Yes, 7 men have to be on the LOS on every offensive play. If you look closely at the video on the site, they make sure to have 7 on the LOS every time, although I don’t think the refs are trying too hard to enforce that rule.

From what I understand, this numbering rule does not transfer over under NCAA rules, so you can’t run it in the NCAA as is, i.e. with two TEs around the center.

“We’ll probably see a Division I team go to something like this, but as usual, it will first be attempted at one of the more obscure programs. ”

A&M-OU ‘99 and A&M-Tech ‘00, Leach ran what he called Ninja in both games.

It is basically the same formation, but with a lineman split out with trips receivers on each side, and one receiver behind the other two players.

BTW, my link above is mislabeled. That is Ninja, not Polecat. Polecat is different, although it too has been run recently in D-IA college football.

I don’t think you’ll see someone at the DI-A college level go to the A-11, but you never know.

We’ll probably see a Division I team go to something like this, but as usual, it will first be attempted at one of the more obscure programs. Perhaps a team like Baylor with a nonconformist head coach will be the first to showcase such an offense. A cellar-dwellar might suddenly go 6-5 and make it to a bowl game and then use the exposure to recruit better talent. The name programs will scoff at the offense as a gimmick before eventually adopting the same schemes years later. Isn’t this what has happened the past decade with respect to shotgun, single back offenses?

Don’t seven players have to be on the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped? Do six players just jump up before the snap?

Also, can anyone foresee any rule problems with this offense?

Lonesome Polecat

In perusing the A-11 site, this looks more like an adaptation of the old single wing short-punt formation.

Ninja, used by Mike Leach @ OU in 1999 (they kicked our ass with it, several plays in a row, we couldn’t stop it) and @ Tech in 2000 (we were prepared for it, and stopped it).

—–X-T———LG-OC-RG———T-Z—-
——H—————————-Y—–
——————F–Q——————-

I’ve also heard it referred to as Lonesome Polecat. This isn’t new.

This reminds me of when Dale Weiner claimed that he created the Spin offense and an article was posted in AFM. He and the AFM staff were inundated by a deluge of mail from football coaches everywhere asking if they had ever heard of a single-wing motion series?

Sounds like another case of someone “inventing” something that has already been done before by someone else.