During the last season, every one of our opponents played a 5-3 defense against us, forcing us to account for eight defenders in the box.

To counter this, we started stacking twin receivers to both sides of the field with the intentions of getting the ball quickly to our skill position players in open space. This forced defenses to thin the box, which opened up the running game for the quarterback and the halfback.

Quick screens, flairs and quarterback runs

We went to this formation at first to catch the opponent’s defense unprepared to match up equally on the two twin stacks.

The quick screens allowed us at the beginning to play two-on-one with the split end blocking the play side corner and flanker reading his block (Diagrams 1 and 2).

When the defenses started to thin the box and play the stacks equally, we motioned one flanker across the formation to gain a three on two advantage with the motioned flanker now the intended receiver (Diagram 3).

If the safety dropped down into the box to cover the motion man or if a defender followed the flanker, we would either flair the halfback and make him the intended receiver or run the quarterback. The alignment of the defensive ends would often dictate what we did. If the defensive ends played head up or tight to the offensive tackles, we threw the flair to the halfback (Diagram 4). If the defensive ends played wide we ran the quarterback into the strong side B gap with the halfback leading and looking to block the inside linebacker (Diagram 5).

Downfield passing game

When the opponents decided to play the stacks equally and crowd the line of scrimmage, it was time to stretch the defenses vertically and throw the ball downfield. Diagrams 6 through 8 are some of the plays we used to do just that. In all of these plays, we are forcing the defense to cover the length and width of the field and are not allowing the inside linebacker to get too deep in coverage. If the halfback was not needed in pass protection, we would have him flair or circle out of the backfield and make the defense account for him.

In conclusion, the twin stack receiver set allows an offense to challenge a defense horizontally and vertically. It can create mismatches numerically on the perimeter and it will dictate the thinning of the box to the defense, which in turn will open up the running game.