In order to continue to best utilize our newly found competence in using audibles as a big part of our youth football plays we needed to find a way to take advantage of how the defense was reacting to our halfback motion from his slot alignment into the backfield. We wanted to be able to take advantage immediately (even before the next play call!). The “read” of the defense’s reaction to motion for the quarterback was easy: either the defense started to adjust as soon as the motion man moved or they were going to be too late to get over to stop the sweep.

For us, the Sweep / Bootleg Combo Play (Sweep-B for short) was born! We had to give up the front side blocking capabilities of the backside linemen and split end, but gained two very important items: gaining manpower advantage on the backside and/or drastically slowed down defensive pursuit to the front side. I will take you through this concept with our base sweep play, but the idea can be applied to other plays as well.

Our sweep play was like just about everyone’s sweep for many years. We would block down with every possible blocker, pull both the front side and backside guards, lead with the fullback and follow everything with the running back with the ball. The quarterback would fake his bootleg and we would check to see if the defense watched him so that we could possibly run the real bootleg play later. We often ran the sweep well, but eventually defenses were doing much better at pursuing the sweep by quickly adjusting to our motion by the slot back/ball carrier.

We felt, however, that any quick defensive adjustment to our motion left the defense weaker from where they made the adjustment. If they rotated their secondary then they left some open space on the backside in their deep coverage. If they “bumped’ or “ran” their linebackers toward the motion man’s movement they could not defend the spaces they just vacated.

We wanted to exploit such defensive movements, and we wanted to be able to attack without having to wait to call another play. “Sweep-B” did this for us. Of course, if they do not adjust to the motion we will run the sweep as the base part of the “Two in One” concept with the belief that they will no longer have the manpower advantage to the side of the sweep (diagram #1). If they did make a quick adjustment we would run the bootleg part of “Sweep-B”.

Diagram 1: "Sweep" - Fullback on sweep side with no adjustment

The backside split end would run his usual bootleg “V” route after faking a blocking path toward the middle safety. The left tackle follows his regular bootleg blocking rule (gap, down, on) and the left guard pulls to his left and hooks the first man outside of the tackle’s block (his regular bootleg blocking rule). We do “give up” whatever contributions that these three players might have made on the front side of the sweep in this scenario (usually fairly limited), but feel that it is a small price to pay in order to attack immediately with a play into a weak area of the defense.

The center does need to be told which of the two plays is being run in order to best utilize his blocking potential. Our quarterbacks came up with some very simple verbal signals to tell the center whether the sweep right or if the bootleg left is going to be run. The bootleg portion of this play got much better in our second year as we found a way to get the fullback involved in the bootleg. (Diagram #2) Again, a quick signal from the quarterback was given if he was needed in the bootleg where he became the flat receiver (like in the Wing-T). The right side of our offense did everything to run the sweep to the right while the left side did everything to run the bootleg to the left. Easy for us and difficult for the defense.

Diagram 2: The Fullback is on the boot side

The quarterback would then run his regular bootleg play after faking the sweep to the motion man. He attacks as wide as he can towards the widest defender. The quarterback will first look to the split end for the longer pass opportunity and then will read the flat defender for his decision to either throw to the fullback or becomes a running back depending upon the reaction of the flat defender.

The Playbook

UPDATE: If you like this concept, I have released the above Sweep/Bootleg (“Sweep-B”) along with the Sweep/Option and Sweep/Isolation audible-based combination plays in a free ebook. Simply sign to the Youth Football Drils mailing list (don’t worry I hate spam and your info will never be sold) and as a thank you the PDF will be mailed to you instantly. Enjoy! And if you have any feedback, leave me a comment. I am always on the lookout for new ideas.

Related Posts:

• Youth Football Plays – The Either Way Q Option
• More “2 Plays in 1″ – The “T” Toss
• FREE “Two Plays in One” Youth Football Playbook
• The “Opposite” Youth Football Playbook
• Drilling Audibles – How to Get More Repetitions