More on the Five Wide Offense

Hmm...Five Wide huh???

So we learned from our previous post that the Five Wide Offense contains basically four formations and offers up ten route concepts when it comes to the passing game.  The first thing I want to discuss is how these ten route concepts transfer from formation to formation.  The example I'm going to use was our favorite concept, known as Shoot.

Here we see Shoot run from the Thunder formation.  The W runs a Post, while Z has a slant, and B runs the swing.  On the weak side, A runs a shoot route, and X runs the takeoff.  Now, the illustrations below show how this route translates into the other formations.

Shoot from Hurricane

Shoot from Storm

Shoot from Tornado

As you can see the routes adapt quite easily.  What puts the defense in a bind is the fact that who may be covering said routes via the alignment they start in.  Maybe a team has their middle linebacker (MLB) in man coverage on the RB when in 1 back.  Well, Shoot from Hurricane or Storm might benefit you because of match up issues with your A or B being a better athlete than your opponent's MLB.  Another thing to look at is how the swing route translates into a bubble for the B when he moves out of the backfield.  This is very good against man-to-man coverage as the Slant and the Post routes act like pick routes and can easily free up the B on the Bubble.

You can also tag routes with any other route you want to make any combination you want.  For instance say you can tell the flat player is taking a really flat angle to come under the Z on Shoot out of the Tornado formation.  One way to combat this is to simple go Tornado Shoot B Wheel.  Now the B runs a wheel route, and defeats the poor angle of the defender trying to come under the slant route.

Sprintout Package

The routes in the FWO, plus the ability to tag routes makes sprintout an easy concept.  Our OC at the time would simply tag a directional call to the concept (ie Hamburger right) and this would tell what side we were sprinting to.  Our sprintout rules were as follows:

1. The side the call is going to is live, these players run the normal concept routes.
2. The side away from the call is dead, the rules are as follows when running routes on the backside of sprintout:
1. If only 1 receiver on weak side run shallow drag (in front of LB's).
2. If 2 receivers on weak side, then inside receiver runs shallow drag and outside receiver runs deep drag (in front of safeties).
3. If 3 receivers on weak side then inside receiver runs shallow drag, middle receiver runs deep drag and outside receiver will run a post route.
3. For players in the backfield all routes are dead, you are blocking.  Blocking rules are as follows:
1. If only 1 player in backfield, and ball is coming to your side, block 1st threat to show outside the PST.
2. If only 1 player in the backfield and ball is going away from you, Flop motion will be tagged.  QB will flop you over to call side, then execute assignment #1.
3. If 2 players in the backfield, then player to call side will block, and player away from call side is treated as the inside receiver and will run the shallow drag.

Let's see how some of these concepts translated to the sprintout game.  Here's three examples of running sprintout out of the 2x2 formation Hurricane:

How does this translate to the 3x1 formation of Storm?

The adding of tags simply gives you another way to attack the defense and create even more route combinations.

The one formation we did not sprint out of, was Tornado.  With no RB in to block, we felt no advantage by sprinting out of the empty formation.  One thing we did a lot of was to sprint to the weak side of our Storm formation (3x1) because a lot of times you got single coverage on that backside single receiver.  Remember from the first post, the X is your best WR, so him in a one-on-one scenario is a good thing.  Add a mobile QB to the mix, and now the defense can no longer overload the trips side of the formation.

Pass Protection

Pass protection was pretty simple in this offense.  There were two basic schemes, big-on-big (BOB) for all drop back passing and turn back for sprintout passes.  The last season I was there, the OC switched to zone reach for the sprintout passing, but you get the idea, there were only two schemes our players had to learn.

Having five receivers out in the route meant that you had to have hot routes built in.  The OL would handle the down four and the Mike (against odd fronts they declared who the down four were and the Mike with calls, but I never knew them).  The remaining six players were all declared by the receivers.  The A and B generally had the OLB's while the Z took any overhang to his side while the X and W looked for corner blitzes.  The rule our OC had on hot routes was to simply turn around and call for the ball.  Now we didn't always do so good with picking up hot receivers, and we had a pretty good screen game to handle teams that wanted to go blitz-happy on us.  Another thing the OC could do is add a "Stay" call to any play call and this meant that whoever was in the backfield was to stay in and help block.

Hot reads

Now I know what you are saying "That's it???" and you're right, but those were the two basic schemes.  We did have a double read tag for odd fronts, but that was later in my tenure, and to be honest if I tried to explain it, I wouldn't do it much justice.  Remember, this post is basically from memory, and reading a playbook I stole over ten years ago!

Drawbacks and Disadvantages to the FWO

Here were some things I never cared for about the FWO, again, these are just my opinion, so take them with a grain of salt.

1. No good "power" run game.  I've know some teams that adopted this style have added a backup QB similar to Tim Tebow or the "Belldozer", but that adds a bit more the teaching style and really changes the landscape of the offense.  75 percent of the run game was some sort of zone scheme, which doesn't always lend itself to be too "powerful" on the three yard line.
2. Pass protection was sketchy at times.  Good teams we faced that ran a lot of zone blitz stuff really threw us off.  Odd front teams, especially the 3-3 and the 3-4 (we saw a lot of 3-4 teams back then, only 1 3-3 team), really could get after us and make our OL's life miserable.  Even with the "Stay" call added in, because we spent so much time working on catching the football and timing, our A's and B's never really were that good in pass protection (remember, these guys were basically WR's , NOT RB's).
3. Relying on a high school QB just never sat well with me.  Our second QB was terrified when it came to throwing the football down the field.  He would leave wide open receivers and take off and run, because he was confident in his ability to do so.  He was being asked to make reads that were too much on him.  Now this isn't really a system complaint, but I was felt if there was a way to tag who we wanted him to throw the ball too, that would be so much better for those QB's who needed a little "help".  
4. When the offense is off, be ready to have a long night, especially defensively.  We were a big enough school that I only had two, players on defense that also played offense.  Thank goodness, because we got in some games where my guys were on the field A LOT.  The lack of a true running game, did not allow us to run the clock and we had several three-and-outs that didn't burn much more than a minute off the game clock.  This factor alone is one reason I would never recommend this to a coach that has a lot of two-way players on his team.  
5. Having OL that work an innate amount on pass protection was extremely detrimental to our run game.  The sled we had at that school was bought the same season I got on campus.  In the four years I spent there, I saw the OL hit that thing maybe ten times.  Run blocking took up maybe ten percent of the practice time, and it showed.  Much like flexbone, wing-t and single wing OL have trouble with pass protection, the same could be said of the FWO and run blocking.  Our guys were finesse guys who were decent at pass protection, but weak when it came to knocking our opponents back and creating a new line of scrimmage (LOS).

These are just some of my concerns about the offense.  I will say, I like the way the offense is organized and packaged, but my love pretty much ends there.  Anyway, I hope this has been informative and helpful and as usual, email me if you have any questions.

Duece

The Five Wide Offense

You really have five WR's on the field at one time!!!!!

A post on the Huey board about this very topic intrigued me enough to write a post about an offense that I do have some association with.  Now, I was just the defensive coordinator (who stole a playbook when I left) at the time, but I always paid attention to what my cohorts on the opposite side of the ball were doing.  The Five Wide Offense (FWO) was a very interesting concept at the time we were running it (late 90's early 2000's), because almost everybody we faced was a run the football, grind it out type of offense.  When I first joined the staff, we had a stud QB who could really zing the pigskin around, plus a very good group of WR's (we had 2 that signed D-1AA scholarships and the other 2 went D-III and NAIA).  Our OL, was suspect for most of the time, and we were not very good at running the football.  By the time I left, the offense had morphed into more of the traditional "spread to run" or "spread option" as our QB was more of a runner, and our receivers were not all that good.

What intrigued me about the offense was the setup and layout of the offense and just how simple it was for the players to understand.  I'm going to take you through and look at the basics of  the offense from the ground up.  Now, most people think FWO and think "Oh, you're just in Empty all the time, you're gonna get kilt!".  Well, that's not necessarily the truth.  As a matter of fact, from what I remember, we were in 2x2 and 3x1 a majority of the time.  Five wide, does not mean Empty, it means you are using five WR's on the field at any given moment.  The formations just put these five receivers in various positions that can create a mismatch or alignment problem for a defense. 

That kind of empty makes me sad...

Personnel

Offensive Line
The OL when I was a part of this offense was never very good, especially at run blocking.  We had a lot of finesse guys, or what I would call "tight ends that couldn't catch".  The OL was set up very similarly to that of a flexbone OL in that the center was one of the better OL, but maybe not a tremendously athletic OL.  The guards were whatever you had leftover after selecting the tackles and the center.  The tackles were lanky, rangy guys that could match up with speedy DE's or OLB's that would blitz off the edge.  Obviously the best OL was saved for protecting the blind side of the QB.

Receivers
In the diagrams below you will see the positions, and they are the X, A, W, Z, and B.  The W is purely a possession guy.  He does not have to be a speed demon, but is probably your best pure route runner of all five.  The Z is a "wild card" type guy.  He's a slot that can run the ball, but is good when matching up against underneath coverage guys.  Don't sacrifice on athleticism here.  The B and the A are almost universal in that they are basically RB's that can catch.  These guys need to be able to run and catch the ball.  They are by far the most versatile athletes within the offense.  The X is the stud, speed burner you have that can give defenses one-on-one match up problems.  He's by far your fastest receiver and probably the second best route runner you have.

Quarterback
I was fortunate enough to go through a couple of types of QB's in this offense.  Our first QB was your prototypical passer.  He was big (6'4" 200 lbs) and had a cannon on the left side of his body (yep, he was a Southpaw).  The second QB was more of a runner, or scrambler who was only 5'9" tall and about 175 pounds.  This guy would have been a great triple option QB, but he could also throw the hell out of the football.  The offense was made to fit around both of these guys, but some essential traits were still needed.  The QB obviously had to be a leader, but physically he had to be able to throw the football and throw it well.  There are some throws in this offense, that some of our younger QB's couldn't make.  They had to be developed to do so, and if you don't have the time to do that, then this is not your cup of tea.  The QB must also be able to make some plays with his feet, but he DOES NOT have to be RGIII either.  He just needs to be able to move and slide around in the pocket as you are usually only going to have five blockers.  He also needs to be able to get rid of the football QUICKLY.  With only five blockers, you end up seeing a lot of blitzes, and the QB has to see this and adjust to whoever is the hot route.

Formations and Alignment

There were four basic formations to the offense, and they were all named for weather events.  The alignments were very simple, if no direction calls were given, the W, the Z and the B would all align to the wide side of the field.  The X and the A only had to know where the W, Z and B were, because the X and the A would align on the opposite side of the offense.  If a direction call was tagged to the formation (example: Hurricane Left), then the W, Z and B all went to the call side, and the X and the A simply aligned on the opposite side.  This made alignment very simple for the players to pick up and to be honest, we very rarely ran out of left handed formations.  Here are the basic four formations:

Thunder

Thunder was the base set for the offense.  All routes and run plays were based from this formation.  Alignment-wise, the W would align as wide as the game plan or route tree called for and the Z would simply split the difference between the tackle and the W.  The X aligned the same way as the W did, while the A and the B flanked the QB, and had variable alignments.  If running routes out of the backfield the A and Z may align as wide as behind the tackles, whereas if running the ball inside they may align behind the guards.  The guard-tackle gap was the base alignment, and that was adjusted in or out based on the play being run.

Hurricane

Hurricane was by far the most popular of all our formations.  I would venture a guess that we were in this formation close to 50% of the time.  The only thing that changed between Thunder and Hurricane was that the A adopted the same alignment rules as the Z would.

Storm

Storm was the next most popular formation we ran, and is a standard 3x1 trips formation with back offset weak.  Here the Z reduced his split by 1/3 and the B aligned halfway between the Z and the EMOL.  The A simply took up his home alignment in the backfield as he would if running from the Thunder formation.

Tornado

Tornado was the least used formation that we had, however we did use it, and was particularly favorable later on with our running QB and using the A and B as "sweepers" to run the jet sweep and complementary plays off of jet action.  The W, B and Z simply aligned in Storm, and the X and the A aligned in Hurricane, so there was no new teaching of alignments to get in our Empty set.

Running Game

The run game varied over the years I was there from a more traditional inside zone and outside zone scheme to more QB iso and power runs, zone read, traps and jet sweeps in the later years.  I really think the sky is the limit when it comes to what you can do in the run game in this offense.  In the early years our bread and butter play was simply the draw to either the A or the B.  This was very good to us because of just how much we threw the football (our OC was a Spurrier guy, so we averaged about 70% passing to 30% running when I first got on campus).  Later, our bread and butter became the jet sweep and a QB trap play off of jet action.  Since our QB was such a threat to run the football, teams couldn't just attack and take away the sweep, because it would leave the middle of the defense vulnerable to QB trap.  QB draw also became a good play for us as well.  Anyhow, the run game is pretty much what you want out of it.  As mentioned earlier, we were 70-30 pass to run in my first two years there.  The last two years I was there, we moved to almost 50-50 and were quite balanced really.

Passing Game
The passing game, at that time, was unlike any I'd ever seen. I had always been a part of a route tree, or mirrored route concept system.  This concept system was unlike any I'd ever seen, however, it is eerily similar to what you are seeing nowadays in NCAA football and the NFL.  The first season I was there, our OC numbered the concepts zero through nine.  Midway through the season he was calling them things like "Middle" and "Wheelies" and the numbers were thrown by the wayside.  Later, he simply named all of his concepts, and as you can see some of them were pretty strange, but our kids understood them and we rarely had busted assignments due to guys not knowing what to do.  Here is the route concept tree from the Thunder formation.

Shoot was our bread and butter pass play.  We gained more yards and scored more touchdowns off this one concept than any other in our playbook.  The routes as they were named going from right to left are Post (W), Slant (Z), Swing (B), Shoot (A), and Takeoff (X). As a side note, these are not what I called these routes, these are the names taken directly from the playbook.

Smash easily was our second or third favorite route concept.  The routes are Slant, Corner, Takeoff, Corner, Hitch.  In this diagram, the A and B would probably have widened out behind the tackles in order to get a better release to run their routes.

Middle was a route concept that was later developed into a good sprintout concept.  The routes are Post-in, Wheel, Post, Swing, Slant.  We did not run this much as a drop back concept, but as I stated earned large dividends when sprinting out to the strong side of the formation to this concept (which I will explain later).

We did not use Zebra all that much, but later started sprinting out to the weak side (X/A side) and that later influenced some of my sprintout passing that I did from the flexbone.  The routes were Hitch, Post, Slant, Takeoff and Comeback.

Panther was a pretty popular route concept the entire time I was around the offense.  Our Z receivers loved it because they always seemed to be open on this one (we saw a lot of cover 3 in those days).   The routes are Post, Hitch, Shoot, Slant and Post.

Oreo was one that was run some with our pure passer, but not much.  Later with the running QB we sprinted to the strong side to this look for some good gains.  The routes that go with the Oreo concept are Out, Takeoff, Comeback, Post and Out.

Taco was one that when we began moving our QB around, we ran this to both sides with a TON of success.  I have no clue why it was called Taco, but that's what they named it.  The routes are Takeoff, Out, Post, Wheel, Post-in.

Hamburger was a rarely used concept, but I like the Smash-like qualities on the front side of the formation.  The routes are Now, Hitch, Corner, Hitch and Takeoff.  I know we would throw this if the defense was playing way off our W, yet later we simply tagged the receiver we wanted to run the Now route and ran it that way, which ultimately led to our not running Hamburger very much.

The JV DB coach used to always call this one "Stained Shorts" and he was right!  Streak we used quite a bit, but not as much as many would think.  It's also not the traditional Run-n-Shoot Streak concept either.  The B on this play was almost always open.  We hit the B for some serious gains off of this one.  The routes are Takeoff, Takeoff, Slant, Takeoff, Takeoff.

Tunnel is one we ran a bunch too, especially early on with teams trying to blitz our less-mobile QB.  The routes are Tunnel, Wheel, the B would block anybody trailing the W, Wheel, and Tunnel.

Now comes the really good part, and that's how these routes translated from formation to formation.  Our Shoot concept was our favorite and that is the one I will focus on for the next post.  I'm also going to talk about how we adapted to our running QB by giving him a pass/run option in the sprintout game and pass protection.  Stay tuned for more on the FWO!

Duece