Efectiveness of a pulling off-side guard

Sarnold had several interesting comments about pulling youth backside guards that I thought I would respond to in order to show how the DC Wing T addresses them:

1) it's a difficult block for kids at the age (10-11) I had been coaching to make.

The DC Wing T solves this problem three different ways. First, it uses the puller as a shield (The "wedge" mentioned in my other post) and, second, he blocks an area, not a man (Over the top of the block on the playside backer) and should always get there first. Third, we don't have him kick a DE on the TE side. Due to the DC Wing T line splits, that DE is too far away for a pulling backside guard to kick. Instead, we either "sweep" or "base" block the DE strong. However, we will kick DE's on the SE side with a pulling backside guard because that DE is lined up much tighter. It's yet another advantage to running an SE.

2) Most plays take longer to develop when you want to pull. My observation is that I can get my kids to open a nice hole, but it rarely stays open for long. I'm big on quick hitting plays right now.

These are "slow developing" plays and, the further out you take them, the more slow developing they are. To compensate, the DC Wing T runs "Quick hits" as a changeup.

3) The defense can't key on pulling linemen. Not sure how much of this goes on but we do it to some degree and I'm certain one or two teams did it against us two seasons ago

You can't key guards in the DC Wing T system. About 75% of the time, the reader will get a read that tells him to "crash" when the play is actually going away. The other 25% of the time, even when he gets a correct read, he can't follow anyway as he'll be accounted for by the DC Wing T's GOL blocking rules.

4) Straight ahead blocking allows me to draft bigger linemen. I used to draft small quick linemen and had a lot of success with that at the 12-13 year old level. When I started coaching 10-11 I passed up on some big kids who could not move all that well. The coach who was grabbing all these kids dominated the league with this strategy for two years. This past season we were big all the way across the line (smallest starter was 130 or so which is pretty big for 10-11). Three of my linemen were fast and athletic but we had another three that I would have passed on in previous years and really did an admirable job for us.

The DC Wing T can use either big or small linemen, although small are preferred (At age 10 about 82-102 pounds). Since you never know what you're going to get in the "last round" of the draft, I designed the DC Wing T to accomodate any player (We have MP rules) - whether it's a girl, "Tiny Tim", or "Fat Freddy". That player will play and will contribute to the team. This works well not only for offense, but also defense. When the other team drafts "all big" players for his offense, he's also going to have "all big" players on defense. The DC Wing T uses "all big" players on defense for target practice. Not only do we hammer them from the side - from the side - and from the side some more, but we let "low man" win head up - Or we just don't block them at all and run right by them with "quick hits" and leave them standing. The DC Wing T is a "speed kills" offense.

Now! I didn't write this to say Sarnold is wrong. If he won with what he did, he did right. Nor am I suggesting anyone should run my DC Wing T. I'm simply pointing out that, while I agree that most youth coaches shouldn't pull, I still do it - Because, like Calande, I'm running a youth offense that's designed for it. The above simply shows how it's designed for it.