Coach ,

It’s been the debate since the resurgence of no-huddle offense over a decade ago…

Overwhelm the defense with a pace that confuses them and allows you to attack a vanilla defense

or

Win the time of possession and protect your defense by slowing the game down.

But what if you could do both? Maintain the ability of the offense to cause the defense to have recognition and alignment issues while taking as much time off the clock as you want.

That is exactly what Coach Josh Gibson does at Pleasant Grove in Texas, using the strategy to win a state championship in 2019.

Coach Josh Gibson exemplifies how to keep the defense on their toes and potentially catch them off guard. He goes over multiple types of plays out of the "sugar huddle" that you need to know in order to dice up your opponent's defense.

Why the Sugar Huddle?

• Defense must prepare for the tempo
• Offense can sit on the clock
• Stress the defense by flying to the line and snapping the ball 3.5 seconds after breaking the huddle
• Objective is to confuse the defense and make them panic right at the snap of the ball
• Use unbalanced formations and snap the ball before they can adjust

Though Coach Gibson doesn’t mention this in his course, if you are looking at utilizing multiple personnel groups, this type of procedure to attack the defense suits you perfectly.

Having run it for a season myself, I know that an official will immediately go and stand over the ball when a no-huddle team changes personnel. This allows the defense to not only change personnel, but to get a look at your formation and align to it. Any kind of advantage that no-huddle gives an offense is taken away when this happens.

The answer is to utilize the sugar huddle when changing personnel. The official won’t slow things down and you can get in and out of the huddle as quickly or slowly as you wish, but what remains from the uptempo advantage is that if you are snapping in 3.5 seconds, the defense does not have very much time to recognize, communicate and adjust.

Gibson uses the wing-t along with this attack, and his illustrations of how the sugar huddle affects the defense is very helpful. This procedure will work with any offense.

Coach shares this strategy in his course “Holding Defenses Accountable with the Sugar Huddle and Big Passing Plays”

Curious if you think this strategy can give your team an edge in 2021.

Always be growing!

Coach Grabowski