Getting Teams to Jump Offsides in Youth Football - What is Allowed?

[Melba Hemingway]

Trick Shift Play Backfires in Big Time College Football
Many youth football coaches are "football junkies". We like watching
pro or college football. Sometimes we even see things that we think we
can use for our own youth football teams. Often times this is how
youth coaches come up with trick plays.
College Bowl Game SNAFU
One trick play used in this Bowl season was during the Sugar Bowl,
Alabama versus Utah. Utah faced a 4th Down and short near midfield.
Utah decided to "go" for it with a play that is designed to draw the
defense off-sides. This was a pretty safe and savy strategy, you are
either going to get 5 free yards and a first down or you are going to
take a delay of game penalty and punt on 4th down. Punting from the 45
instead of the 50 even gives your punter more room to pin Bama deep
inside it's 20 yard line. No matter how the play turned out, the Utes
will have improved thier situation.
I'm not sure why more teams don't try this very safe tactic which
often yields teams a free first down with zero risk, even at the
college level. Utah started out with it's offensive linemen in very
wide splits and in two-point stances and Quarterback under center.
After the players had been set for at least a second, Utah then moved
in unison, with the offensive linemen moving inward together to narrow
the splits and the Quarterback backpedalling to a shotgun formation.
The Ruling
While the play did result in Bama jumping off-sides, the Utes were
called for a 5 yard penalty for "illegally simulating the start of the
play" a 5 yard penalty. The officials got it right on this one. While
you can try to get teams to jump off-sides via varying cadence,
players can not shift quickly in such a manner that simulates the
start of a play.
We use a very legal "no play" in these situations with great success.
We usually run it 2-5 times a game to get teams to jump at significant
times during a game, when we want to call timeout or even when we just
want teams to stop jumping or anticipating our snap count. Our success
rate of getting teams to jump offsides over the last 11 seasons has
always been between 70%-90%. It is a great but under used strategy in
youth football.
The rule invoked in the Utah-Alabama game is why many teams that
shift, do so slowly and deliberately. That is why teams that run Jet
Sweep type motion plays often have their motion man take a slow
deliberate drop step before he starts his full speed motion towards
the quarterback.
Here is a clip of the Utah-Alabama play in action: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB5yNZVYV3U
What Does This Mean for Youth Football Teams?
The moral of the story is, this is a great strategy and a perfect
situation to run a play like this, however it was just poor play
designing on the part of Utah. This coach should have known better.
Now you know better, don't make the same mistake Utah did. Of course
let's give Utah a break over the "body of work", they played a very
brilliant and inspired game.

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