Glad you wrote out exactly what I was thinking.!! I have to laugh at the idea of red shirting players like a Shepherd. Someone even mentioned red shirting Chad Jones last year right after he drafted 10 round in MLB and offered a $1 million signing bonus. Seriously, what are the chances this kid sticks around his senior year. Bottom line... NO CHANCE Shepherd red shirts.
Well if I remember correctly Florida ran a similar play against LSU utilizing a center, two TEs, three receivers on each side, harvin and tebow in the backfield. I think it would be OK as a trick play or something. I like the idea of having the possibility of having all 11 players eligible to receive. It's a lot like the spread, IMO, just a different package with more possibilities.
The A-11 exploits a loophole in high school leagues' rulebooks about jersey numbers indicating eligible receivers. The defense has no idea which players are eligible and which are linemen until they're set, and that doesn't happen until seconds before the play is executed. It becomes very difficult to exploit favorable matchups since defenders are never playing against the same eligible receiver. But if the national governing body declares the offense illegal, the A-11 will be relegated to small HS leagues who agree to use it. In theory it evens the playing field for teams with overmatched talent. In reality this will get your linemen and QBs mangled by big D-linemen even if it was legal in the NCAA and NFL. IMO it's a clever, but cheap, offense along the lines of a fake spike or the infamous "wrong ball" trick play.
I think the A-11 is good for high school coaches who want to win ball games, but do you honestly think that it sets up players for the next level of play?
The A-11 offense was actually just shut down this past Friday by the National Federation of State High School Associations.
I wonder how they plan to actually enforce that. They wouldn't be able to use the confusion with the O-linemen and rapid personnel changes, but a formation with a center, 2 TEs, 2 QB/RBs in the backfield, 4 WR on the line and 2 slot receivers is still a legal formation.
Sure you can get a couple of plays in, but like you said, they wouldn't be able to exploit the "numbering loophole" to where it would be practical. Or advantageous. There is no way that it would EVER be effective (or practical) to use it almost exclusively at major colleges or the NFL. That's just crazy to think that it would be. The coaches in Cali (go figure) who came up with the offense have like tons of books, and videos, and a website to "market" this offense, but the thing that makes it impractical is that it relies on the numbering exploitation--a loophole that's in the rule books because of a punt formation. Clever, but not practical. At all.
