The Jet-Fly-Speed ​​Sweep in Youth Soccer

Speed ​​sweep football plays go by many names; Jet Sweep, Fly Sweep, and Speed ​​Sweep and can be effective for certain youth soccer teams.

The speed sweep involves a wing, slot, or flanker running at full speed, taking a pass from the quarterback and sweeping the opposite end from where it came in motion. The play is extremely effective at getting that speedy run back to the rim quickly.

There is even an entire offense based on this concept, called “Flying Crime” which is run by a handful of high schools. Many high school and even college football teams incorporate the jet sweep into their regular offensive sets and series. Today many Wing T, Double Wing, I Formation, Ace Set and even some Single Wing teams have Jet Series plays or add Jet Motion to some of their football playbooks. Unfortunately, most TV announcers mistakenly call this a throwback or a finisher, I have no idea how they get that term from a simple motion sweep action. Most Real football coaches know that this is a Jet, Fly or Speed ​​sweep play.

Once the defense starts to fly to the outside, there are a number of complementary football plays that can be very effective: fullback trap, fullback wedge, “G” play with QB or Fullback, bootleg, and waggle pass. The key is to have very tight mesh falsies on the fullback during regular jet sweep plays. Some teams run the fullback first before the backswing, most have the fullback run his feint or take right after the backswing, and of course have the bootleg QB out of the play. The tighter the mesh between the fullback and motion back, the more effective these football plays will be. Teams that do this well make this a boom boom play, all three backs going in different directions after a slight split second of hand mesh. Now making it work like that is another story.

This game of football can be blocked in a number of ways, with most teams using a “reach” technique with the linemen on the side of the game and the track blocking to the rear. Many youth soccer teams even pull the game side guard and tackle him. With the speed at which the movement man arrives, they feel like they can leave the play-side defensive tackle unlocked and still not be able to get to the play if the movement man gains a little depth on the pass. Some teams lead the man on the move with a running back, others offset a block to that side. Still others at the junior level can even pin the final man at the line of scrimmage with a wing or slot and lock him down with a GOD, Inner Space, Down, Down rule. Regardless of how he executes it, playback will not work unless the backward movement is executed at FULL SPEED. Your movement man must be trained to trust the QB and his reference points and run with everything.

My only personal experience running the Jet Sweep was with a team of 13-14 year olds, running the Double Wing Offense. This was a “B” tier team that had very little talent, size, and players that I got only a week before their first game (he fired the entire coaching staff 1 week before their first game) and on top of head coaching an 8 year old boy. 10 team. We were able to add a speedy player to our team in week 3 of the season, due to very low numbers (17). We were looking for a way to get this speedster into space without throwing the ball since our QB was so inaccurate. We were able to get the move man handover right with a day or two of practice making sure we had our times and benchmarks, but it took a bit of tweaking and reps to do, it’s a series of games. that requires a tremendous amount of precision and time. Our QB would open up to the side of the move and then move away from the move.

The hard part for us was making good quick, tight fakes to the fullback after the handoff or faking to the speed move back and making a tight mesh. Getting it to work at a reasonable level and reducing the time so we could run our fullback traps, G-plays, fullback wedges, bootlegs and waggles took at least 2 weeks. Our wedge never seemed to work very well with this action because it took too long for the wingers to get into the wedge after the back fake. We were able to get our speed back to the outside with this play. Running the jet sweep in close range situations was where we had the most success.

Since the edge is so tight in the double wing offense and the wing is moving at full speed, the movement would start only an instant before the snap. To make sure we didn’t get called “offside for faking center,” we made our moving wing take a very slow deliberate drop step as the start of its movement. Many uniformed umpires think that they must be in motion for one second before the snap, that is incorrect and probably confused with the rule that each player must be in motion for one second before the team can get moving. Doing the slow and deliberate drop step seemed to solve all of those issues. Since we only had one player with speed, it limited how much we could execute this play, as the defense could just position themselves opposite the wing the speed player was set up on and counter the play call.

In 2000, I watched an 8-10 year old youth soccer team in Council Bluffs, Iowa run the Fly Offense as their base with a very tight jet motion. They were a very well coached youth soccer team with speed to burn. They were pretty good, but the same coach in 2002 was running a different offense, so it may depend on talent, like a lot of offenses out there.

If you have the time and speed, it can be helpful to add some squirt-motion plays to your offense. When I say speed, I mean you have two reliable running backs who are in the 95th percentile for the entire league. This is a series based on accuracy, not a silver bullet, so if your offensive grassroots play execution isn’t great, this could be a huge waste of time. Coaching youth soccer well means you have to decide if you have the talent and if you want to take valuable practice time to add something like this to your offense. For me it made sense for just one season, but I haven’t closed the door to doing more in the future, especially if I have two reliable players with very good speed.