A Tale Of Two Offenses
Texas Tech’s Leach a square inside a circle (Berry Tramel, Daily Oklahoman)
Football is the ultimate copycat business. Texas tried the wishbone in 1968, and three years later 50 teams had embraced the ’bone. Tom Landry revived the shotgun in the 1970s, and now no self-respecting team leaves home without it. The zone read, which is all the rage these days? Three short years ago, none of us ever had heard of it.
Yet no one copies Leach. No one spreads the field with four flankers and linemen taking wide gaps between each other. No one throws the ball 50 times a game, sideline to sideline.
Why not? What would Baylor or Kansas or Indiana have to lose, trying the Leach offense. Is it unavailable to the masses?
Is Leach smarter than the rest of college football? Is Gundy right? Is this offense too complicated for all but the brightest bulbs?
Heck, no, says the man who begat Leach.
“We never had a playbook,” said New Mexico State coach Hal Mumme, who hired Leach for staffs at Iowa Wesleyan, Valdosta State and Kentucky. “You can teach the whole thing in three practices.”
Mumme is Dr. Frankenstein, the man who made the monster.
Coaching high school in Copperas Cove, Texas, Mumme borrowed from the Brigham Young offense and threw the ball all over the field. He first met Leach on the BYU practice sideline.
At Iowa Wesleyan, Mumme said, Leach was “O-line coach, recruiter, equipment manager and taught business law at night. We paid him $12,000 a year. We had a ball of fun.”
They instituted an offense that today lives at Tech, New Mexico State and two other schools where Mumme coached - Valdosta State and Southeastern Louisiana.
Let’s take the risk and try to explain this offense simply. You know how for almost half a century the Oakland Raiders have touted their vertical passing game? Texas Tech runs a horizontal passing game.
Wide splits by the linemen spread out the pass rush, giving the quarterback a precious extra fraction of a second. With four and sometimes even five wide receivers, usually running very short routes, the ball can be delivered quickly.
Find a quarterback who can quickly make the right decision play after play, which Leach consistently has, and it’s a hard offense to stop.
Tramel's story on Leach's offense really is worth reading in its entirety. Leach is the most innovative, interesing offensive mind in college football today.
At Long last, an offense emerges (Jenni Carlson, Daily Oklahoman)
Rhett Bomar and Malcolm Kelly show increasing signs of greatness. The offensive line continue to play musical chairs but managed to stabilized. Add Peterson and Wilson back into the mix, and the Sooners are playing some mighty fine ball.
Credit Long and his staff for not being short-sighted and looking for a quick fix, for building with the ultimate outcome in mind and doing it right.
Inexperience added to injury could’ve spelled total disaster - a losing season. What Long has done developing this offense is nothing short of spectacular.
Despite commanding all those high-powered offenses during the past five seasons, this is his best coaching job.
The Sooner offense has improved somewhat from the bumbling bunch that couldn't even manage to snap the ball without disastrous results early in the season, but Carlson gets carried away in this column. A team with Oklahoma's talent should never have started this season looking so sloppy on offense, and much of the "improvement" has come as the Sooner schedule has eased up and they've been playing some of the defensive sad sacks in the Big 12. There is no doubt that this offense has good young talent and is improved from the start of the season, but "spectacular" is not the way to describe Long as offensive coordinator.
The story on Mike Leach story provides a nice contrast because Leach really does run an offensive system. Under Long, the Sooners run a mish mash of schemes and formations and plays that really shouldn't be described as a "system."
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/12/05 13:30 | Big 12 Football | Technorati
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