Untitled - Fast and Furious Football

RUN OFFENSE 17
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1993 Summer ManuaL. C@ch Taaffe is head, cooah at me Citddel.
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The Flexbone Offense
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Wjthout good players, it makes no differcnce what
offensive folrnation you line up in. For whatever
success we've had, we're indebted to our players,
their execution, and theit belief in our offense.
There's no magic in the term "Flexbone." The
origin of this term came {iom our Sports Information
Departm€nt two years ago when Coach
Ken Hatfield remarked at a prcseason press conference
that we would try to be more "flexible" in
our attack from the Wishbone. Actually, the
Flexbone iB nothing but the 3-back, 2-split end
wishbone o{fense, with the halfback positioned
one yard behind and one yard outside of our tack-
The Wishbone has been criticized for not being
a good pass formation, particularly in longr-ardage
situations. Under my forrner head coach,
Jim Brakefield, at Appalachian State University,
we used this set for our long-yardage and 2-
minute ofTense, because it gave us four quick receive$
on the line of scrimmage and it tended to
spread the defense out a little more and diverted
their concentration liom the run game to the pass
game. Therefore, when we started to toy with this
formation at the Academy, we felt we could incorporate
oul mn offens€ ftom itjust aB well as our
pass offense.
Being an old secondary coach, I've always felt
that play-actior passing was the toughest to defend.
Tterefore, the concept was to use this attack
to run our base offense and, hopefully, make
the defense a little softer for the run. The offeme
could also make our pass offense look exactly like
our lunning plays, and give us more opportunities
on third-and-long (hopefullt running the
Wishbone you won't be in this situation too often)
and in our hurry-up offense.
Reasons for Option Offense
We believe in the option oITenBe because it's:
. unique in a pass-oriented league,
. difficult for our opponents to gain familiarity
with in a week's prepamtion time, and
. an offense that doesn't require you to knock
everybody off the lin€ of scrimmage, but aliows
you to leaaf the defense's commitment.