Knudson: Getting Offensive

By Mark Knudson, The Mtn. Insider
August 25, 2011
 
What’s in a name or a label for that matter? Not that much, really. What you call your offense doesn’t matter nearly as much as what your offense can produce. Score points, and no one will care if you call it the Wishbone or T-bone, West Coast or Left Out. Touchdowns are touchdowns.
 
Still, it’s interesting to look around the college football landscape and see the continuing evolution of offensive styles and how programs are reacting to what’s been successful and what the current fad is. For instance, the Big Ten, long seen as a grind it out league before passing became its fancy the past few years, is looking at a return to ground oriented offenses this season as defenses learn how to better combat passing attacks. As for the Mountain West, sometimes the labels can be deceiving.   
 
What’s happened to college football’s latest offensive fad, the Spread? Not too many years ago it was all the rage, with teams like Oklahoma and QB Sam Bradford lighting up scoreboards at record rates (until their bowl games, that is). Lots of teams were trying to run the no-huddle-hurry-up-six-receivers-in-the-pattern offense all game long, and in a lot of cases (like most Sooner games) it worked. Defenses were seemingly slow to catch up. Eventually, however, they did. The Spread is no longer the rage it once was.   
 
While he was the offensive coordinator at Missouri, Wyoming headman Dave Christensen was a master of the Spread, with talented Chase Daniel running the show and putting up points in bunches. Christensen remains a devotee of the Spread and it will remain the Cowboys base offense, no matter which youngster is taking the snaps this season. But in 2011, instead of being part of the new wave of offenses, the Cowboys are all but alone as a Spread team operating in the Mountain West.
 
This year, five of the eight Conference teams list their offense as ‘Multiple’ heading into the season. What does that mean? A lot of things, actually. Multiple is used as the moniker for the offense at Air Force, which runs the option as well as any team in America. Boise State also lists their offense as Multiple, proving that Multiple can have multiple meanings; the Broncos, with Kellen Moore at QB, don’t look much like the Falcons and Tim Jefferson.  
 
TCU, UNLV (a former Spread team) and Colorado State all list their offense as Multiple as well, while San Diego State lists theirs as Pro Style. In other words, these teams plan on playing offense in a much more traditional manner - the way we’d gotten used to seeing offense back in the day. A fullback, a tight end, a huddle - stuff like that. They’ll most often save the hurry up for the two-minute drill.
 
We should all be curious to see what New Mexico’s Pro Spread offense looks like on September 3. I’m sure Larry Kerr and Steve Fairchild are. Perhaps a mixture of traditional sets and some of the elements of the old “Run and Shoot” Atlanta Falcons under Mouse Davis? Who knows. All we know is it needs to work for Mike Locksley to stick around.
 
By the time the second week of the season rolls around and game tapes have been exchanged, labels won’t matter any more anyway. Air Force can call their offense anything they want but opponents know they’ve got to stop the option to beat AFA. Boise State opponents know that if Moore gets time to stand in the pocket and take his pick of receivers, it’s going to be a very long day.

Guess you can say these guys can beat you in multiple ways. 
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