Spread Offense - High School

High School

In recent years, the spread offense has become a very popular term used in context of the high school gamewith the offense's innovative ways to make the game faster and higher scoring. While it has changed the game, and teams that successfully run it are scoring more points, there is debate whether the offensive system is as effective as it seems.

Some coaches have taken to packaging their offensive system and marketing them to programs around the country, such as Tony Franklin, who served as an assistant coach at the University of Kentucky under Hal Mumme where he developed his offense based on Mumme's "Air Raid" system. Manny Matsakis being another example as he is the inventor of the Triple Shoot Offense, which is a spread set with forms in the Shotgun, Pistol and under center. Matsakis was an assistant coach under both Mike Leech at Texas tech and Bill Snyder at Kansas State. He is currently the head coach of Enka High School in Asheville, North Carolina.

As a reaction to the success of the spread offense in high profile colleges, such as The University of Florida, innovative high school coaches began retooling the system to work on high school teams. Now the system has become quite widespread, with numerous schools achieving success. Defenses are left with the challenge of defending more of the field than ever before, and the offense was given the advantage of having numerous running and passing lanes created by the defense being so spread out.