Big Ten and the Spread offense

[Jaxbuck]

We've all heard it a million times already, Dick Wadriguez is going to bring the B10 into the 21st century with his spread offense(funny how the media considers it chic when its really just a combination of the old single wing and triple option).

I even recall a derisive line from Kieth Jackson during the Fiesta Bowl when CK took a direct snap and plowed straight ahead...Jackson said "Its like single wing football" and he wasn't trying to be flattering. At that time the media experts considered Miami's pro-style offense "modern" football.

Fast foreward to 2008 and the experts have changed their tune, the pro style stuff is blase, snapping directly to the QB in the shotgun and having him run or hand off to the back is "modern" football.

So anyway after watching PSU's backup QB in the Alamo I got to thinking about how many schools run the spread in the B10. I would have been better off listing the schools that don't/won't run it. I listed in by types of spread and made the assumption on PSU based on what I saw in the Alamo.

Pure zone read option teams
scUM
Illinois
PSU
Indiana

Run first spread
Northwestern
MSU(TBD with Dantonio once he gets it built his way)

Pass happy dink and dunk spread
Purdue
Minny

Pro style or teams that still have full backs
OSU
Wisky
Iowa(they don't really have an offense but from what little I saw)

Iowa is a team I'm not sure where to put, much like MSU. I think with the talent issues he has KF is more likely to end up a spread to run team and MSU is more likely to go back to Pro Style once Dantonio gets the roster made over from the spread days of JLS.

So when you really look at it only 2-3 teams in the B10 don't run the spread as their base offense. Just one more thing to keep in mind when you hear the chimps in the media running their necks.

 

[kippy1040]

So very true. Randy Walker came in at NorthWestern and drove us nuts with his "Spread" back in starting with 2001 season. The spread is very puzzleling offense and you must have all the right pieces of fit. One of the media people here in J-ville is hounding me to death on the ventures of DickWad and how are days are over with beating Michigan. Thats when I blew up at him and really started me going and getting ready for the N/C game. I was
just so charged up for that and I wanted a win so badly.

 

[leroyjenkins]

Is it safe to say that teams run this style of offense bc its easier?? (see the direction of a lot of high schools), or because of personnel? From my humble observations, I always thought teams play this way bc they have a few good players and kinda try to catch the other team off balance. Thoughts............

 

[Taosman]

Teams that run versions of the spread/read option have given us headaches. 2005 Penn State 2007 Illinois.
We STILL haven't learned to consistently stop it. That's why people try to run it against us.
That's why Big Ten teams want to run it. They have seen it work when they had the athletes to run it well.
Eventually, we should get better at defending it. One hopes. :(
But, there will be games where we will just have to out score teams.

 

[GrizzlyBuck]

Nice thread Jax

I was just thinking about the indefensible spread offense and wondered about next years early season rankings and which of those teams run predominantly spread offenses.

tOSU - multiple formation pro style
UGa -ditto
OU - ditto
UF - definate spread, but if they had quality RB's they would probably be a little less spread and a little more power
USC - multiple formation, pro style
LSU - ditto
Wisky - smashmouth I

Now a lot of teams do run the spread, but it appears to me that if it was the do-all end-all, then the premiere programs in the country would all be jumping on board.

It will be interesting to see when rr does have elite athletes whose strength is running the spread, if tOSU and others in the B10 will have to go with slightly smaller LB's who move a little better (ala Woody, making safeties into LBs and big LBs into DE's, etc)

I still think that the spread allows teams to compete against superiorly talented teams, but it has many many limitations. Hopefully we'll see some of them next year when rr's scUM plays in foul midwest weather and is laying the pigskin on the turf 5-6 times a game.

 

[MrsB]

Nice thread Jax

I was just thinking about the indefensible spread offense and wondered about next years early season rankings and which of those teams run predominantly spread offenses.
.

Great thread Jaxbuck.
It's not indefensable to pitt.

 

[GrizzlyBuck]

After seeing some of the replies, I thought I'd give a few more cents worth

I think rr and the Illini's version of the spread is very, very dangerous IF the QB can do more than run. If the QB completes enough passes to keep defenses honest, then it keeps running lanes open. Juice had an outstanding game against the Buckeyes, not so much agains USC. Pat White is not a very adept passer, so when WVU ran up against an athletically equivalent team, they lost, because he was unable to keep the defenses honest.

The spread is a great equalizer, if the QB can pass AND if he can stay healthy through all the punishment he incurs. That may be why the premiere programs do not run it (also why the NFL O-Coords treat it like the plague) I would think you need at least two QBs adept at running it because over the length of a season it takes luck to stay healthy, just ask Tebow about his shoulder and Pat White about his entire body, Juice got dinged up as well, just not against tOSU

 

[Jaxbuck]

To me the limitations/benefits of the spread are the same as the triple option teams ran as recently as the 80's.

Pro's
very hard to prepare for, places a lot of stress on the defense and keeps them from being able to "cheat" ie makes them defend everything. IN THEORY if the passing option(of run, pitch, pass) were as fully effective as the other two it would be an amlost indefensible attack.

Con's
this is where theory sperates from reality. In theory everyone would be good at everything. All coaches know that defense and special teams are just as important as offense to winning so why are teams so commonly outstanding in one area and deficient in others?

The answer is time constraints and priorities. There are only so many practice hours, you have to focus on something and its always to the detriment of another thing. The zone read version of the spread is just as much a run first offense as the triple option was and because of that the passing part of it suffers from the priority issue. Option run games require tons of reps in practice...tons.

Why did all the option attacks of the 70's and 80's never produce a great NFL passing QB? Were the players any less athletic? Maybe to a small degree. Were the coaches less sophisticated? Hardly. They knew then just as they know now if they could pass well out of the triple option the defense wouldn't stand a chance.

Its the same now as it was then. Option QB's take too much physical pounding and have to spend too much time practicing the run part of the option to be great passers. Now people will bring up Tebow and I say he's the exception more so than the rule but you saw in the Bowl game how pedestrian of a passing attack they had when the run option was eliminated.

To me the pro style multiple formation system is always the best if you have year in and year out superior athletes. Its built to do everything out of one offense. A power run game sets up the play action pass game and you can do it out of the same sets and even off of the same plays. One year it can be more pass oriented and others it can be more run oriented without changing who you are fundamentally.

My perfect system would have a legit pass first threat QB thats highly mobile with a power run game behind him. To me thats the indefensible offense ie the 1994 49ers with Steve Young and Ricky Watters.

It defeats everything a defense tries to do to dictate to an offense. You can't say we'll take away the run and make the QB beat us, he'll freakin shred you. You can't say we'll pressure the QB and make him get rid of it, he's mobile, he'll get outside and make huge plays. You can't sit in the nickel and drop 8 all day long to take away the pass, the RB will go for 200 yards.

If Mr Pryor has NFL aspirations, and I'm sure he does, and he's smart, which I'm sure he is, he better want to be Steve Young more than Vince Young. I'm not the first to point it out but JT's system will prepare you to be Steve, RRs system will send you down the Vince path.

 

[buckeyes_rock]

I think rr and the Illini's version of the spread is very, very dangerous IF the QB can do more than run. If the QB completes enough passes to keep defenses honest, then it keeps running lanes open. Juice had an outstanding game against the Buckeyes, not so much agains USC. Pat White is not a very adept passer, so when WVU ran up against an athletically equivalent team, they lost, because he was unable to keep the defenses honest.

Absolutely! When you get a guy at QB who can throw the ball well, the spread is very dangerous. Problem for these offenses (it seems) is that rarely does a great passer want to run that type of offense. Passers (if they're smart) don't want to get killed running the football and getting crushed by LBs all day. They're potential money one day is in throwing the football. That's not to say that you can't take a great athlete and in 3-4 years he learns how to be a good passer along with running (if he can hold up that long)

Now Tebow turned out to be a better passer than I thought he'd be. He's what makes Florida's offense hard to stop. But you don't find many athletes like Tebow. And if he takes 2 more seasons of getting pounded running the football. Well...he better start throwing a lot more and running much less.

 

[sandgk]

An interesting description of how to defend the spread - by Kerry Coombs, then Head Coach with Colerain.

Though some of the assumptions about relative athletic prowess are shifted when going from High School to college the core disciplines Coombs espouses likely remain true. As do the core rationale he describes for why to run a spread offense -

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]When trying to make a plan to stop the spread offense, the first question you must answer is, “Why do teams run this offense?” The first thing the offense wants to do is stretch defenseshorizontally. It gives the offense the opportunity to widen the field. It forces the defense to defend more space. [/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]The spread offense allows teams to utilize skilled players on the flank. In this offense, the coach is allowed to involve more players on the outside and get them into open space. In our conference, there are a number of teams that have at least one great athlete. They want to get him isolated on the flank and get the ball in his hands.[/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]The offense wants to create mismatches. I define that as getting fast players vs. slow players, tall players vs. short players, or mismatches in the number of players. They want to get four receivers matched up against two or three defenders.[/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]Coaches who run the spread offense want to screw up your communication on defense. They want to take away the defensive coordinator’s ability to communicate with his defense. They want to take away the communication that the defenders have with one another.[/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]When a team runs a spread offense, they take the pressure off the offensive line. That really surprised me to my way of thinking, but the spread coaches explained to me that they were eliminating the number of defenders they had to go against in the box. They want to get their offensive line in a one-on-one situation with your defensive front. They want to eliminate all the stunts that a defense can run.[/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]They want to restore the playmaking ability of the quarterback. Spread coaches want to get the quarterback’s playmaking ability back into the game plan. The kid that is taking the snap and touching the ball every time is going to be one of the best athletes on the team.[/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]In the spread offense, it becomes easier to identify defenses. Today, one thing Coach Tressel talked about was how defenses are getting eight and nine people into the box. The spread offense allows your team to identify those defenses quicker. It forces the defense to declare and show what defense they are playing. That allows the offense to make their checks quicker and lets them see how many defenders the defense is going to put in the box.[/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]The spread offense creates running lanes. I was amazed at how many coaches told me they got into the spread offense to run the ball. They create running lanes and seams by widening the field from boundary to boundary, and they get as few defenders in the interior of the field as possible.[/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]The last reason is the most important reason and it is the reason the offense is so difficult to defend. The use of the quarterback as a runner gives the offense a full running game in the backfield with four wide receivers. If you are playing a team that has a quarterback that cannot run the ball effectively in the spread offense, you can beat them handily. If the quarterback can run and make plays, the spread offense will give you fits.[/FONT]​

[FONT=arial, Arial, Helvetica]You must have a plan to counteract the advantages of the spread offense. The first thing we do is play speed on defense. Our players on defense can run because we select them with speed in mind. We don’t have any faster players than you do. But, we play our fastest players on defense.[/FONT]​

It is not explicitly about getting away with using lesser players to overcome a more athletically talented defense - though clearly it demands having highly gifted athletes to provide a solid defense agaisnt the spread.

Though very long that article by Coombs is great reading, at times brutally candid about his earlier mistaken approaches to defending against the spread.

 

[usc2010]

One problem I see with the spread is it seems QBs running the offense are tending to be more injury prone ie Dixon and White. When you get a QB out on the outside, he's going to take some shots are we saw how devestating that can be as it probably kept Oregon from winning a national title or at least winning the PAC-10

 

[Jaxbuck]

An interesting description of how to defend the spread - by Kerry Coombs, then Head Coach with Colerain.

Though some of the assumptions about relative athletic prowess are shifted when going from High School to college the core disciplines Coombs espouses likely remain true. As do the core rationale he describes for why to run a spread offense -

It is not explicitly about getting away with using lesser players to overcome a more athletically talented defense - though clearly it demands having highly gifted athletes to provide a solid defense agaisnt the spread.

Though very long that article by Coombs is great reading, at times brutally candid about his earlier mistaken approaches to defending against the spread.

Two things this spread trend will do to the B10 imo:

1) Give everyone more reps against it thus making it more familiar and "easier" to defend.

2) Make B10 defenses smaller and faster in general, as the coach in that article pointed out. Another reason why I would not stop running a more traditional power run game oriented offense if I were OSU or Wisky( and I think MSU&Iowa will follow that trend as well).

 

[HailToMichigan]

Look at it this way, does the perception of the SEC ever hang on Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, or South Carolina? By the same token the fact that Purdue and Northwestern have been running the spread for a while isn't going to change perceptions of the Big Ten. It takes a change at a Big Ten banner-carrier to do that.

 

[ashlandbuck]

One problem I see with the spread is it seems QBs running the offense are tending to be more injury prone ie Dixon and White. When you get a QB out on the outside, he's going to take some shots are we saw how devestating that can be as it probably kept Oregon from winning a national title or at least winning the PAC-10

Exactly. This is why I believe it will only be a "Trend".

Defensive players are students of the game and they saw what happens when you take a play making Qb out of the game just as we all saw what happened with WVU and Oregon. Take the play maker out and the offense completely falls apart. As a result, I think players will put a huge bullseye on the QB's with the hope of putting them out of action.
It is exactly why you don't see the option/spread in the NFL. QB's will get destroyed.

 

[Muck]

Look at it this way, does the perception of the SEC ever hang on Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, or South Carolina? By the same token the fact that Purdue and Northwestern have been running the spread for a while isn't going to change perceptions of the Big Ten. It takes a change at a Big Ten banner-carrier to do that.

Yeah well Wisconsin isn't likely to switch anytime soon.