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re: The boom and bust cycle of spread offense?
Posted on 1/5/17 at 5:20 pm to CKray
Posted on 1/5/17 at 5:20 pm to CKray
Bad spread offenses hurt the team much worse than a bad pro-style offense. Lots of incompletions, penalties, and less defense can have a team losing 63-6 as opposed to 38-6. Going under center allows for more deception, downhill running, and quicker-hitting run game to take advantage of a weak OL. To me, good offense is more complimentary football than it is putting up a massive amount of points. So a 38-7 win always looks better to me than a 63-42 win.
Football is cyclical. Most teams run pro-style offenses (see OSU, Auburn, Tennessee) from Shotgun formations to please 17 year old recruits who like flashy things (like the insane $$$ put into facilities). Not that long ago, everyone wanted to be spread em and shred em, throwing the ball all around the field, and now spread offenses are more run-oriented.
Personally, I'm a football purist. I enjoy watching teams get under center and run contrarian offenses. I don't want to become like the NFL, also known as the "101 ways to run the West Coast Offense" league. CFB was fun when we had lots of schematic diversity. Now everyone's getting to be HUNH and 4-2-5 TCU style of defense.
Football is cyclical. Most teams run pro-style offenses (see OSU, Auburn, Tennessee) from Shotgun formations to please 17 year old recruits who like flashy things (like the insane $$$ put into facilities). Not that long ago, everyone wanted to be spread em and shred em, throwing the ball all around the field, and now spread offenses are more run-oriented.
Personally, I'm a football purist. I enjoy watching teams get under center and run contrarian offenses. I don't want to become like the NFL, also known as the "101 ways to run the West Coast Offense" league. CFB was fun when we had lots of schematic diversity. Now everyone's getting to be HUNH and 4-2-5 TCU style of defense.
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Posted on 1/5/17 at 5:26 pm to CKray
History has shown that you don't need a great QB to run most forms of the spread. You need a good athlete that pays attention during video and whiteboard sessions and is willing to run plays as called. Spread plays call for decision-making according to plan. Innovators rarely make great spread QBs, imho. (There are exceptions, obviously. The SEC alone has had a few of those over the last decade.) If you have a great QB in addition, well, the spread is no better or worse than pro style because a great QB elevates any scheme.
Posted on 1/5/17 at 5:29 pm to Mizzou59
CFB was fun when we had lots of schematic diversity.
I don't think that is going to happen unless they tinker with the rules.
Personally I'd like to see an experiment with something like:
1) Allowing bump and run coverage and less ticky tack defensive holding calls, and
2) Allowing offensive linemen greatly enhanced use of the hands.
Right now the pro set you were talking about is dead in the water as far as running the ball goes, unless the offensive line has better players than the defensive line does.
The spread offenses you mentioned can get running yards even if the offensive line is outmatched by the defense.
One thing that bugs me though, is that spread offenses DO not have to be HUNH. Nevada was a dedicated ball control team, but also ran a spread.
But while tempo does work, it seems like everyone wants to imitate Malzahn's tempo.
I don't think that is going to happen unless they tinker with the rules.
Personally I'd like to see an experiment with something like:
1) Allowing bump and run coverage and less ticky tack defensive holding calls, and
2) Allowing offensive linemen greatly enhanced use of the hands.
Right now the pro set you were talking about is dead in the water as far as running the ball goes, unless the offensive line has better players than the defensive line does.
The spread offenses you mentioned can get running yards even if the offensive line is outmatched by the defense.
One thing that bugs me though, is that spread offenses DO not have to be HUNH. Nevada was a dedicated ball control team, but also ran a spread.
But while tempo does work, it seems like everyone wants to imitate Malzahn's tempo.
Posted on 1/5/17 at 6:42 pm to Mizzou59
Many good points in this thread .
Some of the struggles of spread teams recently may be due to defensive coaches simply having had more time to work on defensing it.
You do see most defenses doing many things differently now (like blowing up the mesh point as quickly as possible, for example). Most are better with substitution patterns and it seems everyone is recruiting faster edge defenders etc . . .
Perhaps some of the "bad QB play" is simply that defenses have learned to make it tougher for spread coaches to scheme around QBs with weaker/inaccurate arms than it had been when the HUNH spreads seemed unstoppable?
Some of the struggles of spread teams recently may be due to defensive coaches simply having had more time to work on defensing it.
You do see most defenses doing many things differently now (like blowing up the mesh point as quickly as possible, for example). Most are better with substitution patterns and it seems everyone is recruiting faster edge defenders etc . . .
Perhaps some of the "bad QB play" is simply that defenses have learned to make it tougher for spread coaches to scheme around QBs with weaker/inaccurate arms than it had been when the HUNH spreads seemed unstoppable?
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