DC,Mahonz...others

BB:
I mentioned my buddy with the 8/9 y.o. team who runs outside veer. Now, its not really outside veer because he doesn't allow his QB to "read" it. As I said he predetermines the play and tells the QB whether to give to the dive back or to keep.

He runs this from a split back type set and he runs it to the TE side. He has a wingback on that side as well. His league is restricted to a 6-2 look on defense. So he doubles the DT with OT/TE and sends the WB to the playside LB. He will stretch the split of the TE a bit to move the DE wider.

The QB has to hustle to get to the mesh point as the dive back is going as fast as he can from his stance to the aiming point - the outside cheek of the playside OT.

The action of the dive back and the lateral movement of the QB causes the DE to pause, thereby making the play a "give" to the dive back.

The coach knows that for the first few times the DE ever sees the play he will just stop and be somewhat confused - and do nothing. The beauty here is that you eliminate that important defender w/o having to block him.

Even at my 12/13 y.o. level I have seen DEs who go for 8-10 repeats of that play right at them before they do anything (on their own). Sometimes the coach will pull the DE, talk to him and re-insert him. Then we MIGHT get a reaction. But the QB has the chance to see the DE head straight for the mesh point/dive back, and he doesn't even have to even try to mesh with the dive man, he just steps around what will be a collision between these two players, and heads off into the secondary toward the near goal line pylon. Now, he may not make it, but it wil be a nice gain, usually.

Now, next time you run this at the DE he doesn't know what to do. He usually reverts to doing nothing at all - until he's replaced and spoken to again by the coach.

Of course, you can run this each way (both L and R), and the coach eventually has to talk to each of his DEs sooner or later.

With a quick dive man, you usually get a big play because he is in the secondary right now. Many times no one even lays a finger on him. In some games we have had the dive man pop into the open and score from 50-60 yards out with only 3 defenders being blocked - the playside DT; the playside LB and the playside CB. The other 8 defenders are rendered useless because the play hit so, so quickly. And, the playside CB many times isn't really blocked at all - just shielded from the streaking dive back.

The play can be run from many sets, formations, or "looks".

When defenses start to overload to this, we do one of several things -
a)we run from a balanced 2 TE set so we can hit either side;

b) we "load" block the playside DE with the dive back and put the QB arounbd that block into the secondary immediately, removing the read and establishing the potential for a pitch to the trail pitch back (although we don't really try to actually get a pitch at all);

c) we run a backside pop pass to the backside TE. This is off the dive action. It is simply a flash fake to the dive back after which the QB and stands up and throws a 5-8 yard pop pass to the TE in the spot vacated by the LB who committed to expected dive back.

I really did not mean to run on so long with all of this, but you get an idea now how this works.