Youth Football- Using the No-Huddle Approach in Youth Foootball

Using the No Huddle Offense

All that 007 stuff about intercepting signals and deciphering your playcalling "code" is not something you should lose any sleep about in youth football. In 83 games of using the no huddle Single Wing Offensive system, just 1 team ever figured it out on us, so we just moved to the simple code change outlined in the book at halftime, problem solved. We have had countless teams try and decipher the code and many have thought they had it down, making themselves look very foolish when they were telling their confused players we were running in one direction, while in reality we were running in another. Add in all the misdirection, motion and meshing we do in this offense and it was pure chaos for the other team having to also listen to their mistaken coaches telling them to go in a direction where the ball wasn't. Actually this code breaking is something you hope your opposition does, because they rarely if ever will be right and when they aren't right, it is pandemonium on the defensive side of the ball. If they ever do break the code it is very simple to reset the dials. Some teams even carry an extra set of playcard inserts they can slip right into the wrist coaches all your players are wearing. The new playcard of course has a different code in it, it would take at least another half to decipher the code even with a genius savant coach with a computer working it on the other sidelines.

If the other team is charting everything and they have an MIT math whiz on their staff you could do a couple of very simple things to insure you aren't giving any "tells". You could add a tag to each play as you are calling it in. For instance let's say your running my Single Wing Offense and you call: 16 Power, the No Huddle Code is "black 123" and you want to use the "cross" adjustment from the book. In previous play calls you could have added "dummy" tags to every play. In other words, you could have added :"juice" to your Spinner 26 Power, "juice" doesn't mean anything, but the defense doesn't know that. You could also add a "live" tag like "cross" to a football play you would never use "cross" on, like 22 wedge. On 22 wedge the fullback is carrying the ball, he couldn't possibly block a "cross" call on that football play. If you are one of those UFO conspiracy types and very paranoid, you can even just go with words that start with the same letter as your call. In other words, anything that starts with a "C" is a cross call, charlie, cat, cob, etc.

If you are the paranoid type you could also have two sets of coaches calling in plays, with one being live and the other coach throwing out dummy calls.

I'm not sure how much you get out of making everything terribly complicated and spy versus spy like. Adding in "dummy" calls probably doesn't take much time to add in and shouldn't cause too much confusion. If you do decide to go that route, make sure you practice it during regular football practice and in pre game. Also make sure you don't use any "dummy" calls that sound like or rhyme with your live calls.

As with any no-huddle system the goal is to get kids more playing time. Using this method we have not only averaged over 35 points per game over the last 8 seasons, but all our kids get a lot more playing time, with over 95% returning to play each year.

Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book "Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan" was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

With over 15 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams. His personal teams to using this system to date have won 94% of their games in 5 Different Leagues.

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Some Video Clips of Dave's teams:
Single Wing Football

Offensive Line