Two Offenses

I'm on spring break, so I suspect I will get some more posts up in rapid order. Over the weekend, I played two games against interesting offenses, and went 1-1 in the process. My record, incidentally, is 61-22.

Game 10

Opponent: D4WVanillaMillz

Team: Georgia Tech

Record: 61-50

Better User Name: D4WVanillaTrillz

I lost this game 35-28 in overtime. The notable thing is that he ran the flexbone offense, which I used to run but abandoned because it's no good when you need to score quick or against someone who knows how to stop it. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to stop it.

The main thing against the flexbone is to stop the run up the middle; if the QB can continually gash you for 4-5 yards, he'll never need to pitch or pass. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. You'd think that running something like a 5-2 with a pinched D-line is the answer, but it's not; the blocking on flexbone responds well to this sort of defense. You've got to spread out your linebackers and let them pick their spots against the O-line. You also need to hot read the rush every once and a while. If you can get lucky once, you put him in 2nd and 11 or 3rd and 9 and then you can generally get the ball back. This is super frustrating, though, because you often don't get lucky.

Anyway, shut down the QB, and you shut down the flexbone.

Game 11

Opponent: Reginald 843

Team: Miami

Record: 195-67

Better User Name: None. Reginald 843 is about as good as it gets.

Reginald did more or less one thing on offense, and it was super clever. He would go 4 or 5 wide, then motion his outside receiver and immediately snap it. So as soon as the receiver starts moving, he snaps the ball, and then immediately throws to that receiver, who is generally running a go route. The motion would throw off the defensive back just enough to either break the press or just allow the WR to run right past him. He did this for like a quarter and a half before I started running Quarters 3-Deep and controlling the safety over the top of whatever WR he was motioning. That stopped it, and then he quit.

What a weird and weirdly clever sort of glitch to exploit, and how bizarre is it that he just quit as soon as I figured out how to stop it? Is it possible that he really does nothing but that, and has no idea how to run any other sort of offensive play? I hope so. Stay strong, Reggie.