DC wing-t, DW, Single-wing, what to run??

Coaching is all about winning with "average at best". Anybody can win with "best". But walking away with the trophy with second best? Yeah. That's victory. When you can beat the other guy, switch teams, and beat him again with his own guys, you are the man.

So how do you get there? What system do you use? The answer to that is three fold. First, coach what you know. Don't coach what you don't know. I remember when my son turned 8 and I signed him up for soccer. The league didn't have a coach for his team and asked me if I'd take his team? I thought - What the heck? How hard can it be to coach 8 year olds to play soccer? What is there to it? Sure! I'll do that. So I volunteered and got a library book and read it. Off I went with my "72 page beginner's" book in hand. During the course of that season, I had to coach against two World Cup soccer players - One from Italy and one from Brazil. They knew how to coach the game and I didn't. The book didn't help. If I had known that coaching soccer was that hard I never would have volunteered. Don't coach what you don't know. That was first the lesson I learned.

The second lesson I learned came from Jack Reed. He said be contrarian. Run something the others aren't. Surprise the opposition. Don't run what everyone else in your league runs. Reed ran SW and GAM and won. I don't think he knew spit about football. But he understood strategy from his days at West Point. He gave the opposition what they hadn't seen and didn't know how to deal with - Hannibal versus the Romans. It works. When I met the coach from Brazil and we faced off, they had won every game they'd played by 8-0. They beat me 2-1 and the coach from Brazil filed complaints against me that went all the way up to the state level and resulted in a rule change so that no one could ever do what I did to that coach again. But on that day I was legal. I studied the rules and based my game on the rules, not on my talent or my coaching ability. I out thought my opponent. Jack Reed did the same thing. He didn't win on his talent or his coaching ability. He gave the opposition what they had never seen and were not prepared for. He snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Not only that, he sold me a book afterwards and so he made a profit doing it.

The lesson here is "coach what you know but don't coach what your opponent knows." Give the other guy something he hasn't seen before. It works.

Third, whatever you pick you have to be able to sell to your assistants. If they're thinking to themselves when you're done showing them what you're going to run , "Well! This isn't going to work!" You're screwed. It's tough enough to have have to battle the other team's coaches without having to battle your own assistants. You must be able to SELL what you're running. I've had assistants who didn't buy into what I was running and I'd have been better off if they had never volunteered.

Virtually every offense out there has been proven, at one time or another, to win. Proven systems are exactly that - Proven systems. But not every coach will win just because he's he's running a proven system. Why not? Because all the opposing coaches are running proven systems too. So a PROVEN SYSTEM will not do you any good. If that was the case, we'd all be running the same system and every team in the league would win the first place trophy at the end of the season. So toss out "proven system" from your selection process. The "West Coast" offense is a proven system - but try and run it.

Now! Of course you didn't post this question to be told the answer we're giving you. So I'll address your question from my perspective, which combined with three quarters, will get you a can of pop out of a pop machine.

I have run all three offenses. In my opinion, the DW is an offense primarily built around one player - The "A" back. This is the guy that runs the "toss". The more yards he makes, the more games you will win. If they can't stop him, they can't stop you. The rest of the team, with the exception of "C" back, is supporting cast. You don't have to pay much attention to what the "D" is doing because, most likely, whatever they're trying, "cross toss" will counter.

The DC Wing T is "almost" exactly the opposite. I say "almost" because like the DW it has an "A" back too - Only now he's the fullback. The other team has to stop the DC Wing T fullback because, if they can't stop him, they can't stop you. Where it becomes exactly the opposite is the solution you employ when the fullback is stopped. "Cross toss" is not the universal answer. It might be the answer. Or maybe a quick hit is the answer. Or maybe a pass is the answer. You are looking at more solutions because the rest of the team is not "supporting cast". Six out of your eleven players are on the field, not to support the "star", but to score themselves when the "star" is stopped. I seldom go a season where all six eligible ball carriers don't score. Somebody's open every play. I just have to find the "right" play. Therein lies the difference. When I ran DW, which is a GOOD offense, I was setting up the "cross toss". I sure as H* wasn't setting up the pass (Unless you do it the way Fish does). The decision making was pretty simple. The DC Wing T is not as simple because you're involving more players in the solution. I run the DC Wing T over the DW for two reasons - Neither one of which has anything to do with winning. I run it because 1) It's fun for the players 2) It's fun for the parents. Now this doesn't mean the DW is not a fun offense. Winning is always fun. Plus, you can start taking kids on the line and let them play "A" back on the toss once you get ahead, and they can score too. So, at the end of the season, you can have just as many kids score in the DW as in the DC Wing T. I just have my kids score from different positions. That's all. That brings us to "It's fun for the parents". The only thing parents know about football is what they see on TV. So I give them what they see on TV. I give them the forward pass. I give them the screen. I give them the great run. I give them a scrambling QB. I give them the show they came for. And I do it with 10 year olds. If putting on a show is a priority for you, then that's exactly why I designed the DC Wing T. Oddly enough, I never designed it to win games. The "show" for the parents and the "fun" for the players came first - and it's an easy "sell" to your assistants because all they know about football they learned from TV - And I'm giving them TV football.

But the DC Wing T has it's limits or we'd have seen it in Disney World by now. If six different kids can get the ball on any one play and one is always "open", then the one who is better have the talent to actually carry it across the goal line. The DC Wing T does require more talent than the DW plus more thinking on your part. There's a tradeoff for putting on that "show" for the parents. It's harder and the "show" had better produce. Most times it does - but not always. In fact, that's how I learned, and tried, the DW. I eventually acquired a team of goofballs and screwups that couldn't run the DC Wing T. I knew they couldn't do it. So I switched them to the DW and it worked. It worked for the kids but not for the parents or my assistants. They objected. It wasn't TV football. They wanted the DC Wing T. I didn't switch because they couldn't run the DC Wing T. They could run the DW so that's where I stayed. They didn't finish in first place (not because of the offense but because I had to play with those same goofballs and screwups on defense) but they didn't finish in last place either (Which is where they should have finished.). The DW is really pretty simple to run. The question of whether you want to run it or not is based upon whether you want to put up with all the cr*p that's going to be shoveled your way for running it. But here's how that works. The bigger you are physically, the less cr*p they shovel until you prove them wrong. The smaller you are - Watch out! Little old ladies in wheelchairs will be chasing you around on the sidelines to whack you with their canes for not "moving that fullback back!" Even my mailman was giving me advice on how to play my fullback. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle and gave them what they wanted. I don't get a whisper of complaint with the DC Wing T - Even though I don't always win.

The SW is a very similar situation. The parents who want TV football won't be happy. My 7-8's went undefeated with the SW this year. But I had a parent wanting to pull my #2 player of the team. Why? Because he wasn't carrying the ball as much as player #1 and they were of equal talent. But, in the SW somebody has to take the snap. He'll end up carrying the ball 65% of the time, the other back 20%, and the "B" back 10%, and the "others" 5%. If you're the parent of the the kid taking tha snap, you're happy. If not, you're not. But it does win games. In fact, it wins A LOT OF GAMES. My kids should have finished in last place. Instead, they went undefeated.

Anyway, long answer and, while I go with my first three criteria first, I go with this answer second.