The Wing-T is often thought of as a run heavy offense that is common in High Schools and Youth Programs through out the country. This is a simplification however and only looks at the offensive system at the surface level. The Wing-T in particular the most famous version "The Delaware Wing-T," has revolutionized offensive football in many ways including philosophy, play calling styles, and how defenses defend offenses. This blog post was inspired by a twitter thread I posted to further expand on some of the points and give a more thorough look at the system, it's history, how it was developed and expanded on, and how it has effected football at every level from youth to pro football to this day.
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History & Scheme Overview
Starting our look at the Wing-T offense we have to back a ways to beginning of football it's self. Before I add my thoughts lets take a look at the beginning of the University of Delaware playbook from 1975 and hear about the offense from the staff and athletic department at the time.
The Wing-T that everyone associates with Delaware got it's start as a system in 1950 at University of Maine. David Nelson born in Detroit played as a HB in Fritz Crisler's Single-Wing offense in the late 1930's and early 1940's. This was a common offensive system of the time that Michigan ran at a high level. David Nelson's backfield coach at University of Maine was another Michigan Man, Tubby Raymond. At Maine the two tinkered with the system they knew at Michigan Coach Crisler's Single-Wing which incorporated deceptive ball handling with series of backfield actions with blocking up front that looked similar but had multiple points of attack for ball carriers shown to the defense. Shift, Trade, and Motion were often worked into these schemes and backfield actions. The defenses needed to take into account if there was a balanced or unbalanced line. All of these movements and figuring out numbers, fits, and seeing similarity in the offensive plays made the defense play slow and have to trust their keys. The thing that was even more frustrating for defenses was the Wing-T Coaches often would know who were the keys based on how defenses played them, which then opened a new weakness for them to attack, leading to their "If-Then," play calling system. David Nelson and Tubby Raymond combined this with the other popular offensive system of the time the T-Formation. The T-Formation featured the quarterback under center having the ability to hand the ball off to multiple backs aligned horizontally behind the QB and the ability to have better play action by the QB hiding the ball by turning his back to the defense. The pair slowly developed this system adding and tweaking series, formations, motions, and plays while at Maine and had the opportunity to take the system with them when they went to the University of Delaware. While at Delaware the pair had success and changed the game of football and athletics at the University of Delaware by winning 4 National titles, multiple draft picks, post season bowl wins, and creating an offensive system with a cult like following to this day.
The history of the Wing-T as a series can be traced back to Michigan and Fritz Crisler. You can see from this clip from 1948 the similarities in deceptive ball handling, shift trade motion and multiple points of attack shown
Organization
The Wing-T system has been starts with it's organization. As described prior in this post is a system that has varied shifts, trades, motions, backfield actions, and blocking schemes all married together to create confusion for the defenses they are going against. Let's look at the Offensive Organization and Philosophy as described by the 1975 staff from the playbook.
We can see how they split play calls into Formation Technique and Attack. The formation where we aligned as an offense, with the ability to modify the formation with tagged alterations telling players any changes in alignment. The Technique telling the backfield what series they were running in the backfield. Finally the Point of Attack defined who was carrying the ball and telling the blockers how to protect the ball carrier based on their aiming point and job to do for the play. The diagram is showing waggle out of the buck sweep series.
This page shows some examples of Alterations on formations such as unbalanced. Or splits for Flankers or Ends on formations. These allow the offense to show different pictures to the defense but keep things similar for the offense within their package or series. These splits can be used to stress defenders in specific ways.
This picture gives a good look at the second digit which is the series. They can be run with or without motion weekly game plans will help in game planning to see if motion helps change how the defense plays the system or if it may be better in a static or can be done with varied tempo due to no motion.
This page showing how the counter tag can effect series and ball carriers. Then goes into a numbering system for identifying defenders to go along with the rules blocking to identify who to block and communicate defenders. The huddle system is shown on the bottom of the page as well.
This page shows how the point of attack relate to where the ball is designed to go and how the blocking creates the running lane based on leverage in relation to the defender each blocker must account for. The pictures drawn attack the flank or as it's described on the sheet as the outside game.
Here is a drawing with more on the point of attack more focused on the inside game. There are also some drawings giving examples of how the counter tag effects the runs and point of attack.
Here is a video of Coach Tubby Raymond speaking about their 20 series and their mentality as a staff to keep driving the ball on the defense and keep attacking unless they fix it.
Scheme
The running game is at the heart of the Delaware Wing-T system but it as a complete system shows ball carriers in 3 different points of attack. The 20 Series is the scheme most people think of when they think of the system. It features a flank attack with the buck sweep, the trap as the inside game, and the waggle pass as well all with similar looks to the defense. The concept the offense play caller needs to understand is how the defense relates and keys the offense to stop the play and series and then know the counter punch that they left open. This is the "If-Then," philosophy. Below some more information on some specific plays in the system.
Film of Delaware running the buck sweep in 2000.
The trap is another concept off of the buck-sweep series. Here’s a clip from 2001 showing it off jet series instead of the buck sweep series.
With an interior component in the trap and outside component with the sweep, another part of the Wing-T is the waggle component. Waggle is the QB Keeper off of it with a great play fake due to the series and options for the QB to throw or run.
Repetitions are the name of the game the system was repeatedly self scouted and tweaked to improve and for the personnel at Delaware. In the page below from the Delaware Football System, they describe years of tinkering and working though problems and mastering their protection in waggle. Like other systems it continued to evolve in clinics Coach Tubby Raymond talked about the system evolving incorporating more option tendencies, he talks about expanding their passing game, and adding more unbalanced formations in the system to hide ball carriers more. The scheme was constantly changing and evolving to fit the personnel and ways that defenses defended them.
Shift trades and motions as well as unbalanced formations are some common traits you’ll see in the system as well as the varied series of plays. Here Delaware shifts and motions to run a belly scheme.
Sally is another great counter to how defenses play your offense. A great misdirection play that can hit a home run when the defense gives you an advantageous look.
The tackle trap series is a unique one that was a hallmark of Delaware at different times. The ball handling and backfield action with similar looks upfront show the power of misdirection in this offense.
The system as it grew spread around the country at every level of football. In 1978 the offense even showed up at times in the NFL with Marv Levy's Kansas City Chiefs. In recent years Tulane has run a Wing-T Package in short yardage situations.
Wing-T principles still have a place in the more spread out world of modern football. Gus Malzahn who got his start as a Wing-T coach, still has Wing-T principles to his offense. At the NFL level you can see the influence of attacking multiple flanks and movement pass game off the same action very similar to the Wing-T.
Hope you enjoyed this post below are sources, clinics, and game film as well as some content brought to you by TD publishing related to the Wing-T and adding Wing-T concepts to your RPO offense. To keep up to date on blog posts and new YouTube uploads sign up for the E-mail list and subscribe on YouTube.
Citations & Resources:
Clinics
Practice and Game Film
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