A Fun Way To Play Flag Football

The following Article was written by Jim Reese.

Jim was a quarterback and assistant coach at the University of Minnesota. He introduced flag football to Long Island and coached and played in over 250 games. He is now retired and lives in Tampa, Florida, where he reports on sports for a local newspaper. Jim will be writing for the CompuSports Network search sites periodically, sharing the wisdom he has gained during his career in coaching.

Jim’s eBook How to Win at Flag Football includes the full text of the article along with illustrations of Offensive and Defensive Schemes, is available through the CompuSports Media Exchange.

A Fun Way To Play Flag Football

by Jim Reese

Since flag football came upon the scene nearly four decades ago, it has enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity. Today on Long Island alone, over three hundred teams play nearly all year long. National tournaments abound through the year with every major city participating. The NFL holds flag football tournaments during Super Bowl week. The game owes its popularity to the fact that it’s fast, it’s exciting, and it’s a lot of fun.

When I first became interested in the game, I wanted to devise a system of play that would be both easy to understand and exciting to execute. In college we had run a no-huddle offense and I incorporated a lot of the principles of that system into flag football. By not huddling, I felt we could run a lot more plays and once we got the defense on the run, we could control the entire tempo of the game.

We played nine man with three ineligible linemen consisting of a center and two tackles, a quarterback, a blocking back, and four wide receivers. But whether you play seven, eight, nine, or ten man versions, the principles remain the same. It must be remembered that if 99% of your plays in flag football aren’t passes, you may be playing the wrong game.

The usual formation would be balanced with two receivers to either side and the blocking back in front of the seven yard deep quarterback and to his right or left. There being no huddle, after each play all of the players would look to the quarterback to see where he wanted them to line up. If the qb holds up two arms, it is a balanced formation. If the qb wants a strong formation with three receivers to one side, he points to that side. The qb then tells the blocking back on what side he should line up.

Again since there is no huddle, the quarterback, after setting his offense in the proper formation, has ample time to look over the defensive alignment very carefully and determine what routes he wants the receivers to run. All too often when you run a huddle offense, the dynamics are such that everyone knows who the intended receiver is before the huddle breaks. In the no huddle offense, nobody but the quarterback knows who the intended receiver is going to be. So both intended receiver and decoys run like receivers; and an added bonus for those on the bench watching is that they know exactly where the routes are going to be run. When the quarterback is ready, he calls out loud a color and five numbers.

Learn about and download Jim’s eBook, How to Win at Flag Football