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DC Wing T
By: Dum Coach
I basically "reverse engineered" the Delaware Wing T and Army's 1947-48 "T" office to produce a youth friendly offense that works on the same principals. I changed the play calling system so that nobody (except the QB, of course) had to memorize plays or formations by numbers. This allows you to teach kids about four times as many plays and twice as many formations as a high school team can learn. Then I either had to copy Markham and reduce the line splits or change the blocking rules because a Wing T team, when it sees this defense, blocks it as follows for a run off tackle to the right (bucksweep):
A B E
O O O 0 O O O
O O
O O
The Wing T wants to pull the RG and kick the DE out. This puts the RT on player "B" and center on "A". Quite honestly, at the youth level that pull is doomed. The center's not going to make that block. Even removing player "B" and adding the RT to player "A" doesn't help. Youth tackles are just too slow to get there. "A" is coming through. I believe Steve Calande used to line his FS in position "A" ("Freak" call) and then let the Wing T try and block him. Whoops! Miss! You either have to reduce the line splits (DW) or stop pulling that RG. I opted to stop pulling the RG in that situation, which led to a change in my blocking rules in order to accomodate "slow tackles" (Which we get at the youth level). I still pull the RG but only about half the time. This prevents teams from trying to read my guards. If a LBer tried to read my guards, he'd get a "crash" read 50% of the time on a play that's actually going away from him. Similiarly, many teams want to read a Wing T's TE. If he blocks down on a lineman (Such as a 4-4 "7" tech DE) they use that as a sweep (run) read. If he releases, that's a pass read. If a defense tries to read a DC Wing T TE, they'll get a pass read every single down. Similarly, a free safety can read an uncovered guard in many youth offenses for pass or run. If the lineman comes out, play is run. If he sits to block, play is pass. The DC Wing T doesn't give this read. The safety will always get a pass read even on run. The defense can't even key the line for play direction. For example, from an even front, you can key the plays direction by watching the center block back backside against the DW. You can't key any lineman for direction in the DC Wing T. This leaves the defense only one choice - key the backfield and follow the ball. Following the ball is the worst way to defend a Wing T team. To make this more difficult, the first three steps of every play by the backfield are the same - whether play is run, pass, buck, or belly. The defense sees the same three steps. We do this to "freeze" the LBers. They have to wait for the fourth step in order to see where the ball is going. That means our blocker assigned to that LBer gets 3 "free" steps at him before the LBer will move. Between not being able to read guards and having to wait three steps for the play to develop, the inside LBers don't get "crash" reads. The LBer will sit, wait, and get smeared by his blocker. This allows the Dc Wing T to run "inside FB Belly" ("24") to the strong side - An unheard of play in Delaware Wing T. That simply can't be done. Coach JB, who had run Delaware Wing T before the DC Wing T, expected that play to get killed by the LBer. But, the very first time he ran it, the LBer got creamed and the FB went all the way for a TD. This brings us to the next different feature of the DC Wing T. Because the safeties constantly get pass reads on running downs (linemen not upfield, TE releasing) and because the inside LBers are watching the backfield for the fourth step, neither the safeties nor the backers will play pass defense. The pass coverage is up to the corners. This means the corners must play pass coverage on every running play. But, on a run, the player they are pass covering will block a safety. This means on every run, they lose three defenders automatically - both corners and the playside safety. They have 8 players left to stop the run. Since we don't block the backside DE on our plays, that leaves the defense with only 7 players to stop the run. The only way to prevent this mismatch is to have the corners play run too. As soon as that happens, ALL your receivers are uncovered. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. This makes the DC Wing T different from other Wing T's in that it is a PASSING Wing T. We throw the ball. The receivers are wide open and uncovered, so why not? Coach JB threw a lot from his DC Wing T - Even more than me. What the heck! If they're not going to stop it. Keep doing it! JB could do this because the corners are caught in a conflict. If they play pass, there's only 7 guys to stop the run. If they play run, there's nobody to stop the pass. Whatever they do is wrong. But we're not done! The DC Wing T, because it releases its TE every play, can line him up in a "nasty split", which produces the famous "Split T" of Bud Wilkins and whch produced the longest winning streak in football history. No Delaware wing T team can run the "Split T", but the DC Wing T can. Finally, last but not least, the DC Wing T plays what is simply known on this board as "a DC Wing T FB". In most wing T's, you can't tell the difference between the HB and the FB. They're the same size. Not so in the DC Wing T. The DC Wing T is a BIG, STRONG, SOLID BOY. He's just about as wide as he is tall. He has no moves - just brute strength. He doesn't run around defenders. He runs over them. He is dragging tacklers downfield. We use this big tank for a reason. The defense only has 7 guys to stop the run. So we give them a runner at FB it takes all seven of them to stop and we train him to run accordingly (Coach JB had a DC Wing T FB this season.). Once we have all 7 defenders homing in on the FB, we pull the ball back from him and give it to someone else -And there's no one on him.Okay! So why am I telling you all this stuff? Because I had to change everything in the Delaware wing T to achieve it. Everything you've learned about wing T you can throw out. You have to start over all new. And for me to explain how to do EVERYTHING ALL NEW requires a lot of pages. The DC Wing T manual isn't just a playbook - It is a BOOK. It's over 250 pages. If you ask for it, expect a lot of reading. Let me know if you're still interested.
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