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AFM Magazine


The Wing-T: An Offense for the Ages

Why is The Wing-T One of the Most Popular Offenses?
by: Patrick Finley
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Jim Roth taught the Delaware Wing-T in a week. Granted, it was a very basic version. It was for an all-star game at the end of last season, and Roth already had one running back from his own team in the backfield. Two other running backs already had experience using a two-point stance, so the Wing-T wasn’t that different.

The offensive system itself, based on timing, deception and athletic blocking schemes, worked. Roth’s team won, 29-7.

“I had a lot of coaches saying we couldn’t run it in a week,” Roth said. “I don’t think I would do it again because it was more work and more difficult to install and try to run. And for whatever reason, that’s always been kind of taboo – to run that offense in an all-star game.”

There is a stigma about the Wing-T among non-believers.

Roth has reason to think opposing coaches are jealous. His Southern Columbia High School team of Catawissa, Pa., has made the Class A championship game nine of the past 10 years, winning the past three. Roth is 249-42-2 in his career and has won 14 straight district titles.

“Another thing is that they have difficulty stopping it, so they don’t like it,” Roth joked. “But I think it’s also an ego thing. There are a lot of guys who don’t want to run an offense that has somebody else’s name to it. People don’t want to run it because it’s an established system. They want to tweak their own offense and say it’s theirs.”

Nonetheless, the offense works. According to an American Football Monthly survey, 23.5% of 2003 high school state champions ran the Wing-T, the third-highest among formations. In 2004, 21.2% of champs ran the offense.

Why does the Wing-T work?

The Delaware Wing-T, now 55 years old, has stood the test of time. It was invented by David Nelson, the head coach of the University of Maine, in 1950. After taking over at the University of Delaware in 1952, Nelson implemented the Wing-T as the school’s primary offensive scheme. Harold “Tubby” Raymond followed Nelson to Delaware and served as the school’s backfield coach until 1965, when he began a 36-year-long stint as the coach of the Fightin’ Blue Hens.

At its most basic, the Wing-T is a formation – usually with a fullback and a halfback – that features at least one wingback. Because of the wingback’s positioning near the line of scrimmage, there is usually a threat for at least three deep receivers.

The potential ball carriers – the wingback, fullback, tailback and quarterback – are in close formation, making play fakes, misdirections and blocking easier. Receivers use crack-back blocks to help spring running plays. Offensive linemen use blocking rules and make reads at the line to determine double-teams, who pulls and who hits linebackers.

“A smart offensive line coach is more important than intelligent players,” said Lewis Johnston, whose Western Branch High School team from Chesapeake, Va., has won three districts in a row and finished undefeated last year. “The coach’s ability to translate the rules and have a kid understand it is what makes it work.”

With the blocking scheme in place, coaches and quarterbacks can check off to a series of plays. Because the Wing-T involves so many ball carriers, offenses can attack the defense at the point of weakness, whether it be up the middle, on either flank or in the defensive backfield. The offense makes this decision based on how the defense adjusts to the wingback’s positioning.

Because Wing-T plays are usually organized into a series – or a number of plays that can be run out of a similar look the Wing-T has at least nine series and sets of plays for each. That’s why Raymond called the Wing-T “an order of football.”

“You’re forcing the defense to adjust when you walk the wingback up to the line of scrimmage,” Johnston said. “It’s a game of react and re-react. They can’t take away everything. It’s a matter of finding out where they’re weak and exploiting it.”

To counter overzealous defenses, Roth will often have his team approach the line with a balanced set, and attack whichever area the defense keys away from. “You’re utilizing so many different people that it’s not a problem when you have to change things up,” Roth said. “I’ve heard this from other coaches we’ve played – we have a system. Everything kind of fits together. There are plays that should be open if they’re overcompensating. Because it’s more of a sequential offense, it makes it easy to adjust.”

With so many ball carriers near the action, Wing-T – when run correctly – is deceptive. Maybe more accurately, it’s the threat of deception that keeps other teams honest.

“The concept of the misdirection is what works,” said Randy Kuceyeski, whose Libertyville (Ill.) High School team won the state title last year and is 37-3 over the past three years. “A lot of times people don’t have the football. The timing and the misdirection, the ball-faking, is something we take a lot of time developing. If they have the timing down and the ability to hide the ball, they’ll be able to be successful.” That makes the Wing-T not only hard to defend, but hard to scout. Because the ball can end up with any ball carrier, defenses have a hard time focusing on one player without exposing weakness. “To prepare for it in one week !=– which most teams do – is a lot to digest,” Kuceyeski said.

Why install the Wing-T?

Johnston took over the Western Branch program in 1985 after running the Power-I as the JV coach. For four years, he experimented with Power-I and Wishbone on the varsity level, but nothing seemed to work. In 1989, his athletic director suggested he try the Wing-T.

“We didn’t match up well running the I or running the Wishbone,” he said. “We just didn’t have the athletes. With the Wing-T, you can probably do more with lesser athletes in this offense than any I studied,” he said. “Once you get good-to-great athletes, it’s almost unstoppable.”

Especially in high school football – where coaches often have to play the cards they’re dealt, talent-wise – the Wing-T can compensate for the lack of one singular superstar. That’s why Kuceyeski installed the Wing-T 10 years ago.

“I did a lot of research on different offensive systems, and .picked one to fit the kind of kid that we get,” he said. “We don’t need to have great athletes to run this thing.”

Kuceyeski was confident that his coaches and players were intelligent enough to counter-attack whatever defensive front they saw. “You’re doing a lot of angles, a lot of pulling on the offensive line,” he said. “There are more blocking rules. In other offenses, it’s more 1-on-1. Here it’s more of a finesse, thinking man’s offense.”

It’s also versatile. Over the years, Roth has customized the Wing-T to focus on fullbacks, halfbacks, wingbacks and quarterbacks, depending on which position was the strongest.

“For me, it seemed like a natural fit for a high school program where you can’t control your talent,” he said. “You don’t get as many athletes at a smaller school like ours, but we’ve worked very hard to develop players. I love the versatility of the offense – you can feature different aspects of it every year. And I love the balance of it, too. It just works really well.”

How can you customize the Wing-T?

Had Roth, Kuceyeski and Johnston just run the basic Wing-T, odds are their programs would not be the powerhouses they are today. While outsiders might view the Wing-T as rigid, coaches have found ways to tweak the offense to their liking.

Johnston’s bread-and-butter play is the buck sweep. In the buck sweep, the strong-side tackle and tight end block down on the defensive tackle and defensive end, respectively. The strong-side guard blocks the middle linebacker in front of him, and the weak-side guard pulls through the hole, behind the down blocks. The backside halfback follows the pulling guard. The buck sweep might be the most basic play in the Wing-T. Johnston favors it because he remembers Raymond’s philosophy that the Wing-T is a flank attack.

Still, teams started to key on the buck sweep. After running the waggle play off the buck sweep – another successful staple – Johnston decided to give the shotgun a try. He liked the idea of getting his quarterback away from the defensive line, and found that his team has an advantage in running two very different sets. Now he considers his team more of a passing team than a ball-control team.

“People scout around here pretty good,” he said. “So our success has been because it’s pretty difficult to prepare for both the Wing-T and shotgun equally well. We’ll still run off the shotgun. Now the run game opens up for us, too.” Kuceyeski’s base play is a rocket sweep, a quicker, more modern version of the buck sweep. In recent years, he has moved from a two-back to one-back set, putting his best athlete at fullback. Last year, three players gained more than 1,000 yards. He also runs shotgun, but only in the two-minute drill.

Roth also focuses on his fullback. Though he runs the buck sweep regularly, Roth discovered that a fullback dive works better than the traditional fullback trap. In the 2002 state finals, Southern Columbia ran the dive and trap each about six times. The dive play was their most successful play; the trap was squashed.

“We found that when you get into a good defensive front with kids that are well-coached, it’s easy for them to recognize and defeat the trap,” he said. “We’re still able to pop that dive play from time to time because it doesn’t take that much finesse and execution. If we get those linebackers leaning, we’ve got a play.” His fullback ran for about 1,800 yards last year, with about 1,000 coming in a five-game playoff run.

Roth has also incorporated his quarterback into the running attack, whether on play-actions or called rushes. Last year, his quarterback surpassed 1,000 yards.

“Years ago, we wouldn’t have thought we could run the ball with the quarterback,” Roth said. “But it just opens up our passing game even more.”

As the Wing-T keeps evolving, there’s no question other wrinkles will be added. But the base offense – developed 55 years ago – will undoubtedly remain a popular choice for high school coaches.

THE WING-T: HOW DO YOU DEFEND IT?
There’s no one way to stop the Wing-T. But Gus Malzahn, the head coach of Springdale (Ark.) High School, has tried them all. The key, he says, is the same as when you’re game-planning against any other offensive scheme.
“You gotta take away whatever their strength is,” he said. “That’s the way you’ve got to approach about every offense. You’ve got to stop that strength and make them do what they’re not as good at.”

In the case of the Wing-T, coaches usually must choose between stopping the fullback trap and the buck sweep. Because Springdale tends to play more of an aggressive defense – as opposed to one based solely in gap responsibility – Malzahn attacks the middle.
“We try to attack their strength and stop their guards,” said Malzahn, who has a career record of 130-36-1 and is starting his fifth year at Springdale. “We’ll cross read our linebackers with their halfbacks and read through their guards.”
The reason is two-fold. “We’re going to try to blow stuff up,” Malzahn said. Secondly, regardless of the team’s strength, one way to disrupt the Wing-T is to ensure that guards are unable to pull. Especially on the buck sweep, following the guards makes the defense less confused by faking.

“The Wing-T works when you have good angle blocks and athletic guards blocking in space,” he said.

Malzahn said he hasn’t seen as many Wing-T teams during the past five years as he had before then. That makes it even harder for his defense to scout the Wing-T. The scary thing, Malzahn said, is that those teams who run the Wing-T do so because they’re very efficient.

“Still, you’ve got to take something away,” he said


5 Essentials to Running the Wing-T
1. Practice play-fakes and play-action. Because so many athletes touch the ball in the Wing-T, many defenses are deceived by solid play-fakes. “It’s a fun offense to practice and it’s a fun offense to watch because of the fakes,” said Randy Kuceyeski, head coach at Libertyville (Ill.) High School. “Because of that, our kids enjoy running it.”

2. Stress blocking assignments. Because plays are often changed at the line of scrimmage, basic assignments should be second nature. “We stress that kids take a pre-snap read and have a certain idea of what might happen,” said Jim Roth, coach of Southern Columbia High School in Catawissa, Pa. “From my perspective, I try to take the guess-work out. If kids line up and they’re still going over what their assignment is, noticing the little things isn’t going to happen.”

3. Encourage unselfishness. With so many ball-handlers, many players – not just the fullback or tailback, like in many systems – might not get the carries they feel they deserve. “The players have to try to be unselfish – that’s a key,” Roth said.

4. Pick a smart quarterback. If the signal-caller can recognize defensive fronts easily, he can audible to another play in the series to exploit the defense. “Quite often I’ll give the QB the option of calling the side or point of attack,” Roth said.

5. Reassure players about recruiting. Though no Division I-A school runs the Wing-T, the system tends to show off the rushing, catching and blocking abilities of ball-carriers and the athleticism of offensive linemen. “Most systems, kids aren’t asked to do all those things,” Roth said.





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