Within Connelly’s article is a point made by Manny Diaz, current head coach of the Miami Hurricanes.
“There’s such a thing as a ‘college football offense’: 90% of America runs 60% of the same plays.”
This point, clearly true when you study some playbooks, leads to a follow up question. What differentiates teams anymore? Does this turn the college football world that was once a tapestry of disparate tactics and styles into a monochromatic product? How in the world can the less-advantaged teams compete if everyone is doing the same thing?
Well, “compete” is doing some heavy lifting there. No, a school isn’t going to be able to run the triple option and compete for a national championship. But there’s still a niche for, say, Mississippi State to run the Air Raid and make itself a consistent pain in the ass that occasionally rises to the heights of nine or ten wins in a brutally tough division.
The real takeaway, though, is that if Diaz is right and Boyd is right, then running a program that makes its bones on talent accumulation — hint, hint, Kirby — means you ought to be doing what other elite programs are doing, because the difference at that point becomes the talent level — especially on the defensive side of the ball, if you’ve got the kids who are better at stopping what those other offenses are doing.
I used to argue that there was real value to being a contrarian in college football scheming, that in an era when defenses are geared to stop the spread attack, being the team that sticks to a power run game has its advantages. The problem with that philosophy these days is spread offenses have gotten so dynamic that it’s hard for a power attack to keep up, as anybody who watched the last SECCG game could tell you.
Plus, the rules.
Rodriguez has found plenty of ways to implement the RPO game into his playbook. It’s hard to see why you wouldn’t. “Anything you run in the quick passing game, you can basically tag onto a run play,” he said. “In college, where the [blockers] can get three yards downfield, you can run just about every run play, specifically your zone, with your quick game and have the best of both worlds.”
And that’s assuming the refs even bother to enforce that much.
Needless to say, I’m very curious to see where Kirby goes with the offense from here.
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