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The hurry-up offense is an American football offensive which has several strategic applications usually categories as the "two-minute drill" and even a "no-huddle offense". If a team is not employing a "hurry-up offense" they will normally huddle on the field for many seconds and take a while before snapping the ball to begin the play. A team employing this strategy will reduce or eliminate huddle and line up at the line of scrimmage earlier.

Contents 1 Relationship to the Two-minute drill and no-huddle offense 1.1 Two-minute drill 1.2 No-huddle offense 1.2.1 Alternative Huddles 2 How it works 3 Effects on the game 4 Variations and details 4.1 Scripted play calls 4.2 Audible play calls 4.3 History 4.4 80s 4.5 NFL Rule Changes 4.6 References

The Two-minute drill and No-huddle offense are subsets of the Hurry-up offense. They can be employed at the same time but have distinct aspects that make them different. When a team employs a Hurry-up offense it does not have to even be one or the other of those subsets, but can be a mixture and even neither. The "hurry-up" portion of the offense is simply focusing on the team coming to the line of scrimmage at a quicker pace than typical.

Commentators and fans sometimes use the terms "no-huddle offense" and "two-minute drill" interchangeably, but the no-huddle is sometimes used by teams to take the advantage away from the defense at any point in the game.

Some teams like to use it to try to gain momentum in the middle of the game if their offense is struggling. Other teams, like the Indianapolis Colts under Peyton Manning and the Buffalo Bills under Jim Kelly's K-Gun offense, sometimes go almost the whole game without ever getting in a real huddle.

This aspect focuses on game clock time management and is usually employed when the game clock is running low either at the end of the first half or the end of the game (in regulation or overtime).

Generally, the Two-minute drill focuses on conserving the game clock by having really short huddles or no huddles, a short snap count, and plays designed to gain lots of yards while using very few seconds and even stopping the game clock after they are executed. There are times when the Two-minute drill is run and the team wants to take more time off the clock, such as when they have reached a position on the field where it is very likely they will score, to eliminate the remaining time on the clock before they score, but such a situation is rare and may be considered outside the Two-minute drill strategy.

Even though the name of the strategy suggests it is only applicable when there are two minutes or less on the game clock, it is possible for a team to employ the strategy with much more time on the clock. It is dependent on whether they are facing a situation where they are trying to score while under the pressure of time's impending expiration. With the typical offensive drive taking 3-6 minutes of the game clock, if the clock has less than 6 minutes remaining but a team is down by more than two scores, they will probably employ the Two-minute drill.

This aspect focuses on reducing the time spent in a huddle, using alternative huddles, or foregoing a huddle altogether, before lining up on scrimmage. The aspect of game clock management may or may not be important to the team.

When the offense huddles it usually takes 5-15 seconds off of a running game clock. They huddle more than 10 yards away from scrimmage. During that same time substitutions are made by either or both teams (usually the defense reacts to the offense or situation). Coaches and players use this time to discuss tactical details of the plays or game situations.

By making quick huddles, using alternative huddles, or foregoing the huddle altogether, the offense intends to affect many aspects of the game. It inhibits defensive substitutions; puts pressure on the defense to make quick adjustements to strategies; forces the defense to be at a state of high preparation; and other items.

The Bengals developed what is known as the "Sugar Huddle", where they gather within 5 yards of scrimmage with the offensive players facing the defense except for the QB who faces his teammates. Because they are so close to the line of scrimmage and are keeping an eye on the defense they are able to assemble at the line of scrimmage very rapidly if the defense decides to make substitutions or appears disorganized. This was most frequently employed by Boomer Esiason in the later years of his career with the Bengals.

By quickening the pace of play-calling and inhibiting situational substitutions, the hurry-up offense expects that the defense will make an error in personnel, reduce the complexity of their defensive plays, or make a strategic mistake. When employed as a Two-minute drill the focus is more on getting the players set at the scrimmage line and executing plays that take a controlled amount of time off the clock.

Plays can be from either a practiced script, called in from the sideline, or called by the quarterback at the line of scrimmage depending on the situation.

The hurry-up offense revolves around strategic management of the remaining time of the game clock. There are a number of techniques used to stop the clock from running down:

• Running out of bounds;
• Spiking the ball;
• Throwing an incomplete pass;
• Using the two-minute warning;
• Using time outs;
• Drawing penalties or intentional fouls (this is not always smart. If there are only a few seconds left on the clock and someone on a team with no time-outs purposely commits a penalty, there is a 10-second run-off).
• Creating penalties by starting plays as the defense is still switching out players, and has the wrong number of players on the field, or has players offside or not lined up correctly.

A team may run the Hurry-up offense for many reasons other than just to manage the clock at the end of a half or game. The method the plays are called and reasons for their approach vary with the coach and players.

Some teams call multiple plays before they go into a no-huddle situation. They will go through the plays in sequence without having to huddle so it reduces the time spent between plays. This is not always used as part of the Two-minute drill as some times have started off the game with "scripted plays" to put the defense in various situations and evaluate defensive approaches. The Bills and the Oilers in the '90s used this approach.

Peyton Manning (and predecessor Boomer Esiason) employed an approach where the team will immediately line up in a formation and the QB will call audibles to orchestrate the play. There are usually plays that are in position but the amount of adjustment they do at the line of scrimmage means the QB is essentially calling a play.

The "no-huddle" approach to play calling has existed in some form in the game of football since plays were first designed. It was popularized by Ted Marchibroda, former head coach of the Baltimore Colts (1975-79), Indianapolis Colts (1992-95) and Baltimore Ravens (1996-98). He developed "no-huddle" strategies with his college teammate, Mike Orbinati, at St. Bonaventure University. Orbinati had coached at Cardinal Mindszenty High School of Dunkirk, N.Y. Mindszenty implemented the "no-huddle" offense on the high school gridiron long before the strategy was used in the NFL. It was not implemented as a major part of the game strategy until the Cincinnati Bengals head coach Sam Wyche began to heavily rely on the approach.

During the late '80s Wyche took notice that when the offense went to a fast-paced rate of play-calling or running the defense appeared to fatigue quicker than the offense. He then developed an approach to take advantage of heavy-substitution based defensive schemes of that era. There were many specialized individuals and when a team suspects the other team may attempt a pass it was customary to switch out most of the defensive backfield. This would mean the players were more accustomed to solely run or pass-stopping techniques. By quickly substituting or going up to the line before the defense can substitute, the offense hoped to get mismatches where a run player would be forced to play out-of-position. The quick pace of approaching the line would also limit defensive coaches the opportunity to asses their situation, make adjustments and sometimes, even to get their call in to the players (this was before the in-helmet radios were implemented).

The Bengals' use of this ploy proved to be highly successful but also controversial^{[citation needed]}. There are many noted incidents where coaches instructed players to disrupt the pace the offense was calling plays by feigning injuries, interfering with placing the ball at scrimmage as well as general complaints about unsportsmanlike practices to the league officials^{[citation needed]}.

In response to this tactic the NFL instituted many rules related to this tactic some including:

• Allowing the defense ample time for substitutions if the offense does
• If a player's injury causes the play-clock to stop, the player must sit out at least one play
• Charging a time-out to a team when a player is injured inside the two-minute warning of either half.

The tactic was used by the franchise from the late 80s while Sam Wyche was the coach. The main rivals for AFC supremacy were the Buffalo Bills, coached by Marv Levy. Marchibroda was the offensive coordinator of Buffalo. Most of the high-profile games (the various games for AFC Conference titles and regular season games) between the two led to these changes in NFL rules.

Wyche recalled that before the '88 AFC title game the Buffalo Bills had seemingly convinced league officials to penalize the Bengals for running a no-huddle offense. In a statement made to the Bengals' press in 2005, he relayed "The NFL was nice enough to come to us an hour and 55 minutes before the game and tell us we would be given a 15-yard penalty every time we used it. Of course we had practiced it all week. We told them if they wanted to answer to the public for changing the competitive balance of the AFC championship game, that was up to them, but we were using it. They never dropped a flag."

Ironically, the Bills later began to employ the no-huddle (with Jim Kelly) and used it to near-perfection, winning the AFC title four years straight.

• John T. Reed. Football Clock Management. Reed, John T Publishing (September, 1997). ISBN 0-939224-39-9