A hopeless attempt at playing catch-up on college football coverage

Just when you stopped worrying and learned to love the (zone read) spread option offense, Gary Danielson, former Purdue quarterback and current CBS college football analyst says its dead.

A while back we wrote of how Rich Rodriguez’s arrival in Michigan from West Virginia with the spread option offense represented the full mainstreaming of that offense into college football culture and how it would continue the trend of other schools mimicking the offense.

In addition to “big boys” such as Oklahoma and Florida using this set as their primary offense, Auburn has adopted it also this year but with disastrous results. 4-3 Auburn’s HC, Tommy Tuberville fired his offensive coordinator Tony Franklin last week.

But no matter, we figured this offense to represent a seismic shift in offensive philosophies across the country and the type of athletes that were recruited to a) run it and b) defend it. We thought we saw the future during the 2006 Rose Bowl when a 7-point favorite USC and their fast, free-flowing defense simply did not have an answer for uber-athlete QB Vince Young running the Texas Longhorn offense out of the spread option set.

We envisioned a move away from the traditional power running game and the vertical passing game to this more horizontally-oriented multi-faceted attack. 300 lb. defensive linemen were out and a front seven that averaged between 220 and 260 lbs. and which could all run 4.5s was going to be in.

Or perhaps not. Not that Danielson necessarily thinks it’s a gimmick but rather, much like the veer and triple option-type attacks that have been used by the service academies over the years to compensate for a lack of size and speed, the spread option has been used by non-traditional powers to vault themselves into the national spotlight. See: Missouri and West Virginia. And lack of talent is something that the traditional powers should not have a problem with. Here’s Danielson:

"Instead of teams going more to it, I think you'll see teams going to it as part of an offense. The top schools can get the best talent. For them, there's no need to do it ... I love it as a part of my package, not as the only package."

And for a system that is so reliant on the quarterback, Danielson doesn’t think the risk is worth the reward:

"Still, it's somewhat of a high-wire attack, and as West Virginia has learned recently, when you're quarterback (Pat White) gets nicked, you lose your passing game and a good part of your running game. You go away from that, and it's not a great fit.
"When an Alabama, LSU or Ohio State falls (from their offensive scheme), they land on the sidewalk, brush off the scratch and walk away. When a Missouri, Kansas or West Virginia falls from the high wire, they break their legs. You've got to have more that you can do."

Danielson claims he saw his own version of the future earlier this season when the spread option jumped the shark.

"The spread officially peaked (early this season) when I saw Michigan spread out and running a fake snap count, (with the quarterback) looking to the sideline, trying to fool Miami of Ohio ... which Michigan used to just line up and run over."

We respect Danielson quite a bit and think he is a very good analyst and while we don’t think that we’ll ever see a program like USC, for instance, go with the spread option as its primary set, we still think that as defenses continue to load up with speed and athleticism, offenses will need an effective counter by which a well-run spread option offense will affect.

Story here.

Grounded

Some random thoughts while waiting for the plumber…

For better or worse, it says something about the reputation of USC quarterbacks and/or Norm Chow’s tutelage that New England's back-up QB, Matt Cassell, who will be starting in place of the injured Tom Brady for the remainder of the season (torn ACL right knee), has not started a game since… high school. This would include riding the bench behind Heisman trophy winners Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart while at USC.

And speaking of Norm Chow… you can be pretty certain that the Vince Young experience is just not going to work out if he didn’t appear to make any progress under Norm Chow. Young, the Tennessee Titan QB, had 2 Interceptions and threw for only 110 yards before going down with a left knee sprain in the 4th quarter in yesterday’s 17-10 win over Jacksonville. This was preceded by boos directed at Young as he appeared to be reluctant to come into the game for the Titan's offensive possession.

Norm Chow (whose list of protégés over the past quarter century reads like a who’s-who of collegiate quarterbacks: Steve Young, Robbie Boscoe, Ty Detmer, Philip Rivers, Palmer and Leinart) was the Titan O-Con for the ’05-’07 seasons and had the opportunity to coach-up Young in Young’s first two years in the League before moving on to be UCLA’s O-Con. That things didn’t click and Chow was reportedly frustrated with Young’s inability to pick-up the fundamentals of the passing game speaks volumes about either Chow or Young. We know to whom we are giving the benefit of the doubt.

Nice little Tropical Storm “Ike” tracking site, here, courtesy Justin.

Republicans get “bounced” in wake of Sarah Palin selection and last week’s RNCC. McCain 49% , Suit 44%.

We know we give quite a bit of grief to Obama supporters for their swooning over his superior teleprompter reading skills so we’ll be happy to take some grief for admitting we still get chills watching the end of McCain’s acceptance speech where he plowed through the applause, not pausing for effect, bringing home what was a very personal-journey accounting of his life and political career. “Nothing’s inevitable… We’re Americans!” Loved it.

The “money” is putting quite a bit of stock in Ohio State’s lackluster performance against Ohio University on Saturday and USC’s demolishing of Virginia two Saturday’s ago. Trojans open as 10-1/2 point favorites against OSU in the “Game of the Year”. We’re not biting…. yet.

Plumber’s here. Hey, we got the new basin in and plumbed-up ourselves only to realize we’ve got a serious blockage on our hands that our manual snake is not dealing with too well. As Dirty Harry said, “A man’s gotta know his limitations” and we certainly know ours.

He's got Jesus in his Heart... and the Chronic in his Lungs.

As you are probably aware by now, Michael Vick failed a drug test by testing positive for marijuana earlier this month. On top of the state dog fighting charges he now faces, he gets to deal with this. The downward spiral continues. Read Sports Illustrated article here.

We had some thoughts last month on Vick's somewhat dubious spiritual awakening here.

While watching the Tennessee Titans wallop the New Orleans Saints this past Monday, we noted the commentators praising Titan QB, Vince Young for his poise and maturity in leading not only the offense but the entire team in that victory.

Indeed, Young’s play was to be commended. He directed the offense efficiently using his amazing athleticism only in spots as for the most part he managed the game plan putting his team in favorable down and distance situations throughout the night.

(And one person who does not seem to get enough credit for Young’s development is the offensive coordinator, Norm Chow. Chow essentially reintroduced the forward pass to the college game while at BYU back in the late 70s and 80s and it was our thought that Chow would not be a good fit for a team and organization that since Jeff Fisher took over as coach was primarily run-oriented. So the guy deserves a lot of credit for swallowing some pride, scaling back the play book a bit and bringing Young along slowly to allow him to grow into this role as an on and off the field leader.)

But back to the commentating. What struck us about the deserved compliments was that they were all eerily similar to what we were hearing about Michael Vick some 5-6 years ago when he first broke into the league and was the Atlanta Falcon starting QB.

We recall a story about Michael Vick’s first year as starting QB and which took place immediately after an exciting last-minute victory by the Falcons that put them in the playoffs. Someone in the Falcon marketing department got the idea to have Vick tape a message right there on the field and have that message sent to the home phones of all the Falcon season ticket holders.

Gee… would something like this work? Would Vick, charged with emotion while being physically drained, be up for this stunt? One of the staffers nervously approached Vick and before he could get half-way through the explanation, Vick snatched the tape recorder from the guy’s hand and started speaking into the recorder something to the effect of: “Hey, this is Michael Vick. What a great game today, huh? I just wanted to call and thank you for your support and thank you for being a season ticket holder. I’ll try to give you a call during the playoffs. Bye.”

THAT’s what Falcon fans had waiting for them when they got home. THAT’s who was calling just to say “Hi”. It was no wonder then why the Falcons were so high on Vick (oh, yes I did) and why he was viewed not only as the face of the Falcon franchise but also as an ambassador for the city of Atlanta.

Now, are we in any way suggesting that Vince Young is like Michael Vick the person? Certainly not. We bring all this up only because we were struck by the similarities in the two situations: two young, athletic, black quarterbacks in the NFL who are on the verge of super-stardom who because of their relative early success are showered with praise and adulation by the fans and the media. That…. AND the expectations, both on and off the field, that Michael Vick failed to live up to which are now Vince Young’s expectations.

We’re pulling for Vince Young. He got into a little dutch in the preseason by violating some team rules. We hope it was an isolated incident. His teammates appear to think so as they voted him to one of the team captain positions. And we hope the Norm Chow “slow and steady” model of progression for his development as an NFL QB is the model for his human development as well.

Photo above is courtesy the cut-throats over at Kissing Suzy Kolber.