Subject: Defending the Flexbone Offense
Date: September 11, 2026

This week’s podcast was a weird one for me. I felt uncomfortable the whole way through the recording session.

Our topic is Defending the Flexbone Option Offense. To be honest…

That offense makes a lot of coaches uncomfortable. So why doesn’t anyone run it?

Outside of a few areas of the country, you may never see the Flexbone Option unless you watch one of the service academies play on Saturday.

Even some of those have gotten away from the pure Flexbone (and one has come back, mostly).
That’s not what bothers me.

And I don’t know all the terminology as well as I know Wing-T or Double Wing. But that doesn’t bother me much either. Makes an audio podcast more difficult, but that’s OK.

After 300 or 400 of them I started to accept they won’t all be a masterpiece.

What bothers me most talking about defending the Flexbone Offense is there are no secrets. No tricks. No playbook hacks.

On paper, defending this offense is not exciting. If you make that game plan exciting…

You will lose.

With a well-designed defensive system like we teach at JDFB Premium Coaching Systems, you should be just fine against the
Flexbone.

On paper.

On the field?

Against a well-run Flexbone Offense, nothing is easy. But you can tilt the field in your favor.

Check out this week’s Football Coaching Podcast for tips on how to do that:

Watch or Listen to How to Defend the Flexbone Offense >>

Today, there are many different families of Flexbone. You’ll need to break down the game film and look for the nuances to build your ultimate game plan.

But one thing I know about this offense, for sure. The exchange film from your opponent is not the most important film for you to watch.

You need to get your house in order.

That means self-scouting your defense.
Many coaches get self-scout wrong. They for tendencies in their play calling. They look for tips and tricks the other team might pick up studying their film that week.

Then they try to cover it up. Trick ‘em.

That is a very minor part of the self-scout process.

And that’s if the coach even does any real self-scout beyond watching last week’s game film one time and fuming about a few mistakes. Firing one or two kids, then moving on to the next team.

Where they make the same mistakes, all over again.

Do that against a Flexbone, or any offense with precise execution?

Long day.

Invest in your self-scouting.

Want to get my self-scouting system? It’s part of the Game Film Master Class, open for enrollment during the month of September only.

Get the Game Film Master Class now >>

~ Joe Daniel






​