Legends’ Take: Spread offenses continue to evolve

It’s no secret that the spread offense has become the trendiest offense in college football’s recent history. Teams like Florida under Urban Meyer, Oregon under Chip Kelly and Auburn with Gus Malzahn have had some of the best offenses in the country.

The topic came up on Monday’s Scripps Legends Poll teleconference, and some of our coaches weighed in.

How can you best describe the spread offense evolution in recent years?

Pat Dye: After watching the Auburn-Mississippi State game I realized they were doing nothing but running the Wishbone with the spread formation. They’ve got the power game incorporated with it. If you play five underneath and two deep, you can’t play it against that formation. Auburn tried it Saturday and Chris Relf ran for over 100 yards, because you ain’t got enough people in the box when they spread them all out.

We saw Auburn slow down Oregon in the title game last year, but is there any way that the spread offenses can be stopped?

Dye: Until defenses come up with something more than we’ve got right now, these spread formations with these quarterbacks can just run the ball and throw it down the field and spread the field.

These teams will keep scoring like they did in the Michigan-Notre Dame game, the TCU-Baylor game, the Auburn-Mississippi State game and the Georgia-South Carolina game.

Those games used to be 13-7. What they are doing on offense today, the defense doesn’t have an answer for it.

What makes it so difficult to defend?

Dye: They’re still blocking and tackling, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to tackle out in space one-on-one than when they are all bunched up running out of the I-Formation. With all the motion and all of the shifting, and all the different formations, you take a young defense like Auburn’s and the coaches can’t get the players lined up, much less play. This is the new era of college football.

Bill Mallory: One thing I see when we get into a spread offense, they’ve got that quality quarterback and running back there and you start pulling out that linebacker to go to the nickel (defensive package). You have one linebacker sitting there and that makes it tough to double cover and still be able to cover that run. That’s what puts pressure on defenses today.

What do you propose as a way to help coaches game plan better for the spread?

Fisher DeBerry – There’s not enough practice time to master those defensive formations. We better go back to the NCAA and get 30 hours a week (of allowable practice time) instead of 20.

(Image courtesy of Flickr, acchen)

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