Coach’s Corner: Colorado’s Ace Tight Formation

Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images We hear it all the time with the Air Raid offense: spread the field, find the gaps in the defense, exploit the space, put your playmakers in the open field and let them run. But the opposite concept can be effective as well. If you bring everybody down closer into the box, it brings a whole host of problems for the defense. You have a lot of bodies in a limited amount of space, and you force the defense to have to have very good eye discipline to maintain a proper read on their keys. The opponent for Washington State this week, the Colorado Buffaloes, are generally a spread team, but they will run about fifteen to twenty snaps from a tight formation where all eleven offenses players are within about a five yard radius of the football. They will sprinkle in some pre-snap motion and misdirection to hide the ball from the defense, and they will use the alignment of both the offense and the defense to create natural rubs to help free receivers.

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