A reader has forwarded to us an intriguing story from Rivals.com regarding a new offense that has been developed on the high school level.

It’s called the A-11, and it’s designed to spread the field by making the defense believe that literally any of the players can end up with the ball in their hands.

The attack is the product of the brain of Kurt Bryan, the coach at Piedmont (Calif.) High School. 

The base formation involves a center flanked by two tight ends, with three receivers to the right and three to the left.  And two quarterbacks in the backfield.  (Jon Gruden likes it already.)

“Going into the [2007] season, we thought that either we’re going to get fired or we’re going to transform the game because of the innovative aspects and the wealth of ideas,” Bryan said.  “Luckily, it turned out to be the latter.”

Though we’re having trouble imagining the thing working in pro football, we can see some of the college teams giving it a try, possibly as a change-of-pace attack aimed at creating confusion and speed-based mismatches.

There’s a web site devoted to the offense, and a quick review of it addressed some of our basic questions and concerns.  Meanwhile, we’re going to try to figure out whether the formation could be used at the NFL level without violating any of the applicable rules.