So you want to watch your high school football team play, but z-o-o-m! … It just ran a play and you missed it.
W-h-o-o-s-h! It just ran another play. And another. …
Welcome to the newest trend in the Denver area and across multiple classifications. Playing fast on offense. Playing fast enough to dramatically increase the number of snaps. Playing fast enough to wear down your foe.
Huddles? Huddles are for suckers.
“We never huddle,” Pomona coach Jay Madden said. “Unless it’s the fourth quarter when we’re winning, then we huddle.”
Think of it as a video-game version of high school football with kids at the controls.
“It seems like playing Madden (NFL 15) with my buddies as to how we run our offense,” Chatfield senior Sean O’Dell said.
“I call a play and don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen,” Mountain Vista coach Ric Cash said.
More plays mean more opportunity for points.
“It’s hard at first,” Madden said. “Then you get it.”
The up-tempo pace has spread from the upper levels of the sport, but as the colleges and the pros have shown, you can play faster out of any formation.
“You can do it with the double-wing,” Chatfield coach Bret McGatlin said.
In 2012, his Chargers ran an average of 51 plays per game. A year ago, they increased to 74. So far this fall, Chatfield has twice surpassed 90 snaps, McGatlin said, and had another game in the 80s.
McGatlin said he watched the offense of former Oregon coach Chip Kelly, now running the Philadelphia Eagles, but initially thought of playing faster after watching his school’s basketball team.
“The energy they had at practice, they were fast breaking, it looked like so much more fun,” he said.
Ideally, O’Dell said, the Chargers want to run a play every 15 seconds. A team has 30 seconds to snap the ball after the referee gives the ready-for-play signal. They can do it in 12 seconds in practice when the Chargers blare the likes of Pantera and MC Hammer, most anything with a big beat to keep up the tempo.
Both McGatlin and Cash said their programs don’t have the huge linemen that many Centennial League teams have, or who Madden and some others in Jeffco regularly have, but speeding up the game offers the opportunity to level the playing field.
“Essentially, we get the skill kids,” Cash said. “But you can absolutely run this when you don’t have elite-level athletes and be exceptional when you do.”
And you must get stops on defense, McGatlin said, or it won’t matter.
Hand signals are big to keep the high flying offenses going, as is the head coach giving up complete control.
“Oh, my gosh, yes,” Cash said. “Imagine the quarterback getting the opportunity to basically call a play, then make a decision based on five options. It puts a lot of control in his hands.”
Madden agreed, and said his players love it.
“They make up the signals; they make up the calls,” he said. “Anytime we want a new way to call a play, we ask the kids.
“And I think it makes it simpler. We had 15-word calls. Now, there are two to three words that tell everybody what to do. The quarterback has more to do than anybody else. And today’s quarterbacks are intelligent. He gets to make some decisions, too, depending on how the defense lines up.”
Pomona quarterback Justin Roberts said: “I really like it. It gets the defense off guard, and we’re ready when I just yell out the play. Everybody knows what they’re doing. We go over it in practice. Just make the call. And one call does everything.
“It’s full go, and we get the ball a lot more.”
Added Madden, “You pay to sign up and play football, so do you want to run 45 plays or run 70?”
Said McGatlin, “For teenage brains, you have to keep them active or you lose them.”
Neil H. Devlin: ndevlin@denverpost.com or
