I haven’t run Wing-T, but I have run all of those plays in the Double Wing with 7-8s.  No issues.  It isn’t whether they can learn the plays; it’s whether you can teach them.

—Dave

Posted by: @coachtfay

Sweep. Power. Trap. Counter. Wedge.

 

Anyone ran it at this age? Advice?

I coach 3rd-4th grade (9U).  We're traditional wing-t.   I see no reason why not.  The blocking for each of those is age appropriate, and its all about the blocking. 

Advice?  Don't water down the plays by "simplifying" them for kids.  

--Dave

Never ran Wing T, but lots of DW.  Is Wing-T the kind of offense where you can flip the line?  

I ran Jet sweep out of a balanced Wing T with 9yr olds. We split out both ends to about 5 yards, and we had our wings blocking down. Our guards didn't pull and our FB would favor play side. The split end would block down on LB.

We did pretty well with it, knocked out in 2nd round of play offs. 90% of teams gave us the edge by letting our wing block down on their DE.

We had challenges when the other team had a lot of movement. We had our split ends run a reverse, but that wasn't enough to deal with teams that had heavy movement. Trap would have obliterated them.

You can turn jet sweep into two plays, Red/Green. The red is a planned cut back to hit the C gap, instead of running power.

Looking back I probably would have just pulled the guard and had the FB run trap backside. It's the inverted way to run it because sweep hits first, then trap. 

Challenges we faced were this

1) The QB center exchange is pretty challenging on a kid. Their cadence needs to be a good rhythm. They should pivot on their playside foot 180 degrees and place the ball out for the RB to take. This puts them almost behind the pulling guard. Sometimes they'll get cracked in the back, but if the timing is right there's no way he gets cracked before the hand off is taken. 

2) You need to practice the full hand off every day with cadence and everything. If the wing isn't practicing the motion and speed they'll stop doing it. It becomes a very comfortable play at a slower pace, and that's no good because you won't win against better teams.

3) Not every kid can be QB in this offense. You need a kid with good hands, but they don't have to be fast. We wasted a kid at QB. Probably should have used this other kid who was small, slow, and short. I didn't use him because I wanted to run boot. The boot didn't work well because everyone has a 7/9 tech in youth. That being said, you need a backup who can go in. Our backup had a bad habit of missing the hand off and panicking and just running with it... which also didn't work. 

Posted by: @gumby_in_co

Never ran Wing T, but lots of DW.  Is Wing-T the kind of offense where you can flip the line?  

It's what I plan to do this year.  Once I get over this atrial fibrillation.  And then get assigned to HC or have a free hand with the offense.  I don't want to run 100 and 900 formations with the hole numbers always going right-to-left, but just regular and "flip" formations with all 11 positions flipping and the hole numbers flipping too.

Wing T is assymetric, so I think it lends itself better to flipping than double wing does.

Posted by: @bob-goodman

Posted by: @gumby_in_co

Never ran Wing T, but lots of DW.  Is Wing-T the kind of offense where you can flip the line?  

It's what I plan to do this year.  Once I get over this atrial fibrillation.  And then get assigned to HC or have a free hand with the offense.  I don't want to run 100 and 900 formations with the hole numbers always going right-to-left, but just regular and "flip" formations with all 11 positions flipping and the hole numbers flipping too.

Wing T is assymetric, so I think it lends itself better to flipping than double wing does.

Then I would definitely flip the line at that (or any) age.