For one of the few times in his career, Chase Daniel was confused.
Sooners were coming from everywhere. For 12 straight games last year, Daniel led an offense that had become the only unit in the country to score at least 31 points each time out. The Missouri quarterback usually had the comfort of standing seven yards behind a big, athletic offensive line and surveying the defense. Even if the D blitzed, the play was often over before defenders could lay a paw on him.
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| Chase Daniel had trouble evading Oklahoma defenders in the Big 12 title game. (US Presswire) |
The spread option -- refined by offensive coordinator Dave Christensen and executed by Daniel -- was the story of the Tigers' breakthrough season. It got Daniel a trip to New York as a Heisman finalist. It got the Tigers to the Big 12 championship game. It got them to No. 1, within sniffing distance of the BCS title game.
It couldn't get those Sooners off his back last December. Daniel's support system in the Big 12 title game -- his mind, his arm, his line, the system -- collapsed. Missouri lost 38-17 to Oklahoma largely because the Sooners had found a way to neutralize Daniel and his offense.
"I was up on the phone with the coaches (in the press box)," Daniel said. "I asked, 'Why are they blitzing so much?' They said, 'Chase, they're bringing four every time.'"
What was once an offensive revolution is now slowly and assuredly falling prey to evolution. The formation that has largely been responsible for every major NCAA offensive record set this decade is on the clock. It's time is limited. The modern gurus of the spread -- Mike Leach, Urban Meyer, etc. -- might not admit it but defenses and their coordinators do not stand still.
The Big 12 arguably has the best collection of spread offenses in the country. The conference led the country in passing yards, total touchdowns and scoring. Six of the top 13 teams in total offense last season were from the Big 12. Five of the six -- Texas Tech, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Kansas and Texas -- run some form of the spread. For people like Daniel and his peers, evolution sucks. All the great college offenses have been shuffled to the oldies bin -- the wishbone, the I, the pro-style -- because defenses reacted and evolved. It's going to happen again in this age of pinball scoreboards. It's just a matter of when and how.
"I think it's the beauty of college football," said Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, whose defense practices against Daniel's elite unit every day. "The offenses in the NFL are much more predictable. The more people that run this offense the better defenses are going to get at it. It's going to happen."
Peers all over the country agree with Pinkel.
Boston College offensive coordinator Steve Logan: "Right now I think defenses are a little bit on their heels. But in the end if you're a spread team and somebody can play an effective man-to-man, you can stop it. That's why the NFL pays those corners millions of dollars."
Colorado coach Dan Hawkins: "If you run that quarterback a lot and he gets doinked (you're done). Look at Oregon with Dennis Dixon (shredded knee), even Florida with Tebow and his shoulder. Pat White went down last year."
Mississippi State coach Sylvester Croom: "The defenses will catch up to all that. In your defensive front, the only big guys are your two interior guys. Once you get past those two defensive tackles, it's all about speed and even they have to be able to run."
That's what Oklahoma has been able to develop with some regularity and why it stuffed Daniel and the Tigers twice last season. But there is an immediate caveat. There are only a handful of Oklahomas and this is college, where you're only as good as your next recruiting class. One key to defending the spread is stopping the opponent with as few people as possible up front, but how many programs have that much talent?
Oklahoma's front four that night consisted of All-Big 12 end Auston English, Big 12 defensive freshman of the year Gerald McCoy and DeMarcus Granger, a sophomore tackle who tied a career high with five stops.
Even with all that, Oklahoma's defense collapsed against West Virginia -- another spread option team -- in the Fiesta Bowl.
"The spread is such a broad word," Auburn offensive coordinator Tony Franklin said. "If you say Texas Tech, if you say West Virginia, those two are nothing alike. Basically, you spread the field to run or you spread the field to pass it.
"The goal is to constantly put pressure on the defense."
The defense, though, is fighting back. Here's how it is happening.
The spread will die because all offenses have their day: Remember the wishbone? It was de rigueur in the late 1960s and 1970s. Then d-coordinators started developing quicker, lighter defensive ends who could get to the perimeter quicker than the quarterback. That eliminated one of the three triple options, making it easier for defenses to break the bone.
"The defenses will catch up to all that," Croom said of today's spread. "It's just like the wishbone. It's just like a passing wishbone. It all starts, like everything else, with the quarterback. The quarterback is most difficult person to account for."
Coaches call that a "plus-one," the advantage all option teams have -- the quarterback as an extra ball carrier. In response to that, defenses have gotten quicker and smaller. Croom moved cornerback Derek Pegues to safety to take advantage of his speed.
"You've got to have six corners who can play," Croom said. "It has eliminated that 250-pound linebacker."
How that 250-pound linebacker got eliminated: Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson unabashedly claims to be one of the modern fathers of the spread. Coaching with Jack Elway at San Jose State in 1980, they basically ran the great Mike Singletary off the field.
An early progenitor of the spread that day forced Singletary, a future Hall of Fame middle linebacker, into a slot to cover a receiver.
"You've got one of the best linebackers who ever played the game out of the front seven, playing a little slot guy," Erickson said. "He's playing inside and the receiver has the whole middle of the field to run through. Pretty soon our thought was, you get rid of the ball quick and spread 'em out and those four guys get tired.
Linebackers continue to get smaller and quicker but it's a constant struggle.
"I used to have to tackle Mike Alstott," Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said of Purdue's (and later Tampa Bay's) notorious battering ram back. Fitzgerald was a two-time national defensive player of the year with the Wildcats. That was 15 years ago, when there were more Mike Alstotts than Noel Devines.
"I had neck-roll guys, guys who today probably couldn't even get recruited to play Big Ten football with the 11 teams being in a one-back spread type of mentality."
"It's all about mismatches," Erickson added. "That spread stuff if you're throwing it, you can get guys who can run who aren't heavily recruited."
No disrespect, Chase: Daniel was one of those lesser recruited guys. Not a stiff, mind you, but certainly not at the top of Texas' list. By the time the Longhorns became interested, Daniel already was committed to Gary Pinkel's new spread at Missouri.
Heading into this season, he might be the most complete spread quarterback in the country (note the 720 career rushing yards). That's why you tend to listen when he starts breaking down defenses.
"People don't like to blitz us," he said. "When they're not blitzing us, they're playing a cover-four look with safeties 20 yards down the field. We've got to take the five-yard hitches. We can't get so fed up with it that we try to throw into four-deep coverage.
"If you were asking a defensive coordinator what to do (against Missouri), I'd say have a ridiculously good defensive line and play good coverage behind them. How many have that?"
Oklahoma, we know about. The other team that impressed Daniel? Illinois, who lost to the Tigers by six last year and open the season against No. 6 Missouri in 10 days. The goal ...
Head hunt: Willie Martinez is old school. In the offseason, Georgia's defensive coordinator posts the schedule in his office and obsesses over every opponent with one thing in mind.
"Defensively, you've got to punch the quarterback," Martinez said. "You look at one of our goals, we're going to find out how tough he is."
The effect of a smackdown -- legal, of course -- is cumulative. Georgia led the SEC in sacks last season and returns one of the best defenses in the country. Martinez doesn't claim to have a secret, just a method. The Bulldogs lost to South Carolina's Blake Mitchell, no one's superstar, but also contained -- make that punished -- Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow in the Cocktail Party.
"A knockdown of a quarterback can be effective," Martinez said. "Is he a guy who is tough enough to take those (hits), legally? If he runs the ball you better punish him. That's what makes Tebow so tough, he's a physical kid. He can endure. How long he can endure remains to be seen."
The new breed
These five defenders are among the most effective against the spread:
Taylor Mays, S, Southern California: Some coaches prefer cover guys in the defensive backfield. Mays is 6-feet-3, 230 pounds of destruction. He has the speed (an amazing 4.25 in the 40 in the spring) and hitting ability to intimidate receivers.
George Selvie, DE, South Florida: A swift, lithe 245-pound All-American who has tormented West Virginia in consecutive victories. West Virginia just happens to have the best power running game out of the spread, except when it plays against Selvie.
William Moore, S, Missouri: When senior safety Pig Brown went down eight games into the '07 season, the 6-1, 230-pound Moore became the leader of a defense that was No. 1 in Big 12 games. Moore is built like Mays and is just as nasty.
"Nowadays you've got guys who have more juke moves than anybody," Moore said. "You've got to decide when to go for the big hit and when to be fundamental."
Alphonso Smith, CB, Wake Forest: Expect a dip in Smith's numbers. Quarterbacks tend to stay away from guys who are coming off seasons in which they picked off eight passes (three for touchdowns), broke up 10 passes and forced four fumbles. That's 12 turnovers from one guy.
Auston English, DE, Oklahoma: English, the Big 12's preseason defensive player of the year, just returned from surgery to remove his appendix. Once he gets in shape, English should continue to wreck all those Big 12 spreads. In the first meeting against Missouri, he had nine tackles and 1½ sacks.
The final blow
The spread will die out for the same reason the wishbone died out.
It doesn't translate well to the NFL. Eventually, blue-chip offensive players will see their skills don't necessarily translate well to the pros. They will start gravitating toward programs that can exploit their talents. Goodbye spread.
"We do point it out in recruiting battles," said Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema, who still runs a pro style offense. "(The NFL) looks at that from not only working with a quarterback but an offensive tackle who protects a drop-back passer."
"If you ran (the spread) in the pros, you'd get killed," Notre Dame's Charlie Weis said. "I could never do it in a heavy dose myself because the quarterback gets exposed."
Few of those great option quarterbacks in the '60s and '70s had meaningful careers in the NFL. Draft experts are still perplexed as to how Tebow's talents translate to the next level. The same for West Virginia's Pat White. Daniel took advantage of an NFL Draft evaluation after his junior year but decided to stay in school to sharpen his skills -- and win, of course.
As good as he is, Daniel's pro future is uncertain. His immediate past, though, may become a historic touchstone when the spread eventually dies out.
"Oklahoma, they're not perfect at everything they do," he said. "They're really, really, really good at everything."