Hurry-up offense

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The hurry-up offense, no-huddle offense or two-minute drill, is an American football offensive strategy designed to run a series of plays quickly and efficiently using as little of the time remaining as possible. Very few rushing plays are called and most passing plays are designed to be out patterns, towards the sideline so the receiver can get out of bounds. Typically a play will last between 3 and 7 seconds in a hurry-up offense.

Plays can be from either a practiced script, called in from the sideline, or called by the quarterback at the line of scrimmage depending on the situation. If a defense has adjusted to an offense's gameplan well all night, plays may be called in from the sideline ad-lib to better gain the advantage over a defense that was prepared against what the offense was trying to do. If a defense has not adjusted well all game, a coach may opt to run the practiced two-minute drill done in practice throughout the week. The hurry-up is sometimes called a no-huddle offense, though the no-huddle is properly a subset of hurry-up offenses.

The hurry-up offense revolves around strategic management of the remaining time of the game clock. There are a number of techniques used to stop the clock from running down:

• Running out of bounds;
• Spiking the ball;
• Throwing an incomplete pass;
• Using the two-minute warning;
• Using time outs;
• Drawing penalties or intentional fouls (this is not always smart. If there are only a few seconds left on the clock and someone on a team with no time-outs purposely commits a penalty, there is a 10-second run-off).
• Creating penalties by starting plays as the defense is still switching out players, and has the wrong number of players on the field.

[edit] No-huddle offense

The no-huddle offense is a tactic in American football designed to minimize clock usage and/or to keep defenses off-guard. It is most often used at the end of a half, either at the end of the first half for momentum, or at the end of the game to win. When a no-huddle offense is used at the end of a half, it is more properly called a two-minute drill, which is a formation or series of formations and plays scripted in practice and designed to score from any point on the field in under two minutes.

In a no-huddle offense, the offense has a series of plays called in a single huddle, from the sideline, or at the line of scrimmage, and run those plays consecutively without going into a huddle. This keeps the defense from calling different plays to counter the situation. It also hampers the defense's ability to switch players in and out as the offense controls the play.

Commentators and fans sometimes use the terms "no-huddle offense" and "two-minute drill" interchangeably, but the no-huddle is sometimes used by teams to take the advantage away from the defense at any point in the game. If a team is trailing in the fourth quarter, they may opt for a hurry-up offense with more than two minutes remaining, and in Super Bowl XXXIX the Philadelphia Eagles were criticized for not doing exactly this when 24-14 down with just under six minutes remaining, almost four of which were used up in the touchdown drive.

Some teams like to use it to try to gain momentum in the middle of the game if their offense is struggling. Other teams, like the Indianapolis Colts under Peyton Manning and the Buffalo Bills under Jim Kelly's K-Gun offense, sometimes go almost the whole game without ever getting in a real huddle.

[edit] History of the no-huddle

The "no-huddle" approach to play calling has existed in some form in the game of football since plays were first designed, however, it was not implemented as a major part of the game strategy until the Cincinnati Bengals head coach Sam Wyche began to heavily rely on the approach.

During the late '80s Wyche took notice that when the offense went to a fast-paced rate of play-calling or running the defense appeared to fatigue quicker than the offense. He then developed an approach to take advantage of heavy-substitution based defensive schemes of that era. There were many specialized individuals and when a team suspects the other team may attempt a pass it was customary to switch out most of the defensive backfield. This would mean the players were more accustomed to solely run or pass-stopping techniques. By quickly substituting or going up to the line before the defense can substitute, the offense hoped to get mismatches where a run player would be forced to play out-of-position. The quick pace of approaching the line would also limit defensive coaches the opportunity to asses their situation, make adjustments and sometimes, even to get their call in to the players (this was before the in-helmet radios were implemented).

The Bengals' use of this ploy proved to be highly successful, but also controversial. There are many noted incidents where coaches instructed players to disrupt the pace the offense was calling plays by feigning injuries, interfering with placing the ball at scrimmage as well as general complaints about unsportsmanlike practices to the league officials.

In response to this tactic the NFL instituted many rules related to this tactic some including:

• Allowing the defense ample time for substitutions if the offense does
• If a player's injury causes the play-clock to stop, the player must sit out at least one play
• Charging a time-out to a team when a player is injured within a certain time period of the game

The tactic was used by the franchise from the late 80s while Sam Wyche was the coach. The main rivals for AFC supremacy were the Buffalo Bills, coached by Marv Levy. Most of the high-profile games (the various games for AFC Conference titles and regular season games) between the two led to these changes in NFL rules.

Wyche recalled that before the '88 AFC title game the Buffalo Bills had seemingly convinced league officials to penalize the Bengals for running a no-huddle offense. In a statement made to the Bengals' press in 2005, he relayed "The NFL was nice enough to come to us an hour and 55 minutes before the game and tell us we would be given a 15-yard penalty every time we used it. Of course we had practiced it all week. We told them if they wanted to answer to the public for changing the competitive balance of the AFC championship game, that was up to them, but we were using it. They never dropped a flag."

The ironic part was afterwards the Bills began to employ the no-huddle (with Jim Kelly) and used it to near-perfection, winning the AFC title four years straight.

[edit] References

• John T. Reed. Football Clock Management. Reed, John T Publishing (September, 1997). ISBN 0-939224-39-9