Learning Level: INTERMEDIATE

    In this day and age of more and more advanced offensive and defensive schemes, a single, isolated play can no longer effectively stand on its own in accomplishing key offensive objectives.  If, every time your team lines up in a certain formation, you run off-tackle to the same side, eventually the defense is going to figure it out.  If you run from certain formations and pass from others, eventually the defense is going to figure it out.  The evolutionary idea in offense has been two-fold, of which I will discuss both here.  Likewise, both of these ideas overlap to a certain degree.  The first is the formation system; the second is the play system.

Formation Systems.  This is a simple but popular idea in today's offensive philosophies.  The idea is to run the same play (or plays) from a variety of different formations.  The benefit is two-fold: first, the different formations confuse the defense into changing their basic assignments.  Second, running the same basic plays gives the offense the benefit of repetition, which is among the single most important elements in developing a sound offense.

Play Systems.  There are a variety of different names for this concept:  Coach JJ Allen calls it "Play Calling Progression," while I prefer the term "Play System."  However, the basic idea is the same:  develop a base play and then progress to different options based on that base.  A good first-order example of this is the play-action pass.  To be most effective, the play-action should result from one of your successful running plays.  Thus, while the defense keys on your back, you are confusing him with a pass.  But this concept should, and has, been taken further.  It is possible, and highly effective, to develop a series of plays that work together.  While I played football, our most effective running play was an off-tackle to the tailback.  Based on that, our offense ran three play-action passes from this run.  Thus, this play system consisted of four plays.  I think, as a minimum, at least three plays should be developed to create an effective play system; probably four or five is a better number.  Trying to go much higher than this, you will attempt to force plays into the system that don't belong.  This could potentially upset the balance of the play and is thus not recommended.