The spread goes down in Illinois...

Any great executing offense or somethng that works out of the norm is great to watch IMHO< I dont really care what type of offense it is. But even from a guy that has run the DW and appreciates its intricate blocking, I get bored with it.

My favorite college offenses to watch this year:
Navy
Oregon (before the QB got hurt)
West Virginia
Kansas ( not a great performance last night)
Missouri
Florida
Texas A&M ( I like Frans option even if its not perfect all the time)
TExas TEch

You know what I would love to see, is a spread team's practice (air raid especially). I am interested in the drills that get receivers and QBs on the same page and the teaching of levels and reads. The install of the offense would be very interesting to understand.

Wildcat,

One particular play jumps out at me in terms of that Tuscola game and it was on one Go route, they rolled Wienke to the side he was throwing to. If I recall correctly, the ball was dropped by the FS (but should have been picked).

It just seemed like an odd play to run against a single safety deep because you're almost leading the safety to where the ball could be going. Especially because Wienke has such a strong arm, it seemed to me that a dropback would have been much more sound.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps they were running a Flood to that side or something and the QB just decided to launch it deep.

Let's look at the evolution of the certain positions on defense in recent years......namely, that of Strong Safety.


Less of a 4th LBer, more of a CB hybrid now........which means the kid you would play 10 years ago at SS is now your Mike, and your 10 years ago Mike is now your 9 tech.


I think defenses (in an attempt to catch up with the spread), are shuffling their personnel to make themselves faster as a unit.


just a thought

Columbia's QB had a partially torn MCL and couldn't run any of there option game. I thought Columbia was going to make a game out of it until the fake punt from the 7 yard line. Did you catch the coach say it wasn’t his call? I wonder if it was an audible buy the punter or if one of his coaches called it. Also thought 3a was as weak as I have ever seen this year. Ever year there seems like there is a team that everone is afraid to play but this year no one really amazed me. Of course I say that after a round two exit

Anyway,You know the deal with the kids from Tuscola, wich hurt their chances or repeating.
Metamora ran the gun quit a bit and was successful but I miss parts of that game. AD and JAC were going to win regardless who they played.

There's an equilibria of offenses. The spread "exploded" because there was a dearth of teams running it; people didn't have good information on how to defense it; defenders weren't coached up in playing man and zone and covering the lanes and whatnot. Now - and this will continue for a couple years before it peaks - there are probably too many spread teams.

So I think the answer to wildcat's original post is twofold: (1) Yes, defenses (particularly the good ones) are better at defending the spread because they have to be and they see it more and more. And (2) so many teams run the spread that, pick me a weekend and a region, and I can show you X number of spread teams that got "shut down." In 1997 it was like Purdue, Northwestern, and Kentucky. Now your grandma's flag football team is running the mesh and the zone read.

Chris,

Do you think there are too many because it's become a trend and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon? For a while there the Spread (and I'm sorry for referring to it in such a general way because I know there are too many variation to just refer to it as "the spread") was known to be an offense that comparatively had a better chance of being more explosive and getting you more points. Do you think that is the case anymore?

Also, because I respect your intellect, do you have any thoughts on what the evolution from the current spread might be?

Thanks for the compliments. I've probably been banging this drum for a couple years and probably the spread is going to continue to grow for awhile before we see it recede. But don't get me wrong, I think the "spread stuff" is great and sound and, although there's plenty of bandwagon, people got on board because they were moving the ball and scoring points with it.

My larger point re: the spread is that it will stop (and is already approaching this) being an "equilizer offense" that you turn to so you can compete against the big boys. Instead the spread more and more is an "amplifier" offense. What I mean by this is say you get in 5-wides, 3x2, and you want to run some pass play. Say Smash or curl/flat or all slants. The problem arises when they have 5 cover guys better than your 5 receivers, and their pass rushers can beat the OL.

In this case you haven't "put your kids in position to win," instead you've put them in 1 on 1 matchups they are bound to lose.

The run game can suffer from similar defects. Overall I think the zone-read itself is an incredibly sound play. Bootlegs haven't gone away in 70 years of the "tee" offense, and the zone read, to me, is simply a dynamic bootleg. And the other great thing is you have great faking between one runner going one way and another going the other. I.e. the Pat White/Steve Slaton phenomena - who do you watch for?

The zone-read/gun-option triple, on the other hand, has structural problems (or just weaknesses) that make it overall less effective than the tradition triple option (primarily relating to the difference between a dive-back with the playside combos and just reading the backside DE).

The other phenomenon is just information. If I am a DC, but I've never faced the spread, and next year I face three spread teams. So in the offseason I find this site...well...let's just say that I'm glad I live in 2007 instead of 1977, or even 1987, or hell, 1997. There's also more clinics, books, manuals, downloadable playbooks, etc.

One of the points I made related back to the college football season when Texas/Vince Young won the Nat'l Title. The question was how can you be "different" when you run exactly what Ohio St., Penn St., and Texas run? And each was in a BCS game?

Where things will go? I can't be sure. My guess is you will see teams go farther on one end of the creativity (i.e. see Mizzou, with the plethora of unbalanced stuff, screens, jets, pistol used properly as a changeup, quicks, etc). And then a few "spread" staples will just always be there for everyone. The zone read is going to be used by plenty of pee wee teams in the coming years.

And then from there I think the legacy of these few years is just the change in the quarterback position. I think you have two phenomena's, (1) the increased line of scrimmage responsibility for QBs, coupled with (2) more and more QBs who can throw and are athletic. For the second factor thank guys like Darin Slack. The coaching is (slowly) getting better at all levels.

I don't know if I answered your questions. If the question is whether you can be "new" or "different" by being spread the simple answer is no. Maybe you can if you adapt a few more wrinkles (if you want wrinkles look up the wild bunch). But even Ted has to say, hey, when I first started drawing this up there were a handful of teams ANYWHERE who did this stuff. Now it's slowly coming around.

Were you at mrigg? I coach at Red Bud 2a this year but mostly been a 3a team. We run the spread for 2 years and I love it. Historically we have been bad 20 years since last post season and this year we were 10-2. I learned a lot from this site and that's why I installed the spread 2 years ago. Kids love it.

I'd also like to hear why you think the triple isn't sound out of the gun. I actually think it's safer and easier than a traditional triple from under center. Also running it out of the gun you don't need an exceptional athlete at QB, just one that can make a read and run fairly well. Ofcourse a Tim Tebow woould be great but they are few and far between.

I wrote about it in another thread so maybe can track that down. It's more of a RB path/blocking scheme issue. If you run the triple from say, splitback veer or the Nebraska I or the wishbone you have your OL block down to get the double teams and, for your dive back you read the DE. Then if you pull you look for that second back on the pitch. If you give it to the dive-back because of alignment and the guy you are reading you are essentially ensuring about 4 yards.

In other words, the reason the triple works so well is that you overpower everyone else with the combos and you do not block the most dangerous man (the DE) and instead read him to "block" him by making him always wrong. What this does is immediately give you a numbers advantage (many double teams) and, with proper reading, ensures a perfect block. Both the dive back and the QB should have very clean lanes with the OL crushing the playside guys and your QB making the DE wrong every time. Then you put in the pitch man and you have even more success.

Conversely on the gun-option all you're reading is the pursuit guy. It's more of a safety net issue than it is giving you a true playside advantage. By reading the backside DE on the zone, you're just making sure there's no backside pursuit. In other words, this isn't an "option" per se, it's just an improved bootleg where you take the guesswork out of whether the backside pursuit is going to crash.

Does that make sense? So my point is that the gun option, including the gun-triple, is really just a playside run with a souped up bootleg action to make sure the backside pursuit stays at home. If you hand it off to the zone runner there's no such guarantee that the guy who stays to watch your QB was even going to be the biggest threat on the play, and it's not certain either whether the zone-read/gun-triple gives you more playside double teams are not.

The one advantage with the pistol is that you can more easily have the dive back go to the playside so you can get these same advantages.

So I'm not saying the gun-triple is unsound, but I am saying that it is not structurally set up in a way that I see it as a "if we execute, we will always be successful" type offense in the same way that, say, the Academies have done with their option games. It's good but it's not that good.

In terms of the pistol I just don't think it's an "offense," it's just a particular formation.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. There are plenty out there who would disagree with me I'm sure. (Like those who run the gun-triple I guess! )

Spread Attack, I never could put my finger on it, but that begins to make a lot of sense ot me how the Gun Option is different. One thing I could never figure out how to do out of the gun, is to run midline option. Philisophically, I think it is impossible. So, my next question is, "can you run midline option out of the pistol?"

Perhaps, I should address this question in the "offense" section, but I am very curious about this aspect of the gun or pistol.

Great post, coach.