I'm not a football fan, but I thought the NYTimes article about the birth of the new "A-11 Offense" for high school football was interesting. Seems it started here in the SFBay area, as Piedmont High School coaches tried to figure out how their small school with smaller players would remain competitive against bigger teams.I guess this won't work in Fantasy Football, but I wonder if it's happening out there in the east.Steve Humphries, the assistant, had an idea: What if the offense featured not one quarterback but two? Not bad, Bryan said, but things would really get interesting if all 11 players were potentially eligible to receive a pass.
Hence, the A-11 offense was born.
To its proponents, the A-11 represents the logical and inevitable evolution of a game that is becoming faster and more spread out at all levels. The alignment diminishes, or eliminates, the need for a traditional offensive line, where players can weigh 300 pounds even in high school. And, coaches say, it reduces injury because it involves glancing blows more than smash-mouth collisions.
To its detractors, the A-11 is a gimmick that cleverly but unfairly takes advantage of a loophole in the rules. To these critics, the offense places an inequitable burden on defenses to determine who is eligible for passes and makes the sport nearly impossible to referee.
1 comment:
The birth of the a-11 is from small schools making use of the time it takes to figure out how to defend it. The story I remember quotes the coach as saying it took them 3 quarters of the game to figure out who was getting the ball. To the detractors who say it is a gimmick, so was the forward pass at some historical point in football. Aparantly the founders of A-11 are making out good on the idea with video's, seminars, consulting and the like.
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