Scheme doesn't concern me.  How well-coached they are does.  Besides, at youth or middle school level I rarely see a true offensive scheme.  Teams will put a Wingback to the side and say they're running Wing-T.  They'll put the in a T, or I, or Bone and claim they're running those offenses, too.  In the end, their offense usually features a "just block the man in front of you" approach.  Really difficult to get too concerned about their "scheme."

--Dave

Since I had to defend so many split back veer teams when I coached H.S. ball, I kinda prefer that, since I;m familiar with defending it.  Haven't seen it at the youth level, tho.  At youth level, I prefer to see 'grab-bag' offenses.  When they run some of this, some of that, some of the other and couple plays they drew up in the dirt,   ...  generally means they haven't mastered anything.

Back in H.S. ball played against, and coached against, mostly 5 - 2 monster (strong safety) defenses.  Again, a matter of familiarity with 'em.    We see mostly even fronts in our league, but when we play out of league games, we see a lot of odd fronts.  We can generally manipulate  the Strong safety's (monster) alignment by our formation and if he is good, put him on the wrong side of the field from where we intend to run / pass.  If they keep him to the wide side of the field, we're happy to put the formation to the short side and march down the the shortside hashmarks on the way to the end-zone.  We keep hearing about how the sideline is an extra defender to the short side (Sammy Sideline, stuff), haven't seen it be very effective, tho, esp when we put the wing to boundary.

I can only speak from the perspective of an OL coach. Generally speaking, and if all else is equal, I would rather play a stagnant 40/50 front team than a 30 front team who has options with the extra LB. 

Certain movements by defenses can create some issues for our blocking rules in the 2 gap schemes that we run. They are all solvable but some weeks it takes work on potential "rule breaker's".

From a zone blocking prospective and pass pro perspective I don't really care. 

Posted by: @coachdp

Scheme doesn't concern me.  How well-coached they are does.  Besides, at youth or middle school level I rarely see a true offensive scheme.  Teams will put a Wingback to the side and say they're running Wing-T.  They'll put the in a T, or I, or Bone and claim they're running those offenses, too.  In the end, their offense usually features a "just block the man in front of you" approach.  Really difficult to get too concerned about their "scheme."

--Dave

Then...I've been coaching in a higher class of sub-teen, early-teen football than Dave Potter!  I feel...elevated!

When I was in the Bronx Warriors, about half the teams seemed to be as he describes -- including some I coached on!  But it was far from rare to "see a true offensive scheme", unless I'm that bad at recognizing them.  And we all practiced on the same field, I think I would've noticed!  Before that, in the Big Apple Youth Football Whatever, roughly the same.  Now, in the Morris County Youth Football League, maybe 10% have been like that.  So I get the idea we're in a higher class of competition, and that I always have been, although at the same time the playing rules in the MCYFL are more dumbed-down than I've seen or heard of anywhere else, with all the restrictions, mulligans, simulated kicks, and coaches on the field at ages above what they do elsewhere.

Still, I haven't given thought to what type of offense or defense I prefer to coach against.  We see a lot of wing T, and beyond that about an equal mixture of pistol-fly, shotgun wing T, and I -- but one team embarrassed us with beast.  Defenses show a lot of 5-3 and 5-2 with press coverage; I really only pay much attention to where their DEs and ILBs go.  The defenses that seem to take away our "creativity" are those whose DEs pinch and who have a MLB or ILB shadow our FB.

Misread Chucknduck's post.

Favorite defense to face:

60 fronts with no one on my OTs and "extra" guys on the edge to defend the sweep. That's about 80% of our league. No one stays in the same defense after the first Beast drive though.

Favorite offense to face:

First off, I don't enjoy slobber knocking a team with little talent and a bad scheme. But last season was the first time you needed to bring more than a fast guy to score on us. So last year, I really enjoyed the teams that put all their efforts into 1 or 2 players who were capable of taking it to the house on any given play. I think we played 4 teams in that category last season.

1) Put their stud in shotgun and let him scramble. Throw if it's open, run if it's not. Poor man's RPO. He thew for a TD and ran for another (when the game was out of hand and I had 80% subs in). He sat out the 2nd and 3rd quarters from getting hit so hard.

2) Wannabe double wing with a TB 5 yards deep, high, inconsistent tosses and slowly developing counters. Blocking was an afterthought. Backs holding/tackling at the POA on every play. Lost 18-12 to that team, but did very well defensively overall. The last time we played them, 2 players hung 40+ on us.

3) 1 super stud. They sort of a wide Beast at us. Unbalanced with 2 blocking backs outside the long TE and a pitch to the super stud. First game, that kid ran wild on us. We had some alignment issues that I failed to spot in the game. Fortunately, 2 of our guys ran wild on them and we won something like 35-24. 2nd game (playoffs) the stud was out with a neck injury/concussion. By the end of the game, that coach was cussing at me for "running up the score". 

4) Lots of speed in the backfield, ran a lot of formations on film, but mainly a split back pro set. In the championship game, they moved the WB to a FB spot (wishbone) and tried to toss sweep basically the whole game. I think they had -12 net yards on the day and had a single first down on a 12 yard run. Mojo score was something like 12-0. Their parents accused us of a) being dirty b) cheating because we "knew all their plays" due to our illegal filming. 

@coyote yes, "grab bag" O is preferred here too! They run reverses without setup, desperate long passes, flea flickers, complex, slow developing plays, and give all their plays away by their formation. When we are playing good D, we see a lot of "grab bag."  

Stream of consciousness, here, but when I scout, two things keep me up at night: teams that can run C Gap and can kick out the DE and get ugly yards off tackle, and teams with QBs and receivers that can throw/catch longer, jumpball passes. We drill Larry's beast extensively. But it's not a special X and O approach for us. It's about firing out low and gap control.