Very interesting two QB system developed in California, apparently some college teams have incorporated small parts of it. Article Website
It's good for an "every now and then" sort of basis but it's not something you want to build your offense on. As I mentioned, the Lonesome Polecat basically was this offense 50 years ago. It bears a near identical resemblance to the swinging gate. It looks like this except that the "K" is a running back and he is lined up with the "LW" on the other side of the formation, and the "LE" is lined up behind the RW. In addition, the traditional usage of this formation was that the formation was mirrored (the loaded side of the line being on the left and the 2 backs on the right) because the QB was right handed and it was more comfortable for him to roll that way. The Polecat, as well as this A-11, is a really good set to throw defenses for a loop every now and then, but it has a ceiling on what it can do for the run game (and to a lesser extent, the pass game). This formation is actually what gave way to the 4-wide set (then called the "double slot") the year after the Polecat was drawn up, and by the same person, Tiger Ellison.
While this is legal in Federation high schools, the NCAA rule for kick formation requires that it be "obvious a kick may be attempted", and the official-unofficial word is that 1st and 10 form your own 20 is not an obvious kicking situation, and running standard plays from the formation most of the time in fact makes it obvious a kick won't be attempted. You can probably get away with it in a Texas high school game because AFAIK, TASO/UIL hasn't made any statement about it and "whaddaya mean that's illegal formation? It's a punt formation! We've been doing it all year! I got it off a website!" is a winning argument with most crews. Then you can pull the "Coach, wrong ball" play on the next down. I'd hate to be the umpire in one of these games trying to figure out who in the middle is a lineman on a down and who is a back, so you know if there's an ineligible downfield. I think it's an interesting exploitation of a loophole in the rule created when they stopped requiring players of the punt team to wear pullover jerseys to have eligible numbers. It seems to be in clear violation of the spirit of the rule, which was to allow the fast guys to cover on the punt team, not to create a situation designed to confuse the defense. It was half-expected NFHS might try to close the loophole, but rumor has it the rules committee liked the competitive balance it brought to smaller teams. We'll see if their attitude changes as the offense spreads. There are a few disadvantages built into the rules: since it's a kick formation, the offense cannot block below the waist during the down (NFHS severely limits cut blocks anyway) and you cannot have a motion or shift that brings one of the players with an eligible number from an ineligible position to an eligible one (so, the coolest thing you could do from this formation, shift players on or off the line before the snap to adjust to the defense, is illegal, though if you do it before the center puts his hands on the ball, and stop for one whole second, you should be ok)
Actually it was interesting when they broke the huddle and ran to the LOS. This was a small Class 1A school and we were lucky in the fact that our guys were VERY athletic-theirs were not. They did a pretty good job of confusing our defense-me included- for the first series, but they did not score. Once we showed our guys where to line up and what to look for it was no contest. However, if they would have had a couple of athletes playing, they could have had some more success. I complemented the coach after the game for his approach. His boys seemed to be having fun with this. I think we won 46-0 or some such. There was another team that year that sporadically used this against us. The problem was that our defenders were in the backfield and were much too fast for anything to develop. This offenes actually looks like watching 6-man football where for the most part the best athlete wins.
