There's a gimmick offense that has legs in California that puts all other gimmick offense to shame.

Introducing the A-11 Offense, which even has a website devoted to spreading its extreme spread influence. It's described as such:

"An innovative offense blending aspects of the spread option, west coast & run-and-shoot. Your team can use the A-11 as a "package" to supplement your own offense & feature up to eleven players as potential threats, and even two quarterbacks in the shotgun."

What originators Kurt Bryan and Steve Humphries forgot to add to their description is that it also blends aspects of recess playground and college intramural flag football. It's as frightening as the image above appears.

Like most gimmick offense, it's the product of a school with less talent and bodies looking for an edge against the big boys. It's Boise State's final drive against Oklahoma on steroids. It's every sandlot quarterback's dream creation.

Bryan and Humphries are the head coach and director football operations, respectively, for Piedmont High School in California who created this offensive package, while thinking up some new ideas for their smaller school. Presumably, several brews were involved.

These trailblazers first implemented the offense last fall and it showed signs of success on the high school level. The Piedmont Highlanders went 7-4,

I think everyone is still trying to figure out what this is all about, which is a big factor in its success. Isn't the point of an offense to confuse a defense? This should do the trick. Here's a more thorough explanation:

"The A-11 features up to all eleven players wearing an eligible receiver jersey number, either 1-49, or 80-89, with two quarterbacks in shotgun formation, and with nobody under center - therefore meeting the criteria for a scrimmage-kick formation. In their base sets, Piedmont has a center and a tight end on each side, and three wide receivers to the right, and left respectively. By spreading the potential eligible receivers across the entire field, it forces the defense to account for every possible receiver on each play. Of course, on any given play, only 5 of those players can go downfield to catch a pass, and the rest remain ineligible to catch a downfield pass on that particular play."

Got it? OK, maybe some video will help:



Looks fairly straightforward. What's even scarier is that 30-40 college coaches have contacted Bryan and Humphries for more information and plan to include at least one option for this offense this fall.

As we know from the WAC and other mid-major conferences, a gimmick offense can work extremely well. But thus far, it's yet to prove consistent success in the BCS. The spread option, however, is a different story.

Do you think football will evolve into the A-11 offense?

Personally, I think the powers that be would alter the rules to maintain the original integrity of football and enforce that five players must remain side-by-side on the line. I'd rather not see this catch on and turn real football into flag football.

A-11 offense could be the future of football [Rivals High]