Fullback vs. H-back

Is the fullback position in football being slowly pushed out in favour of the hybrid H-back? My generation of football always featured a power I formation that featured a powerful crushing fullback blocking for a speedy athletic tailback. Until recently the fullback position was very prominent in most all offensive formations but in today’s football game it appears that the blocking fullback is being pushed out in favour of a more dynamic H-back that can line up as a receiver as well as in the backfield. Does it mean that in time the fullback position will be eliminated? No, not at all my friend! What it means is that for now the H-back is a more popular choice for offensive co-ordinators trying to gain an advantage over traditional defences in spreading out the defence as well as looking for mis-matches in downfield coverage. It’s all part of the evolution of the game of football. Similar to the ideas of the Wildcat formation which jumped on to the scene several years back with success, the H-back formation will have its success for awhile and then the game has a funny way of moving on or back to something else. Cheers!

The Pistol Offence and Youth Football

One of the things that you will probably see over the course of the next couple seasons is the evolvement of the Pistol Offence at the youth football level. With the success that the San Francisco Forty Niner’s have had running the ball with the pistol offence there will be many coaches around the globe trying to emulate this type of offence and to be honest, I think that it can work at the youth football level. Even though they run it at the Pro level it’s really not hard to execute. Basically the play breaks down to just three players. The Defensive End, the Quarterback and the Running back. It would be ideal to run for small programs that don’t have a lot of depth players but have a few good linemen as well as a couple of good athletes that can be placed at the quarterback and running back position. The basis of the pistol offence is designed to isolate the defensive end and make him choose whether or not he wants to tackle the running back or the quarterback. The key is that the quarterback reads the end every time , always shows him that he is going to hand off the ball to the running back and if the end bites on this, then pulls out the ball at the last possible second and runs around the outside of the box. The idea being that as soon as the end bites on the RB run, he is giving up his contain assignment and puts the defence in a vulnerable position. At the same time, if the end does not bite on the inside run and maintains his contain assignment, the quarterback reads this and hands off the ball to the running back that runs off-tackle. Now keep in mind that the Defensive End is left unblocked, so it enables the Tackle/Guard Combo on the play side to have good angles as well as double team opportunities on the Defensive Tackle and Middle Linebacker. Simple but effective don’t you think? Cheers!