I hate the Double Tight Double Wing Offense.
I hate the way they line up foot to foot. I hate the power sweep. I hate when they run rocket toss. I hate when they dive on a veer. I hate how they wash every D linemen down the line. I hate it when they run orbit motions. I hate how the fullback lines up with his head touching the quarterback’s butt. I hate the fact that they run over top of you at will.
But mostly, I hate the way I don’t hate it, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.
Over the years I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this offense. I hate it so much because it has made my coaching life a living hell for 13 years. Every year, we face off against at least one team that runs this system, and every season my coaches and I spend what seems like 400 hours concocting new ways to stem the bleeding, but the fact of the matter is every year it becomes a war of attrition against these teams, because their offense is built for one thing; running people over.
But why is it so effective? Why is it so dangerous?
The reason it’s such an effective offense is because it takes the SIMPLE and makes it COMPLEX. It takes three to four plays and creates a juggernaut. It makes it possible for players of any size, shape, or speed to dominate anyone they go up against. It encourages the idea of improvement by repetition.
The reason I love the Double Tight Double Wing is all the reasons why I hate it; it is a crazy, crazy, effective SYSTEM.
This posting will not be a love letter to the Double Tight Double Wing; oh no, don’t get me wrong I still hate it with all of my heart. Rather, this post will be about taking the ideas I love about it and applying it to the JV and sub-varsity levels: creating simple ways to look complicated, dominating the defense with a few basic plays, putting window dressing on our base plays to add a little something extra. In essence, this post will be about creating the big thing in football right now: Creating a System.
What is a system?
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you may have missed the renaissance of the idea of football systems. When thinking about an offensive system as a coach, you’re looking for more than just a collection of plays that you’ve gathered along your career. The basic idea of a system, instead, is building a playbook that’s based around the idea of having answers. Have a good base play that is really hitting well? Keep running that play. Is it getting stuffed? Have a counter to that play. Need to align players differently based on a defense? You have answers to that, too.
Systems give you the answers you need to run an offense efficiently, as well as giving you the ability to teach everyone on your team the foundations to build off of. They also give you, as a play caller, the piece of mind that no matter what happens on the field, you’ll have something up your sleeve. It gives you and your team the confidence to go into a game and say “We know exactly what we’re doing, and we’re gonna go out there and kick the crap out the other team.”
At the JV level, building a system is the key to getting your players developed thoroughly in their time before they get to Varsity. As I’ve stated for three weeks, our job in sub-varsity football is to DEVELOP players, and a system allows us to do this because it encourages the growth of FUNDAMENTAL SKILLS and building in QUALITY REPS.
First, when building a system, you start with a base play to build from. In the Air Raid, it’s the Mesh. In Double Tight Double Wing or Flexbone, it’s the Veer. Whatever the base, you work the techniques with your players until they’re perfect, then you rep that with your players until they can do it in their sleep. In a system, because you work your installs in this manner with each play, you can spend more time working techniques and skills with your players, thereby developing them further than you could if you were just working a giant collection of plays.
But, the question begs to be asked though: where do you start?
The Conversation
Growing up, many of us sub-varsity coaches, I’m sure, have dreamed of calling our own offenses. Building a juggernaut from the ground up, we would start with our base play, then build from there. If I decided I wanted to be based around Power, I would build with a counter,, then maybe a pin and pull to get outside, then throw some Play Action to throw teams off. We’d all like to create these unstoppable offenses from scratch, then go on to win undefeated seasons and get all the accolades. The problem lies, though, with the irrefutable fact that creating our own systems from scratch doesn’t help the overall program.
So what do we do? Where do we, at the sub-varsity level, get our offensive system AND help the program succeed?
The answer: GO TO THE SOURCE.
Every sub-varsity coach when creating their offensive system needs to go have a conversation with the Varsity head coach about what they want you to run. It can be humbling, having to run someone else’s stuff, but at the end of the day, remember, it’s about the program.
When beginning this conversation, the first question you need to ask is “what is your base?” To elaborate, find out what formation, run play, and pass play is their bread and butter, the ones they run 90% of the time. That’s what they’re going to want your kids to know when they go to Varsity, the one’s that should become core memories to these players as they progress.
In our program, we base around RPO. That’s right baby, we Run Power Often.
Our bread and butter play as a program is Power. We are a spread no huddle team, but Gap Scheme is our home. Pass game wise, we major in Quick Game, and Hitch routes are our go-to.
Once we’ve ID’d the base, then we start talking the specific ways we want it taught. Your varsity coaches may reach or describe different techniques on how to block, run, pass, and catch than you do, so you may have to swallow your pride and learn those techniques, because that’s what the program needs. The head coach doesn’t care how long you’ve been teaching “Gap Down Double” on Gap scheme runs if they’re teaching it as “Gap Down Backer,” they want you to do it their way, because that’s their vision for the program. And you are ultimately an assistant coach in the program. And what’s your job as an assistant coach? That’s right, it’s to carry out the vision of the Head Coach. So again, swallow your pride, teach their techniques, and create a system that’s both in line with what they want AND successful for your kids.
Now here’s where rubber meets road. Once you’ve had the big talk with the varsity coach and you know the vision, the base, and the philosophy of the program—it’s time to bring that vision down to Earth. Because if you’ve coached JV or Modified football for more than 10 minutes, you know that not every player is ready to run varsity stuff on Day 1. And guess what? That’s okay.
At this level, you have to evaluate your kids through a developmental lens. WHen creating our system, we ask ourselves:
We’re not running the Georgia Bulldogs offense out here. You’re probably working with a mix of first-year players, multi-sport athletes, kids who forgot their cleats, and maybe one or two future all-leaguers. So be honest—what can they realistically execute right now? That’s the key question.
Here’s what I tell my staff every season: You’re not coaching a playbook. You’re coaching people.
If you install 20 plays and your players can run 3 of them correctly, that’s not an offense. That’s chaos.
So don’t try to run the full varsity system just because that’s what “we’re supposed to do.” Instead, take the base of the system—the core runs, formations, and pass concepts—and water it just enough to help it grow. You don’t plant a seed and dump a gallon of Gatorade on it. You give it sunlight and patience.
Start with the essentials. If Power is the varsity base, make sure your kids know how to:
Once they’ve got that down? Then you build.
Now that you’ve got alignment with the varsity vision and a real understanding of your personnel, you can start developing your system. And no, I don’t mean inventing a 74-page playbook on napkins at Applebee’s. I mean taking the varsity concepts and repackaging them for JV players in a way that makes sense.
Here’s how we do it:
You don’t need to run 400 plays to be a good JV team. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be a great coach. You need to run your system, built on the varsity foundation, tailored to your players, with relentless attention to fundamentals and reps. And if that means your system is a humble little package of Power, Hitch, and Orbit… well then, welcome to the party. Because simplicity isn’t weakness—it’s preparation. It’s clarity. And it’s what gets your players ready for Friday nights.
Build it. Rep it. Teach it.
That’s coaching for development.
Next week, we’ll flip the script and talk about creating your defensive systems, and pinpointing the different techniques that need developing at the sub-varsity level. In the meantime, continue checking out the great resources available at coachingshare.com, and don’t hesitate reaching out to me at Twitter, @CoachEaston268. I’d love to talk ball with you guys. And for those of you reading this from New York, Happy 50 days til the season! Thanks for reading.
