I don't think Shakespeare ever faced this particular
dilemma but we like to offer this question up to the other team whenever
possible. In the spirit of making things more complicated for our
opponents we use a multiple punt/offense formation which is intended to
force our opponents into a decision. Our quarterback is also one
of our personal protectors in this formation and our punter is an
athlete who can run with the ball a little. In fact at one school
our punter actually was one of our fullbacks.
I'll draw up the diagrams here shortly but the essence
of it was this: We'd line up in an Ace Back offensive formation
with the QB behind center and our punter as a single back. Our
quarterback would look over the defense.
If they were in a standard defensive alignment our
Quarterback would call "SET!" and he and the punter would quickly shift
back to their punt alignments. We'd snap the ball and kick it as
usual. The defense would have to scramble a returner back to field
the punt and fairly often our punter kicked it over his head. It
was rare that we saw much, if any, of a return and most teams were
reduced to trying some kind of wedge blocking scheme since they were a
little confused by our initial alignment.
If they other team lined up initially in punt return,
with one or two returners deep, our quarterback would call "DOWN!"
followed by a quick audible into one of our offensive plays -- typically
either an inside dive run, a sweep or maybe a quick pass like a slant to
one of the split receivers. We encouraged our QB to keep it simple
on this audible since the idea was to snap quickly and take advantage of
the defense being out of position. We didn't want to run counter,
or reverse or some other time consuming play, in other words. We
just wanted to run something that would get us enough yards for the
first down.
Naturally there is some judgment involved here. We
tried to coach the QB to be aware of distance. We're reluctant to
run a play when it's 4th and 12. We're happy to do it when it's
4th and 1.
Check back shortly - I'll try to get the diagrams for
this up soon.