The 5 Points (often called Dice because it looks like the 5 face on a dice) is perhaps the easiest and most effective scheme to teach young players on the grass, and it’s just as effective in football games like Maximum Football, because it attacks the vulnerability of every defensive formation by spreading them as far as possible.

Also, it can be utilized from any offensive formation you want to put on the field, from Goalline to 5 Wide Empty sets, allowing you to use (and have to memorize and practice) just a couple of route setups but then run them out of various formations.

All it requires is learning a few route combinations, understanding the Hi-Lo concept, and then practicing it like crazy. I’m going to provide some illustrated examples from different formations below to show how versatile this one scheme truly is.

Above you see a basic 11 Personnel Gun set, in Maximum Football it’s called Gun Solo. It uses 2 route combinations that each create a Hi-Lo concept on the sidelines with Ohio and Divide. It stretches zones as wide as they possibly can be to expose the gaps and it includes multiple man-beating routes as well, meaning you don’t have to care what coverage your opponent is running, just read it pre-snap and pick your 1-2-3 target progression based on what you see.

For example, if you read Man or Closed coverage (meaning there is a high safety in the middle of the field directly in front of the center) then your target progression would be the Yellow receiver, to the Green receiver, to the Red receiver. Your tailback on the shoot to the flats is going to be your Hot Read if your opponent blitzes, and your final checkdown if your opponent doesn’t.

And if you read Zone or Open coverage (meaning there’s 2 high safeties playing over your tackles) then your read progression might be Blue receiver (hole shot if it’s cover 2 zone), to Yellow receiver (open flat vs. cover 3 zone) to Green receiver, and again your tailback shooting to the flat is your final checkdown.

Totally different play with different route combinations, this time using Smash and Dagger, but achieving the exact same effect, and once again you make a pre-snap read of the defense and pick your 1-2-3 target progression based on what you see.

This time I’m using an I Formation giving us a single route combination with Scissors but again achieving the same effect of stretching the defense by sending routes into the same 5 points to expose zone coverages and using multiple man-beating routes. Read the defense and pick your 1-2-3 targets.

Here’s another setup run from I Form. Hopefully at this point you’re seeing the pattern, it isn’t about what formation you run or even what play, it’s all about targeting those 5 points on the field to stretch the defense, and making sure you include at least two man-beating routes in the mix.

Above is an example from the Singleback formation using the Wolf and Salem route combinations. Just to show once more the formation you lineup in doesn’t matter, if you learn and master a small number of route combinations that you like, then you can apply them to build plays attacking the 5 Points from any formation.

The Air Raid offense is popular, and was basically built upon this scheme. In fact, the staple plays of the Air Raid system all attack the 5 Points as shown below:

With this very basic scheme that can be run from any playbook using any formations, just learn a handful of route combinations that you’re comfortable with which give you Hi-Lo reads, mix in your favorite run plays, and you’ll have an effective offensive scheme.

If you’ve been struggling with Offense this easy scheme should give you an instant and massive improvement.

Don’t hesitate to drop a comment below if you have any questions about the 5 Points scheme or anything you find here on MFPlaybook.