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REFUTED: Wishbone for Fiesta Bowl?!

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That.... could be a scary thing to have to defend...
As much speed and vision as Pittman/Wells/Haw bring, couple that with Troy's running ability and determination--and remember just how effective Troy's been while passing out of the 'option look.' Just one receiver on the field is enough to cause worry--an 'ole' block suddenly becomes a fly route...

Interesting.
 
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If it gets used, I would guess it would be in the red zone.

Taking away a lot of the deep passing threat, given ND's suspect secondary, doesn't make a lot of sense to me when there's plenty of room behind the safeties.

But when run right, the wishbone is a handful. The Texas teams of 69-70, and the Oklahoma teams of the 70's were a bitch to defend.
 
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daddyphatsacs said:
I wouldn't discount this rumor, JT seems to pull out some nice wrinkles in the bowl games.
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From what I was told, this more than an extra "wrinkle" for a few plays, this is supposed to be the main offense aside from obvious passing downs.

BB73 said:
Taking away a lot of the deep passing threat, given ND's suspect secondary, doesn't make a lot of sense to me when there's plenty of room behind the safeties.
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The bone opens up the secondary since the strong safety has to cheat up tp copunter the multiple rushing threat. Navy had two TD passes out of the bone against Colorado State in their bowl game.

Taosman said:
But, when the offense got better, Smith ran less.
So, why would we run Smith more?
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Here's Smith rushing totals for each game he started:

SDSU: 14-87
Iowa: 18-127
PSU: 19-38
MSU: 7-42
Ind: 12-55
Minn: 11-25
Ill: 7-55
NW: 11-75
Mich: 11-37

Two factors emerge in my mind as to why the number of Smith's rushes decreased after his first four games: The opposing defenses keying on Smith (see the PSU game on how they shut our offense down) and the emergence of Pittman from the MSU game on. Still, it's not as if Smith didn't run much...in four out of the last five games, the number of his rushes was nearly identical (12, 11, 11, 11, aside from the 7-rushes against Illinois).
 
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I'm not a huge fan of this idea as anything more than an occasional changeup. The Bucks have a QB and offense that has explosive receivers, has rarely been picked off, and has fumbled at an alarming rate, so why use an offensive scheme that would minimize the talents of the WRs and that tends to allow a plethora of opportunities to fumble? More significantly, given that ND has a penetrating but not particularly bulky front 7, why not just run 'em over between the tackles and with the backside cut that Pittman specializes in and use play action and true screen passes to Pittman when they cheat up? I think that OSU should be able to win this game with its standard offense and that ND probably needs turnovers to win so I wouldn't change to what's likely a more turnover-prone scheme, especially in light of Smith's rather average ball-faking skills on the option (as displayed thus far).

All that said, I really enjoyed watching Navy and their scheme and would love to see the Bucks use a little bit of that sort of misdirection against ND, especially if they happen to start a play with option right with Smith and Pittman and then pitch back left to Ginn :biggrin:
 
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Bucknut319 said:
Wish....I knew more about the Bone...

Seriously, can anyone explain the advantages or disadvantages of running it?
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I'll assume we are looking at double tight bone, split/double split bone (one or zero TEs replaced by SEs), and some flexbone/double wing.

Advantages: Eats up clock, forces strict assignment football which usually leads to big plays, limits blitzing.

Disadvantages: Backs take a pounding on every play, bad reads lead to bad results, limited passing with a diminished field.

The bone was abandoned when players got too big and too agile up front. The defense must contain both A Gaps (either side of center) against any form of bone or flex as that is the immediate threat. Without splitting the ends, the corners can also match up on TEs which will leave LBs to only worry about the run or backs in the flats and the safety(ies) to tee off.

There is a an unlimited amount of misdirection out of the bone but the power game relies on RBs willing to just not block, but plow defenders with double teams on LBs and sometimes DL. However, in modern football, the Bone/Wing-T/Flexbone is primarily used to level a playing field when an offense does not have great speed.

tOSU has run a pseudo-flex when Ginn comes into a tight slot/wing...

Never know...but it would be surprising for sure.
 
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"Advantages: Eats up clock, forces strict assignment football which usually leads to big plays, limits blitzing."

That might be the main reason why this would work, we can run on ND, we just need to keep their offense off the field as much as we can. The only road bump that I see is that colleges spend years recruiting the correct personal to run that offense.
 
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