can throw, and because he carries the ball often, he's usually trained to deliver the blow rather than to take one. If you call a quarterback keeper three or fewer times per game, what you're really doing is risking that player.

As for the reverse, how often do you want to risk a huge loss with it? I didn't have one, but one of our opponents did. They called it three times in our first game against them (for 15, 7, and -8 yards, respectively) and then once per game after that. Worse for them, once we knew it was coming, they never again got positive yardage on it, because we keyed the flanker, and the moment he broke to the inside, we started screaming "reverse" and went into pursuit mode. They lost an average of six yards every time they called that play after that. Teams that scout you will eat your reverse for breakfast.

Oh, and what do you do when that starting tailback, you know, the one you built this offense around, goes down with academic ineligibility after game two of the season? Or sprains an ankle? Or quits football for band? These things happen, and frequently at the youth level. It's the rare youth coach to go the entire season without an injury or player quitting. Building an entire offense, hanging the dreams of the other twenty-four players on the legs of one tailback is nothing more than asking for a losing season if he gets hurt. 

Hey, nobody wants to get a kid hurt, but if you don't plan for the possibility, your season just ended. You have got to have a system flexible enough to allow you to compensate for losing any one player from your program, or even a couple of them if you're having a run of bad luck. Feature systems like the I-formation just don't have that flexibility. 

Changing to other formations, like the Power-I, from the standard I-formation still leaves you trying to attack a defense with a very common offensive system that the other coach has probably taught his kids how to stop. Worse, now you have to teach all your plays over again, since the blocking is going to change once you move the players around. Every time you add a new formation, you double your offensive practice time. The Power-I is not just an I-formation with the flanker in the backfield, it's a unique offensive system with its own styles of blocking and ways to attack the defense. It does have a significant advantage in misdirection over the basic Pro-I look, with one tight end, one split end, and a flanker split to the strong side, however.

I don't hate the I-formation, I just think it's not well suited to youth football. Unless the next Ricky Williams is on your team, you'd be better served with the Double Wing, where you can pull nine blockers through the point of attack on five defenders.

~D.