The Perfect High School Offense

Hello gentlemen, my name is Mark Jackson and I am the Offensive Coordinator

at Sikeston High School, Sikeston, Missouri. The “Perfect High School Offense” is a
pretty arrogant title for an Offensive Coordinator from a 4A school in the southeast
Missouri that finished this past season at 5-5. My goal is not to be arrogant, but rather to
summarize my offensive beliefs after 14 years of coaching, 3 of which as a Head Coach,
and this past season as the first as Offensive Coordinator at Sikeston. I am also being
reflective in what we did well as well as what we need tweak in running our fly spread
offensive attack. I am thinking out loud about what is the best and most feasible
offensive scheme for a high school program.

My Background
If there is anything that qualifies me to talk about this topic it is my coaching
background. I have coached 14 years and in that time I have moved around several
times. In my coaching journey I have coached in the following offensive systems; Pro
Style Offense, Dead T, One Back, Wing T, Veer Option, Spread, and Double Wing.
During my three years as Head Coach I ran the Double Wing Offense and really like the
offense, though I left the experience thinking that at a high level of high school football it
is not possible to just sit in the Double Wing and be stubborn. This past season I joined
my football mentor, Kent Gibbs, at Sikeston High School. We worked together to put in
an offensive scheme that matched our players at Sikeston and fit our personalities. Kent
has run the I for most of his coaching career and I am an oddity of sorts being a Double
Wing, Spread, and Fly coach.

Which Offensive System is Best

Spread is the latest fad and comes in many different flavors. The wishbone
featuring the Triple Option was once unstoppable. The Wing T has stood the test of
time and forces defenses to defend the whole field. The old Houston Veer Option is still
the basis of many solid high school programs. Don Markham’s Double Wing holds the
national record for points per game for a season. If you have a great I back, solid
fullback, and offensive line you can line up in the I formation and get after people. The
NFL is the west coast league. The run and shoot pioneered passing offenses. The new
A11 offense may be the next phase of offensive football even though my guess is that it
will lead to a rule change before it does. And of course everything can be traced back to
the old Single Wing. And the truth is that if you coach ‘em up, get your kids to buy in,
and execute you can win in any of the systems described.

My contention and the basis for this discussion is that the perfect high school
offense is a little bit of a combination of it all. Here at Sikeston we want to have a
scheme that:
• first allows us to run the football (we don’t believe you can win championships
without being able to run the football)
 • forces the defense to defend the field both horizontally and vertically or another
way of saying that is to not allow the defense to cheat by adding people in the box
or defend just the run or pass
• Throw high percentage passes
• Allows us to have balance and put our players in space
• Can be adapted to our players’ best talents
• A scheme that controls tempo
• A scheme that when opponents watch film they say, “how are we going to defend
all that and rep in on scout team?”
• But most importantly an offense that puts points on the board!

To accomplish these goals we believe we need to include the following:

• Multiplicity in the run game (Fly, Zone, Power, and Counter out of multiple
formations)
• Misdirection in the run game (accomplished with fly motion)
• Power in the run game (Power and Double Wing package)
• Enough option to keep the defensive games to a minimum and steal practice time
• Play action (Boot and Flood)
• Easy throws (Quick Game and Screens)
• The ability to stretch the field and best of spread passing game (4 Verticals,
Smash, and All American Concepts)
• Enough deception to steal points and steal opponent practice time.
I believe that if you can teach, practice, and execute this you have the perfect high school
offense. This is a tough task to accomplish but we believe it can be done. Minus the
option scheme we accomplished this last season and averaged 34 points per game.

Key points to remember to make this all possible with limited practice time in
high school. Two platoon if numbers permit, we are currently not able to do this at
Sikeston but with success we think we can get to this point. Run the no huddle. We ran
the no huddle this past season and believe that we have to make some adjustments to help
our defense and win more games. Just remember that running the no huddle does not
always mean you are Indy or Nascar (fast) tempo, but rather that you can slow the
offense down or use the look tempo to see what the defense is doing. In my opinion the
best part of running the No Huddle is the reps you get in practice. A third key point is to
keep it simple for the Lineman.

Just Run It!

The best run play I have ever coached is the Double Wing Power and its cousin
the Power O is not bad either. The best compliment run play is the Counter Trey scheme
which of course is a staple in the Double Wing and the I offenses. The run play that I
think is the hardest to defend is the Triple Option. The run play that allows offenses to be
the most multiple is the Zone. And the play that allows you to set up all of those other
plays just mentioned plus giving you a home run threat in the running game is the Fly
Sweep. So our plan at Sikeston will be to implement a little of each. Sounds like a
daunting task, but we ran all of the above this year and plan to use Zone blocking
schemes to allow us to run the Option looks off of what we already do.

The Fly Sweep forces the defenses to defend the field horizontally. It also slows
down defensive reads when you fake it setting up the rest of the run game. We choose to
operate from the gun most of the time and though we will go under center as well. The
structure of our offense is based on Spread Offensive formations which we believe force
the defense to spread thin by alignment. The Fly Sweep (Diagram 1):

Diagram 1
Doubles 2 Jet 28 Fly

FS

C B B
C
B B
E T T E

Once you force the defense to adjust to stop the fly sweep the base play away
from the fly sweep for us will be the Zone play. The Fly action will hold the backside
DE and should prevent the Zone from being caught backside. The Zone away from the
Fly Sweep (Diagram 2):

Diagram 2
 FS

C B B
B C
SS
E T T E

Doubles 2 Jet 35 Zone Doubles 4 Jet 34 Zone

While the Fly and the Zone are great plays, they are also both finesse plays.
Teams that cannot run the ball in a Power run game will struggle in short yardage and
goal line situations. The mistake a lot of spread teams make is not having a short yardage
under center set. So we will use the Double Tight Double Wing as our short yardage and
goal line set. We will run the Power out of several sets and will run it as part of the Fly
series as well. The Power is shown out of our Deuce Formation (Diagram 3):

Diagram 3

FS

C C
B B
B B
E T T E

Deuce Rip 24 Power

The best play in the offense may be the counter. We run the counter in multiple
formations and with multiple motions. Once the defense begins to adjust to what you are
doing on offense you hurt them with Counter and hit a big play. In the scheme below
(Diagram 4), we combine the Counter play with Option.
Diagram 4

Doubles 4 Jet 37 Counter Option

FS
Pitch Key

C B B
B C
SS
E T T E

Read the DEto give or pull Counter

Airing It Out!
I mentioned earlier that we want to achieve balance. We don’t necessarily define
balance as being 50/50 run pass, in fact we would prefer to run the ball at least 60% of
the time. We want to define balance as being able to get the ball in the hands of all our
playmakers. This can be accomplished in our run game of course but the passing game
allows us to force defenses to defend the whole field while spreading the ball around.

The spread offenses have gotten very good at running passing schemes that are
good against multiple coverages, easy to teach, and provide both deep shots and easy
throws. This is why we have chosen to use the spread packages as our base passing
offense. The quick game is all curl and slant (Diagram 5):

Diagram 5
 Doubles 91

FS

C B B
B
SS
E T T E

As far as 5 step or 3 step out of gun passing schemes, we use three common
schemes. Four Verticals (Diagram 6), Smash (Diagram 7), and All American are
Doubles 92
concepts that most spread teams run in some form.

FS

C B B
B
SS
E T T E
Diagram 6
Doubles 60 Stretch

FS

C B B
B C
SS
E T T E

Diagram 7
Doubles 60 Smash

FS

C B B
B C
SS
E T T E

Diagram 8
 Doubles 60 Box

3 1
FS
2

C B B
B C
SS
E T T E

All of these schemes are common and can be learned about at various spots on the
internet. With all that said, our best pass play is the Boot. Because of how we run the
offense and our run first mentality, play action is the best way for us to throw the
football. Our best play action pass is the boot (Diagram 9). This is really the Wing T
Waggle which is a great pass play that has been open at all levels for years.

Diagram 9
Slot 2 Jet 34 Boot

FS

C C
B B
SS B
E T T E

The perfect high school offense has to include a screen game. The ability to
screen defenses takes away aggressiveness of the defense, gives you an option in hard to
call downs, and a chance to create big plays on easy throws. Screens tend to be, much
like the option, high maintenance plays that take time to get right. I have diagramed two
of our screens below:
Diagram 10

Trips X WR Screen

FS

B B
C B
SS
E T T E

Deuce 4 Middle Screen

In terms of the passing game there are many ways to have an effective passing
game. I do believe that to win at the high school level you have to be able to throw the
football. I know the spread passing game well and choose to use it to in the design of our
offense. My contention is simply that the perfect high school offense contains a way in
the passing game to attack the defense down the field, in the flats, and across the middle
FS QB.
while handling multiple coverages with simple reads for the high school

Here are a couple of concluding thoughts about the perfect high school offense.
My challenge as Offensive Coordinator
C is to be able to do all thatBwe have talked
B about
without doing too much, hence we are good at SS none of these. In order to accomplish this, B
I will not try to run every play out of every formation, but rather pick the best formations
E T T E
to run each play out of. As the season goes on, we can break these formation tendencies.
The use of wristbands that are individualized by position helps make the learning curve
easier. Most importantly we work to get as many reps in at practice as possible. I will
close with a quote from the “ball coach”, “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can
teach your players”!