Subscribe Feed (RSS)Some things in sports run in cycles. But there are other things I’d have thought would never come back.
Funny thing. If a National Football League coach suddenly announced, “I’m going to run some single wing this season,” they’d immediately not only fire him, they’d offer him up as a candidate for idiot of the year.
But if you just invent a new name for it, say, call it the “Wildcat,” you can not only get away with it, you will be hailed as an innovator and everyone will start copying you!
(Thanks, KVD, for reminding me!)
Tags: Dwight Jaynes, NFL, single wing, Wildcat offense
1959, Red Hickey and the 49ers put in the shotgun and run 3rd string quaterback Bobby Waters out of it with some success.
At that time, they actually alternated all THREE of their quarterbacks in it. But the teams now are often using a running back, rather than a quarterback, getting the direct snap from center — making it more single wing-like.
It’s all cyclical and it applies to so many things Some of the richest people in the World have done nothing more than reinvent the wheel. The Razor scooter, “flared” jeans (wait you mean bell bottoms”, Windows 7….
wow… terrible punctuation, sorry.
I think it’s good. Pop Warner and Jim Thorpe must be smiling somewhere.
It does look silly when the quarterback goes way out as a wide receiver, but that micro-second that the running back gains by getting a direct snap seems to work for teams like the Dolphins. It’s more dicey when the running back, who may have been a QB in college, tries and throws. That is hit and miss since he only gets a couple of chances a game, if that. Or a regular back throws one up.
Do you really want your high-priced QB on the sidelines watching Ron Brown throw in the red zone? Apparently so.
The main problem with the running back sprinting forward relying on the direct snap to give him an advantage, is that he doesn’t wait for a hole to open, so you get some big hits, especially as teams get used to this again.
Still I’m enjoying it immensely. Not as much as Gruden is but close.
If the Wildcat is run correctly the only time the RB throws it is when the receiver is so open the only bad thing that could happen is a dropped pass so yes you want him making that throw.
It certainly worked early last season with Ron Brown going off against the Patriots. I think he had 4 or 5 touchdowns including a pass.
By this year, the surprise had worn off and the Pats were prepared. I think half of it is to get the defense to think, “What’s going on here?” Once they see it a few times and are prepared, the defense looks more like hungry
wolves about to eat.
It worked well for Miami against Indy but that was the game where the Colts had the ball like 5 minutes and still won.
I think a large part of reason Miami does it is in order to get their best two players more involved in the offense. Also an often overlooked aspect of the Wildcat is that defenses have to spend time in practice preparing for the Wildcat and that takes away time from preparing for other aspects of the game… which is even bigger in the NCAA where teams are limited in how much they can practice.
A lot of what schemes you can use, on both sides of the ball, depend on the players you have.
Running the wildcat wouldn’t make sense with a Troy Aikman under center. Keeping a pre-prison Michael Vick (no dog jokes please) cooped up in the shotgun would be a waste of his talents. If you got a D-lineman big and strong enough to need two blockers, you gain a whole lot by switching to a 3-4; without a first-rate nose tackle, though, you’d be crazy to run that scheme. If you have a shutdown cornerback who takes away a whole side of the field, you can afford to blitz a lot more.
And if you have a stud running-back who is best between the tackles, why not run the single-wing, or the Wildcat, or whatever? Especially as part of a larger more conventional package. If you got a speedburner or two behind the line, and a QB who is a threat to run himself, why not run the option?
So much received wisdom in NFL play-calling simply doesn’t appy to college, where the greater disparity in talent makes a whole lot of schemes which would get smashed in the pros, perfectly workable.
It’s not that the schemes would get smashed as much as the individual players.
That’s the race for the Oregon Ducks: To win as many games as possible before the QB gets knocked out. It almost worked with Dennis Dixon. It’s working with Tim Tebow although he might not remember parts of it.
If an NFL team exposed a QB that much, he’d be on the cart by the 3rd quarter.
Sports Illustrated had a great article earlier this year on this exact topic. It traced the origins of the Wildcat formation and the single wing. I am sure it is in their archives now online. Pretty interesting read for those who like football history.
I still have my skinny ties.