Last year on this blog, Ian Ayres wondered why, to truly keep their opponents guessing, football teams don’t pick plays at random.
Two California high school football coaches have taken the thought one step further and randomized the plays themselves — by scrapping the traditional starting formation and making every player a potential receiver (normally, only five players can receive a pass from the quarterback). That increases the possible number of plays the team can run, from the usual 36, to 16,632.
It’s called the A-11 Offense — all 11 players are eligible to catch the ball — and it works by introducing such unpredictability into where a quarterback will pass the ball that it baffles the defending team and gives the offense a better chance of breaking through.
And it works enough of the time that it has helped the Piedmont Highlanders, the high school team that first deployed it, improve its record for each of the last three years, as they run A-11 plays more and more often. The randomized plays have given the scrappy team an advantage over brawnier teams that used to regularly clean their clock.
A-11 isn’t legal in the N.F.L., and it is uncommon at the college level. It’s so controversial in high school football that it has been banned in 10 states.
But the success of the new offense has made its inventors, Highlanders coaches Kurt Bryan and Steve Humphries, heroes to some, who say A-11 could revolutionize the sport. Their detractors say A-11 is dishonest and unsportsmanlike because it uses randomness to distract and deceive the opposing team.
Using randomness in sports strategy may be effective, but is it sportsmanlike?
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Critics aren’t saying that it is unsportsmanlike because of the randomness of the plays. They are saying that the team exploits the jersey number loophole to make all the players eligible receivers.
In basketball, we have the motion offense, which works on the principle that any open player can shoot, and to make a player open that a series of movements/screens (without the ball) should be executed. How boring is a set offense in comparison?
Let the A11 be the “motion” for football and force defenders to do their jobs, not follow scripts.
The whining about it being unsportsmanlike is just that – whining. If deception in sports is unsportsmanlike then the offense should tell the defense what play it will run and catchers should tell batters what pitch is coming. (Looking at an 80mph breaking ball after watching a 90+ mph inside fastball? Now that’s deception!)
The rules are what the rules are. And changing the rules, after the fact, to eliminate innovation is the epitome of unsportsmanlike behavior.
“Using randomness in sports strategy may be effective, but is it sportsmanlike?”
I’m sorry, I was under the mistaken impression that the point of the game was to win.
I suppose Goliath thought David’s slingshot was unsportsmanlike, too. After all, David was supposed to take his beating like a man, right? That would have been FAR more sportsmanlike of him, as compared to embarrassing Goliath.
Wow, another reason to chuckle at American football. I have never been able to get past the fat people in spandex, but banning said fatties from touching the ball is plain daft.
The 49ers under Bill Walsh would script the first 15 plays of the game. it divorced play calling from the game situation so they might run on third and long or pass in a short yardage situation. One thing to note: it was only unpredictable for the defense. The offense would practice those scripted plays (which in the west coast offense often called for short passing routes and therefore precision timing) all week long.
Hmmm… Considering the characteristics of sportsmanship… Unless the team using A-11 rubs salt in the other team’s wounds when they lose, then it doesn’t seem unsportsmanlike.
The main issue is that generally in a competition or industry, whenever someone decides to break rules that aren’t there by innovating, the ones who are slow to innovate lose out and are sore.
That seems more unsportsmanlike to me actually, given that being a sore loser is a trait of someone who is not following the rules of sportsmanship.
I don’t really see how this is technically “random”. It’s just more receivers at the expense of other roles they would have been playing, right? It’s not as if players are blindfolded and running in random directions, or the QB rolls a die before hand to determine who they’ll throw to. This just sounds to me like non-traditional offense, which could happen in any sport.
I also don’t see how anything that’s within the rules of a game could be called unsportsmanlike. If it is a jersey loophole then that may be pushing it, but if that loophole is there then it’s not their fault. No one complains when wrestlers cut weight. The rules are the line of what’s unsportsmanlike, if someone’s not closing loopholes that’s their fault.