Let's travel back to the ancient times of the early 1990s. A young Joe Daniel was on a knee at the end of middle school football practice.

My 7th Grade team head coach was older. He'd been coaching for a while. Coach Cobb became a legendary figure so many of us loved playing for.

That day, another coach was joking about our upcoming opponent. He was laughing about their "antiquated Wing-T Offense." The jokes were catching collateral damage because Coach Cobb was an old Wing-T guy.

I'm piecing all this together in my brain. Details could be wrong. No idea why I remember it because "Wing-T" meant nothing to me in 1992.

15 years later, I spent an entire summer studying the offense. It was still antiquated. But teams were still winning with the Delaware Wing-T Offense. Tubby Raymond made it famous at the University of Delaware. Coaches like Football Coaching Podcast guest Denny Creehan were keeping it alive (on life support). 

Fast forward to today. Is the Wing-T Offense dead?

Not even close. It is back in fashion. Resurrected from the grave like baggy jeans and high socks. But this ain't your granddaddy's Wing-T.

Swarm to the football using ASKA to prevent missed tackles and explosive plays when defending the Wing-T Offense.

Gun-T Offense. Pistol Wing-T. Spread Wing-T.

Wing-T Offense coaches have added unbalanced formations, RPOs and more to gain an edge. Defensive Coordinators need to work overtime to put together a game plan now.

Or do you?

The core principles remain the same. That's why they get to keep the Decoder Ring from the secret Wing-T meetings (they still have those). If you stick to the Coach Simple Philosophy and hold on to your ASKA, you can still stop the Wing-T Offense.

If you don't? It's gonna be a long day.

Here's 3 Reason Why Your Defense Can't Stop The Wing-T Offense...

Alignment is the first lever in your ASKA. It is the easiest adjustment to make fast improvement and fix problems.

Build your Alignment rules into your Defensive System. If you change the rules every week, you'll have problems.

The flexibility of the Wing-T system means the offense can get into new formations every week. Every play. They use motion and shifts to get there, causing even more confusion.

When you install all-new "Flavor of the Week" rules every week, your players have to think. Checks and adjustments take too long. You get caught out of position. Disaster.

Lynn Shackelford is a multiple-time Oklahoma State Championship winner, and Football Coaching Podcast Guest. He told us about an off-season study where his staff charted every explosive his defense gave up over several seasons. They discovered that 70% of big plays came because of an alignment mistake on defense!

Our JDFB Premium Coaching Systems defenses include all the Coach Simple alignment rules. Once the rules are in place, your players know what to do every week. It adapts to any offense, any formation.

The foundation of those alignment rules is our Umbrella Run Fits System. Never lose sight of each defender's primary run fits when setting alignment rules.

Kenny Simpson's Gun-T Buck Sweep to a Tight-Wing alignment attacking the 3-4 Defense

There are tweaks during the season. We have 5 ways to defend Unbalanced Formations. Based on tendency we have different ways to handle Tight End-Wing formations.

But the core rules remain the same every week, so that our players have the confidence to line up and play fast. That's the first step to shutting down the Wing-T Offense. Start right to finish right!

Now that you are lined up right, the second reason your defense can't stop the Wing-T is...

The Wing-T Offense is famous for misdirection. There are a lot of reasons to run this offense, but the element of disguise is near the top.

The most common series in the package is the Buck Series. It packages the Buck Trap, Buck Sweep, Counter, and Waggle into a single backfield action. If your defenders get their eyes caught up in the backfield, every one of those plays is going to look the same.

Every one of them hits a different area.

Wing-T coaches use shiny objects in the backfield - speedy ball handlers and fake handoffs - to hide the truth. That truth is what defensive coaches have been screaming for years during Wing-T practice week...

Trust the Guards!

It always comes back to the ASKA for your defense. Alignment, Stance, Key Read, Assignment. If your Linebackers don't trust their Key Reads, they get lost.

Key Reads, like alignment, build on the foundation of our Umbrella Run Fits System.

In our JDFB Premium Coaching Systems defenses, the Key Reads are critical. All your practice drills focus on getting the reads right. That lets us get numbers to the ball and prevent explosive plays.

The Linebackers use guards as primary key reads. The backfield is the secondary key read (and can alert them to rare influence pulls).

For the Safeties, we're keying the Quarterback and preaching the old TCU teaching, "Don't Go Till You Know... GO! When You Know!" That helps us avoid one more big problem that keeps coaches from stopping the Wing-T Offense...

182 Down run play against a 3-4 Defense from Tubby Raymond and Ted Kempski's book "The Delaware Wing-T: The Running Game." 

Another core principle in the Wing-T attack is putting players in conflict. They try to find the player who has more than one responsibility, and make him wrong no matter what he does.

The most obvious defender is the Outside Linebacker. We call them Safeties because it makes them feel faster, but who cares about names? He is the guy in Cover 3 responsible for contain against the run or flat coverage on the pass.

If he's aggressive stepping up to stop the Buck Sweep, they're going to throw a Play Action behind him to the open flat. Then he slows down to stop getting beat in the air, and the run game opens back up.

JDFB Defensive System solve that position problem with the "Don't Go Till You Know" key reads. Drilling that technique also cuts down on the effectiveness of RPOs.

For other positions, the "conflict" come from a just plain bad job of defining Assignment. That's the last piece of the ASKA.

Coaches make big mistakes like yelling at a corner to step up and defend the run when his primary job should be to Stay In Coverage. Or they keep the Free Safety back for pass when he needs to be filling the alley to tie the run fits together.

Another big one is giving a Defensive Lineman any instruction besides playing the "one-on-one game" you should be working with the Key Read Drills every single day.

It's all built into the System. If the System has conflicts, your players have conflicts. Simplify your system to eliminate too many "If... Then's..." to eliminate the conflicts. 

It isn't easy. The Wing-T Offense is far from the antiquated dinosaur in modern football. There are weaknesses in any defense, and those tricky Wing-T guys will find them.

Focus on your ASKA during the practice week. If you know your system, you'll have the right adjustment ready to counterpunch with them all night long.
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