Daily Links - Joseph, Jardine Starting Something

8. The spread and pro-style offenses will learn to coexist

College offenses constantly go in and out of vogue, which means the spread-offense craze is bound to plateau (if it hasn’t already). Last season, the spread still thrived for teams like Pac-10 champion Oregon, Big East champion Cincinnati and 13-1 Florida. However, Alabama won the national championship with a more traditional, pro-style offense, Stanford defied the trend of recent upstarts by utilizing an old-school, smash-mouth offense and Nebraska’s disruptive defense showed it’s possible to shut down a wide-open attack like Texas’.

So will the recent influx of NFL-influenced coaches like Washington’s Steve Sarkisian and USC’s Kiffin kill the spread? Not exactly. Spread gurus like Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly and Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen keep importing it at new locations, and Arizona State’s Dennis Erickson — a veteran of both levels — is one of several coaches implementing a version of former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach’s Air Raid attack this season.

Instead, the future is likely a hybrid of both systems.

“The great thing would be the combination of both — spread it out and throw it, then be able to do it with two tight ends and run the ball with some power,” said Erickson. “It’s just the evolution of football. I really believe if you can have a combination of all that stuff and confuse [defenses] with different personnel groups, that’s what it’s all about.”

Oklahoma provided a glimpse into the future with its prolific 2008 attack that averaged 51.1 points per game and produced both a 4,720-yard passer (Sam Bradford) and two 1,000-yard rushers (Chris Brown and DeMarco Murray). While those Sooners were grouped in with the Big 12’s many other spread attacks, they actually utilized a diverse playbook in which Bradford lined up both in the shotgun and under center, in five-wide and two-tight end sets — all while operating in hurry-up mode the entire game.

In a sign of the times, many of the modern techniques that were once viewed as “gimmicky” will be showing up throughout the high-minded SEC this season, at schools like Arkansas (where Bobby Petrino will complement pro-style quarterback Ryan Mallett with the “Pistol” running game), Auburn (where coordinator Gus Malzahn uses the hurry-up exclusively) and South Carolina (where old-school play-action proponent Steve Spurrier is incorporating the new age zone-read fake).

I think this is what HCDM is going to try to employ this season. We dont have the rare Timmy T type QB and we dont have a star studded O Line to protect him. We are going to spread it out to give the WRs (and TEs) an opportunity to get open. The blitzes should be exposed which will allow Nassib to go through his reads and find which ever guy gets free. Then we can DC3 power run it up the middle and try and get more speed on the field with many of the new guys. I believe this is a lot like what they did in NO where you line your ATH’s up all over and confuse the crap out of other teams. Nassib does not need to be Peyton Manning or Mike Vick. He needs to be Drew Brees and spread it all over for a high (70% would be nice) completion percentage.

I learned the alma mater by midway through basketball season freshman year, and I sing it all the damned time.