Attacking the split-4 with the stack I. (offensive strategy for attacking split-4 defense in football)

During the 1970s the split-4 was the predominant defense used in the Wichita City League. We played the defense ourselves and didn't lose very many games.

One game we did lose, however, was to a team who came out in a Stack-I set and gave us a clinic on how to attack the Split-4. We immediately installed the set into our offense, and it has been an integral part of our multi-set system ever since.

Today we use it against 8-man-front teams (especially Split-4) as a goal-line/short yardage offense, as a bad weather offense, and finally as a kill-the-clock offense in our present system.

We discovered many ways of aligning our offensive personnel. The best, we found, was out of our two tight-end package. Both Y's were expected to be able to play the stack-back position, which allowed us to shift into the unbalanced set shown in Diag. 1.

We did not change the alignment or stance of our fullback from our normal I when we aligned in the Stack. We aligned in a 3-point stance, heels at four yards.

Our stack-back aligned in a 3-point stance halfway between the fullback and the quarterback.

Our tailback aligned seven yards deep in a 2-point stance.