Using Motion, the Flexbone, and a Check With Me System

This week we encountered a double wing flexbone attack. They ran veer, midline,flip option, counter, dart, and a trap play. As we all know, when we see Navy run it's triple option attack, they will run deep motion behind their fullback with one of their wings. That is the staple of their attack. From this, they can run all of their base plays.

They also incorporate a flip motion, where the wing back will take a few steps towards the fullback and then stop and comeback the same way he originally came. A flexbone team normally does this when teams rotate their safeties or check to some kind of blitz versus their deep motion and they leave their backside vulnerable to some portion of their attack.

However, this does have a distinct disadvantage. As an offense, you are now short one blocker to that side in comparison, since you lose the wingback since he went in motion. Often times, a team will also utilize a flexbone attack because the motion combined with the counters will allow them to have a misdirection element, and the option will allow them to often times leave the the opponent's best player unblocked. This allows teams like Navy, which can't recruit road graders since the military doesn't have a need for 6'7" 300 lb lineman, to compete with bigger and stronger teams. However, if the level of talent is so high and the other team is well coached and very disciplined, losing the potential blocker at the point of attack can be devastating for the flip motion and the counters.

Well, a new way to defeat this is to incorporate a check with me system. This can be applied to any team that uses motion really. The opponent we played this week utilized this system with their deep motion. The team would send one of their wings in deep motion. He would go through the traditional cadence of a flexbone team "Ready, Set, Go", and then he would stop and reset. The team would look to the sideline and change the play. One of our levels this week, which didn't see this on film, had not prepared for this. They subsequently were burned by it. One of their most common checks to deep motion was cloud cover 3 to the side the wingback was going to. They also did a corner blitz if the down and distance was appropriate. Well, thanks to the check-with-me system, the flexbone attack flourished. Especially when additional blitz's came. The coaching staff of the flexbone team didn't use check with me every play, so that way they defense had no idea what the snap count was.

The end result was a few big plays, all off of the check-with-me series. This team, vastly under powered in comparison to our own, beat one of our levels. It was a great gameplan and great execution by their coaching staff.

So I highly recommend looking into this if the flip motion and counters simply aren't enough versus a solid opponent. I believe Navy has recently begun utilizing this as well, and if I find a video online, I'll be sure to post it.