Franklin Pierce football undefeated, beating opponents with run-heavy Power T
Bored with endless time on his hands during the pandemic, Cary Nagel fell down the rabbit hole. At the time, he was the head football coach at Tenino High School and was looking for something to spark his program. He watched football clinics online to occupy his time, listening to high school football coaches from around the country detail their schemes.
Someone caught his attention. An older coach from somewhere in Michigan was talking about the Power T offense.
“He was saying it’s great because there’s not a lot of need for a quarterback,” Nagel said this week during practice at Franklin Pierce High School, where Nagel now serves as the offensive coordinator.
He started researching and reaching out to coaches. Eventually, a coach from Wisconsin agreed to talk with Nagel about the Power T.
“After about an hour, I was sold,” Nagel said.
He installed the offense at Tenino and it quickly paid dividends. Nagel led Tenino to a 10-2 record in 2021 behind Oregon State commit Takari Hickle. Nagel’s teams quickly grew a reputation for piling up hundreds of yards per game on the ground. He was winning big, and now coaches around the country were calling him for advice.
“I kind of got in the cult,” Nagel said, laughing.
Nagel worked as a coordinator with Trevor Hanson in 2016 before taking the Tenino job. Hanson, who was the defensive coordinator on that staff, eventually landed the head coach position at Franklin Pierce while Nagel was at Tenino. Last year, Nagel joined Hanson’s staff at Franklin Pierce.
Hanson actually started running the Power T at Franklin Pierce a year before Nagel joined the staff. Things weren’t working offensively and Hanson was inspired by Nagel’s success at Tenino.
“We went from a 1-9 program to a 5-5 team the next year,” Hanson said.
Then 7-3 last year with Nagel on board. This year, Franklin Pierce is off to a 5-0 start and has won every game in blowout fashion, outscoring opponents 258 to 28.
RUN THE BALL
Franklin Pierce quarterback Jeremiah Orcutt has thrown a total of 17 passes through five games this year. The team’s ball carriers have combined for 186 carries, rushing for 28 touchdowns and averaging 9.8 yards per carry. The Cardinals are averaging 363 yards per game on the ground.
The Power T offense is essentially the opposite of a spread offense. It features five linemen, two tight ends, a quarterback under center, and three running backs in the backfield. The offense is heavy on deception, using fakes to make it difficult for defenses to figure out who is carrying the ball on any given play.
“Tackle everybody!” is something Hanson and Nagel are used to hearing from opponents.
“It’s reflective of the guys here,” said left guard Anton Aloisio. “It’s a really physical offense and there’s a lot of hard-nosed guys on the team, tough guys. … (It takes) everybody doing their job, everybody fitting in like a puzzle.”
It’s not for the faint of heart, though. Running back Bryson Allen (682 yards, eight touchdowns) is the team’s leading rusher. He gets hit even when he doesn’t have the ball.
“I get tackled every play,” Allen said.
The quarterback is a threat to run in the Power T, too. Orcutt has 177 yards and four touchdowns on just 25 carries through five games. And when the defense starts stacking the box, there’s an occasional pass play. Orcutt is averaging 26.4 yards per completion this season.
“Passes for us are like strikes,” Hanson said. “We want them to go for 50 yards and a touchdown every time we call a pass play because they’re loading the box.”
It’s a different philosophy, according to Nagel.
“It’s a different way to think about the pass game,” he said. “Everybody is trying to spread everybody out, but we want to bring all those DB types and corners into the box and we want to see if they can play some football.”
RUN-HEAVY OFFENSES WORK IN HIGH SCHOOL
Franklin Pierce isn’t the only program featuring a run-heavy offense. Several perennially successful programs run the Wing-T — sort of a cousin to the Power T — and have had success. In Class 2A, seven-time state champion Tumwater runs the Wing-T. In 3A, Bellevue runs the Wing-T and in 4A, Kennedy Catholic runs the Wing-T under Pat Jones, but also runs a spread, a nightmare combination for opposing defenses.
The Wing-T is similar to the Power T, but features a wing back lined up near the tight end, rather than a third running back behind the quarterback. Passing plays are less rare in the Wing-T than in the Power T, also.
“From our perspective, it’s not quarterback-dependent,” said Tumwater coach Willie Garrow. “It’s great when we have one. If we have a QB that can throw it, we’ll do it. But in some years, you might not have a kid like that at your public school.”
The Wing-T is more common at smaller schools, which often have lower participation numbers and fewer star athletes.
“Public schools at lower levels don’t have all those kids walking the halls, those extremely tall athletic types,” Garrow said. “They don’t have to be super tall or super fast, but if they’re tough, they kind of fit into that mold. Fullbacks, halfbacks, wing backs, we can use them in that spot.”
Garrow saw Franklin Pierce during a camp over the summer and walked away impressed.
“I thought they were physical,” he said. “They had some kids in the backfield who ran really hard. … I was impressed with the way they got downhill and the physical nature with how they played. That’s kids who have bought into a system.”
The one potential downside to a run-heavy system is that by nature, it’s one-dimensional. If a run-heavy team goes down by two or three scores and the clock is ticking, it can be harder to mount a comeback.
But at Franklin Pierce and Tumwater, the pros are outweighing the cons.
“It’s really nice for me to see these kids have success,” Nagel said. “This is a rough area out here. These kids need some wins and need some successes and it’s really great being able to coach with my buddy and him having some success and us share it together.”
Hanson echoed the sentiment.
“These kids only get one high school experience and we want to make it the most for them,” he said. “We believe we can win running this system.”
