Spread Offense Sweeping Northern Virginia High Schools

Sometimes, being a copycat pays off. Just look at high school football in Northern Virginia.

As college and professional offenses alike have lit up the scoreboards using what’s called the “spread offense,” coaches throughout this area have adopted the system’s techniques to lift their teams to new heights.

The system functions by putting more receivers on the field than a defense can reasonably keep track of, “spreading” out opposing players until they ultimately make a mistake. All the offense needs is a good quarterback to deliver the ball quickly, and the team can advance down the field with lightning fast precision.

Lake Braddock Secondary School’s head coach, Jim Poythress, is just one of these innovators. After spending years losing to powerhouses like West Springfield or T.C. Williams, Poythress saw the spread as a way to get a leg up on the competition.

“We would finish 7-3, 6-4 every year, and we just needed a way to improve,” Poythress said. “It became apparent that it was easier to develop one really good quarterback rather than a whole offense.”

The spread has become popular partly due to the fact that it doesn’t require players with pro potential to make it work; they just need to be athletic and learn the system.

As Poythress began to try to install the offense, he looked to one of its earliest adopters in the area: former West Springfield head coach Bill Renner.

Renner’s offense had helped his quarterbacks pass for nearly 12,000 yards in the three years he’d used it, along with earning the team back-to-back district titles.

When Renner left West Springfield, Poythress convinced him to spend a year to get the spread working at Lake Braddock.

Although Renner would depart after one year for North Carolina to watch his son, Bryn Renner, play quarterback for the Tar Heels, Lake Braddock has been using the system ever since.

“It really helps you get the matchups you want,” Poythress said. “It’s a system designed to find weaknesses.”

The spread’s helped the Bruins win district titles in 2009, 2010, and 2012, and they advanced to the state championship game under the leadership of quarterback Michael Nebrich in 2009. Before the recent success, Lake Braddock’s last district title was in 2001.

“Obviously, you have to have a good quarterback to run the system, like Nebrich, but I think you can see the fruits of our labor in the results of the last couple years,” Weiler said.

Lake Braddock and West Springfield aren’t the only schools to win using the spread in recent years. Chris Beatty began using the system back in 1998 with North Stafford High School with incredible results.

“At the time, no one was throwing the ball, so no one defended the pass very well,” Beatty said. “But I didn’t care what everyone else was doing, I wanted to throw it.”

Beatty left the school in 2000, but went on to use the spread to coach players like future NFL star Percy Harvin, and ultimately earned the attention of college coaches for his innovation.

“I attribute a lot of my success to the offense,” Beatty said. “I got my first job as Hampton’s offensive coordinator due to the spread, and if it wasn’t for its effectiveness, I wouldn’t be here.”

Beatty’s currently on staff at Wisconsin as the team’s wide receivers coach, and he’s acutely aware of the system’s growing influence both in college and elsewhere.

“When the NFL started using it, that was when I knew things had changed,” Beatty said. “With as stubborn as they are, that’s when it was clear that there was a real place for it.”

Yet for all the system’s benefits, some coaches are still resistant to using the spread, shunning it for pro-style offenses or the ancient single wing. Despite the spread's inherent advantages, it’s also incredibly complex. 

“It’s definitely not the easiest offense to wrap your head around,” Weiler said. “It takes an incredible amount of memorization, especially if you initially learned something else. I know I spent every waking moment trying to memorize the terms at first.”

Some criticized the system as a fad initially, but the success of these teams has helped ensure that the spread is here to stay in Northern Virginia.

“I’d really encourage more coaches to use it,” Weiler said. “It used to be that it was difficult just to get kids to come try out for football, but now we can’t keep them away because we score so many points.”