Up Tempo Offense: No Huddle

By Kristian Johnson, Assistant Coach

Tyler Junior College

Twitter: fb_coachjohnson

We’re going to take a break from the three part RPO series, and talk about something that plays a direct part into making the RPO offense as deadly as it is. Today’s topic is the No Huddle offense. We see this a lot today in college football and just about every spread offense runs this system.

Why do Offensive Coordinator’s go no huddle? It’s simple – it creates problems for the defense. As an offense you want to do your best to throw the defense off its game and, by installing an up tempo offense, it enables an offense to do just that. Often when a team goes no huddle it’ll wear down a defense and when fatigue sets in. Then we all know our body doesn’t react as explosive.

To install this style of offense it can be very simple. The objective to successfully executing this offense is to run a play and get the next one called in and run it again as fast as you can. Many teams throughout college football will use hand signals, cards, wristbands, or even my personal favorite, packaged plays.

Now, how can the No Huddle and RPO feed off each other? When we see teams like Oklahoma, Oregon, and USF who pop off 54 second drives ending with touchdowns it attracts the common eye. If you take a further look into it when the run pass option is combined with the No Huddle it cancels out all defensive schemes.

The No Huddle offense is a defense’s worst nightmare. It’s proven that the more plays per game ran, the more points per game scored. It doesn’t take a math guru to know that the more points you score, the higher your chances are at winning a football game.

Execution is the key to this offense just like any other. As a coach this needs to be a fundamental drill that is practiced daily. When your athletes know how to effectively run the No Huddle to its purpose, magical things will happen on game days!

For more information on this topic, please watch Coach Bates of Auburn High School (Auburn, AL)