Cleveland Browns to use All-11 concepts in 2016

The All-11 as a logical progression of the spread concept

The All-11 offense is a progression of the logic that brought the spread to football. In order to understand the All-11 it will be necessary to first review the principles that make up the spread offense.

The old saying is that football is all about the “Jimmy’s” and “Joe’s”. That is, football ultimately comes down to who has the more gifted and better athletes. But history has seen numerous occasions when the less gifted athlete defeats the more gifted better trained athlete. The United States was born of the spirit of the underdog. We are a country who supports David against Goliath.

In the football world, Goliath is the pro-style offense. The offense is predicated on having better athletes who can outplay the opponent’s athletes. The NFL will be a pro-style league for the foreseeable future. It will always have the best athletes and the salary cap works to diversify those athletes across the league. The National Freak League is primed to allow the pro-style offense to flourish.

The spread offense developed as a way for David to take on Goliath. The result is that it is effectively shifting the game away from gifted athletes as the driving force toward coaches as the main combatants.

The spread offense was an innovation designed to answer one question: how can a smaller, less athletically gifted team defeat better more physically gifted athletes? The answer: make the defense cover every square inch of grass on the field both vertically and horizontally.  Make the defense run by getting the ball quickly to playmakers in space. In short, basketball on grass.

Spread style offenses put eligible receivers in open space to force defenses to “spread out” over the field. This allows those receivers to have winnable matchups on the edge. It also creates a numbers advantage in the box in the running game.

The All-11 offense expands on this idea by putting ineligible players in space.

Next: All-11 history