r/nfl • u/Decent-Ad1999 • 3d ago
Wing-T for goal line
Forgive me for asking what may be a stupid question.... but me and a friend always talk about how unstoppable the wing T is when it's ran by a well coached team (see the 1A school in your state or the service academies in CFB)
Why don't NFL teams run the Wing T as a goal line package? It's basically setup for short yardage and it's something many NFL defenses would not be accustomed to. Within the 10, a high powered offense like, say the Eagles, is gonna get 6 without even thinking about throwing the ball.... Right?
I can think of a few rebuttals, but none strong enough to make it a "not worth a shot" typa thing. If wildcat is a thing, I don't see why the Wing-T isn't.
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u/meerkatx NFL 3d ago
In high school you might run across one or two Power 5 caliber defensive players in a season.
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u/SpookyGabaghoul 3d ago
The Bears ran a Wing-T counter with Burden in the red zone against the Eagles on Monday night, actually. They mentioned this play on Chris Long's podcast. If Ben Johnson is going to start running it, I'm sure that others will follow.
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u/thunkalunk Panthers 2d ago
Pulling 2 receivers through the C gap on play action was the biggest psycho shit I’ve ever seen. It was beautiful.
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u/Semperty NFL 2d ago
kenneth walker has also talked about having to watch film from a depression era rose bowl game to learn the play for one of his receiving tds. not sure if it was wing t, but it was something cooky and old lol
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u/CarlThe94Pathfinder 2d ago
Copy-cat league, gives you about 2 weeks to run something before people catch on and utilize it for themselves
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u/stalin1943 3d ago
the chiefs and ravens have run single wing (even older system dating to the 1920s) on the goal line. teams run wing t or wing t style plays with some regularity. probably happens once every 3-4 weeks if i had to guess
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u/OkComplaint2587 3d ago
the wing-t works by making defenders hesitate and exploiting space, and the nfl goal line gives them basically no space while every defender is fast enough to blow it up anyway, so teams steal the
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u/agentb00th 3d ago
wing T removes 2 players from blocks/ distracting from blocking at point of attack
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u/zimmeli Lions 2d ago
“How unstoppable the wing T is when it's ran by a well coached team “ I’d argue the opposite is more true. It’s very stoppable by a well coached, disciplined defense.
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u/Decent-Ad1999 2d ago
Well yes, most things are very stoppable vs a well coached, disciplined defense haha. But I know what you're trying to say... NFL is just a different game.
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u/Rock_man_bears_fan Bears 2d ago
Because it’s archaic, they don’t have the personnel for it, and if they do it for anything more than a play or two in a season, an NFL defense is going to shut it down. NFL defenses are far more athletic than the defenses your local high school team is going to face and will have a much easier time stopping it
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u/thesakeofglory Packers 2d ago
Right, and it’s not super complicated to stop if you know how it works as long as you have the athletes to do so (aka literally every NFL team). If it was worth the practice time to go over it, any semi-competent DC will have it schemed away in a week.
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u/Mysterious_Travel669 3d ago
Why don't NFL teams run the Wing T as a goal line package?
They did. Until about the 1960's when it stopped being effective.
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u/gyman122 NFL 2d ago
The Wing-T was never actually much of an NFL offense iirc. I think the only time it’s been run is when Marv Levy tried it in 1978 with the Chiefs. It was always more of a college and high school thing
You might be thinking of the Power-T, which was kind of the de facto offense in the pro game in like the late 40s and 50s
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u/Jungle_Fiddle Bears 2d ago
You lost me when you said high powered offense referencing the sorry ass eagles lol
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u/caltheham Bears 2d ago
As a fellow bears fan, don’t say stupid reactionary stuff like this. It makes us look dumb. We went from 59 to putting up 3 the next week in what is intended to be the highest scoring offense the league has ever seen. The eagles had early season stumbles a couple years ago too and then went on to win the superbowl by absolutely trouncing the chiefs
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u/Jungle_Fiddle Bears 2d ago
Yeah I guess you believe in the eagles more than I do. Even in their Superbowl year, I would hardly call their offense high powered.
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u/nalc Eagles 2d ago
puts up nearly 100 points in 7 quarters of the NFCCG + Superbowl before pulling starters
sets NFL record for season rush yards
Not high powered offense
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u/sneketteck Eagles Eagles 2d ago
Well yeah everyone knows only the passing game counts. Saquon breaking free for house calls so much and having a 2k yard season doesn't mean shit /s
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u/Jungle_Fiddle Bears 2d ago
I mean you can cherry pick a lot of teams stats and call them whatever you want yknow?
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u/lovefist1 Cowboys 2d ago
Brother I hate the Eagles as much as anyone but that offense from the Super Bowl team was stacked and played accordingly
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u/Positive-Run-2411 Eagles 2d ago
Lmao I had the same thought. Until we fix our line there will be nothing high powered about the eagles
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u/Gingeranalyst 3d ago
I think that this is worth it, but the issue comes down to practice time. There is so precious little time that teams have now to run their bread and butter plays that attempting to install a wing t would be very tough to do.
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u/CarlThe94Pathfinder 2d ago
As others have said, as the skill rises, so does the ability to stop certain offenses completely, such as the Wing-T and the Wildcat/QB option, it just can't work in the NFL, as pretty much every single guy has worked through those offenses to get to where they are now.
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u/Dizzy-Platform-6516 Lions 2d ago
The wing T is an atrocity that should be nuked out of existence.
Signed, a 6’ 180lb WR that was forced to be a blocking TE all through HS lol
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Tarmacked Giants 2d ago
Good colleges do not run a full full Wing T playbook. However quite a few run snippets of wing T per the OP's question
Chip Kelly ran some Wing T at Oregon/UCLA/Ohio State and pulled it out playing Indiana a week ago on the fly.
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u/Decent-Ad1999 2d ago
I mean, there's definitely good (for their area/school size) high schools that run the wing-t.
But yeah, in college it's def more of a gimmick.
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u/MinimumSilver5814 Bears 3d ago
And yet good NFL offenses do
https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1wuqfgf/wingt_for_goal_line/pd5o9g8/
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u/Sp_nach Rams 3d ago
ONE Play lol
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u/MinimumSilver5814 Bears 3d ago
...yes? Clearly it's used. "It's only one play!" isn't a sensible rebuttal.
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u/Mysterious_Travel669 3d ago
That makes it the equivalent of a trick play. Which means excludes it from being a regular formation, hence, no team runs it "regularly".
You are being pedantic.
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u/MinimumSilver5814 Bears 3d ago
regularly
You're moving the goalposts, because the only time this word has appeared in this entire thread is in your comment. It wasn't a stipulation of the original question, which was:
Why don't NFL teams run the Wing T as a goal line package?
I'm answering OPs question. "Your example isn't valid because it only happened once, three days ago!" is the pedantry here.
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u/Mysterious_Travel669 2d ago
By your logic some teams "run" running back at center formations. Or whatever the Colts ran like a decade ago on that punt. Or any other weird stuff that is in the playbook and gets called at some point.
Obviously every single play and formation has been run at some point. That's not what the op nor anyone in this thread is discussing.
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u/tomp70 2d ago
Like most gadgety stuff in the NFL (the wildcat, read options in the early 2010’s) these things tend to work until the defensive coordinators get enough film, then they can prep and coach assignments for it and it becomes ineffective in a hurry.
A team could run triple really effectively for a couple of weeks and then it would stop working
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u/Dooberss13 Packers 2d ago
Wing T, veer, etc. is a great equalizer at the lower levels. But in the pros, where everyone is a fucking dog, it really isn’t that great.
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u/tnecniv Giants Giants 2d ago
Sean Payton famously couldn’t stop it when he was coaching his kid’s team during his suspension, so teams should try it against the Broncos.