How to Set Up the Offense for a Sweep in Football

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson, for Expert Village. What we want to talk about now is to properly set up our offense with our line, our wide receivers, our running backs and our quarterback so we can run an effective pitch. We're going to start with the line. We're going to run our tight end to the left side. We want to line up strong to that side. Since our tight end is covering our tackle on this side we want to have our wide receiver back off the line about one yard to the outside. Then we're going to have our guard, our center, our guard and our tackle to complete our line. We have to make sure we have seven men on the line of scrimmage so we're going to put a wide out on this side to the right of the tackle (video demo diagram). Behind the center, of course, you have your quarterback. You can run the sweep out of a couple of different sets. You can run it where you have your fullback behind and to the left of the quarterback and the tailback to the right of the fullback. Or, you can run it out of the I formation, which is what I like to run a lot of my offenses through. You'll have your fullback directly behind the quarterback with the tailback directly behind the fullback. The main thing is to have your line with good splits ready to block to the outside not allowing these guys to penetrate and stop the sweep or the pitch."