Win with the Jet Sweep: putting the halfback out in full motion. (Football).

The Wing T has been very good to me since 1948. It actually started with the Single Wing that I played under Bob Higgins at Penn State. When I became a coach, I put the QB under center and began running single-wing plays with the QB taking the ball from center and handing it off.

At a Cleveland Browns clinic in 1950, I was taught the original Buck Sweep Series by Paul Brown, who had his QB, Otto Graham, run a bootleg off it.

That fall I introduced the offense to the high school game, while Sid Gillman and Dave Nelson, who had been at the same clinic, began using it on the college level.

Over the next half-dozen years, my teams at Braddock (PA) High School went 55 games without a defeat, setting the high school record.

As I moved into college coaching, I took the Buck Sweep with me to Rutgers, Indiana University-PA, and Carnegie Mellon U. (CMU).

While at CMU, I discovered that my defensive coaches were working on a master plan for the defense of the Buck Sweep. I liked what they were doing and I began lecturing on it at clinics! It wasn't too long before the Buck Sweep Series wasn't scaring people anymore.

That included me. I began searching for something that I could use as a false key to resuscitate the Wing-T offense.

A high school coach named Eric Hogg showed me a new play he called the Jet Sweep. He put a wingback or flanker in full-speed motion a yard behind the QB, who would turn and hand him the football.

That left only the three outside defenders to block. He had his other blockers take out their men with reach blocks, as shown in Diag. 1.

In his Jet Sweep, Coach Hogg used a verbal starting count, with the back going in motion on "Red" and the ball being snapped on "Set Go."

We discovered that we could time it better by having the QB set the running back in motion with a heel lift and having the ball snapped on "Go." The "Go" would be called as the back came within one full step of the QB, who would then make a full pivot and hand the ball off with his back to the LOS.

We thought of pulling the front-side guard to get an extra blocker, but it couldn't be done fast enough.

Coach Herschel Moore of Cumberland University, who works at our camps, suggested a 180-degree QB pivot, with the ball being handed off to the FB in the front-side "A" gap, as shown in Diag. 1.

It worked. As we write this, Cumberland has led Division III in rushing three out of the last five years.

With the speed of the sweep, we could focus our blocking on just the three outside defenders. We could run away from the other eight players.

We taught the ball-carrier how to get the most out of the play by taking the ball to the numbers and turning up at the sideline.

In the beginning, a lot of teams had success running to the slot, but few could run the TE-wing side. After seeing Auburn run a toss sweep to a TE-wing side, using a pulling tackle and guard, we began experimenting with our offense. We can now block the TE-wing gap as shown in Diag. 2, with a guard and tackle pulling to lead.

Diag. 3 shows how we run our 28 Jet Sweep (with pulling guards) from our Blue Formation.

We align the tight end and wing to the left and the slot to the right. The wing is set one yard out and one year back of the TE, and the slot three yards out and one yard back of the RT.

The QB lifts his heel to start #2 (or LHB) in motion, and the ball is snapped when #2 reaches a point one full step (about four feet) from the QB.

The QB makes a 180-degree pivot on the ball of his right foot and swings his left foot around -- taking him over the mid line.

With his back to the LOS and butt now in the front-side of the "A" gap, the QB will hand the ball off to the running back with the left hand. This occurs in the front-side "A" gap. The QB then takes two steps back and fakes the waggle or bootleg.

The fullback (#3) hits up the mid-line, fakes receiving the ball, and continues downfield to block in the area from LB to safety.

The #2 back runs in full-speed motion, aiming for a spot one foot behind the QB. The QB delivers the ball into the receiver's hands (in groin area) and the receiver immediately slides the ball to his outside hip to conceal it from the defense.

#2 tries to take the play wide (Diag. 4). If the #2 defender is stretching to the outside, #2 will turn up inside the block, as shown in Diag. 5.

The #4 back (RHB) aligns three steps outside the RT and one yard deep. His assignment is to block the #2 defender outside the "B" gap.

The tackle and slot must not allow penetration -- preventing the guard from pulling. Most teams have the center and backside guard, tackle, and TE reach-block. Most of the basic Wing T plays can be run with the Jet Sweep fake.

Diag. 6 shows the play with which Nebraska defeated Oklahoma several years ago. George Darlington, the veteran backfield coach at Nebraska, played for me at Rutgers in 1960, and he has this play in his playbook. It is a variation of the Jet Sweep left, but with the addition of a pitch to the opposite wingback followed by a pass to the QB swinging down the opposite side.

People ask what I like best about the Jet Sweep:

1. You only have to block the defenders outside the "B" gap (the gap between guard and tackle).

2. During a game, you can watch the three outside blockers and determine why you were successful or not.

3. If the defense puts four people outside the "B" gap, it would weaken them to the inside.

4. If the #4 defender comes from the secondary, it would weaken the defense vs the pass. We run various double-wing formations, sometimes unbalanced, at times with the fullback five yards behind center and also with the fullback in an offset position behind the tackle. (Check the broken circle in Diag. 2.)

My life is over-run with the Jet Series. Which happens when you have six camps and more than 50 teams running the offense.

We put the series in for Dowling (IA) H.S. three years ago and, as we write this, they have won 26 games in a row with two state championships.

I answer more than 10 e-mails a day and try to help people the way Paul Brown helped me 50 years ago! I am now writing a book on how to never lose a game. If you would like to reach me, my e-mail address is: [e-mail]. (It stands for "B" (Braddock) and the record I compiled there (54-0-1)!