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How Paul Johnson came up with his offense

Posted by HenryJames on August 7th, 2008 under Football

It may be possible to divide offensive coaching into two camps. The first one camp says you should devise your scheme and then focus on finding the right players to fit into what you’re trying to do. The other says you should devise a scheme to fit around your talent at hand. Each system obviously has its merits.

Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson has twice told the story of how he came up with his offense in recent weeks. The most recent retelling was at Georgia Tech’s media day last Saturday. It’s a good read.

I like this story, especially the part involving Erk Russell. The longtime defensive coordinator at Georgia wants to run the I because that’s what they ran at Georgia. Johnson obeys, and then quickly realizes you can’t run the I without a fullback and tight end who are worth a shit. So Johnson changes it and then assures Russell that they’re still going to run the ball. Russell thinks about it for all of fifteen minutes and then gives the go ahead.

Proving once again that necessity is the mother of all invention.

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11 Responses

  1. Beergut said:

    August 8th, 2008 at 5:26 am

    I remember watching some of Johnson’s offense at Hawai’i.

    They were running triple option with a motion back from 4 wide sets, something I hadn’t seen anyone else do. They weren’t winning every game, but they were fun to watch.

  2. dedfischer said:

    August 8th, 2008 at 8:23 am

    I guess we’re about to find out, if Johnson’s offense can move the ball against the Russians.

  3. Ag_in_TX said:

    August 8th, 2008 at 8:35 am

    I love that flexbone offense – it’s so hard to defend and it controls the pace of the game.

    My son’s high school ran that flexbone (Tim Beck, now RB coach at Nebraska, was the head coach at Summit and a flexbone lover) until Chiles showed up and, to their credit, the coaches said to themselves: “Hmmm, we gotta do somethin’ with that!”

  4. ChrisApplewhite said:

    August 8th, 2008 at 10:19 am

    Urban Meyer did a lot of that spread flexbone motion stuff at Utah. He’s done it less at Florida because he hasn’t found a true double threat yet.

    His Utah offense was a beautiful thing to watch.

  5. Scipio Tex said:

    August 8th, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Anyone remember Syracuse and the freeze option? Of course, that has Veer roots, but Syracuse ran it out of pro-sets and did at an execution level far beyond anyone else. Those yankees were once actually good.

    Made Don McPherson a Heisman runner-up in ‘87.

    How about Ronald Veal, the QB at Arizona? They ran a balanced wishbone that you could throw pretty effectively out of – if someone other than Ronald Veal was your QB.

    The set up was two WRs with no TE, FB, two HBs. Forced the defense to declare strength based on the hash marks or go balanced themselves. They ran true wishbone reads in the running game paired with a deep passing game to the ends. You could do a lot of deceptive stuff. Very interesting conceptually though they didn’t have the skill position talent you need to make it really effective.

    There was a lot of this stuff being tinkered with in the 80’s. It’s funny that it took a bunch of high school coaches to hone the different versions of the spread we see today.

    In terms of Spreadology, Urban Meyer is a relative latecomer. He just invented his own little brilliant version and has shown the greatest adaptability to personnel of any coach I’ve seen.

  6. Beergut said:

    August 8th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    “Urban Meyer did a lot of that spread flexbone motion stuff at Utah.”

    Meyer’s running game is based on the single wing, not the flexbone. He studied the shotgun option game at Notre Dame, and used the motion series from the SW to give him an outside threat on the option.

    ” He’s done it less at Florida because he hasn’t found a true double threat yet.”

    Tebow is more of a power-runner than a finesse guy, so Meyer uses a buck lateral SW series with him as his base running game. Alex Smith was a little more finesse than Tebow.

    He does do some fun things by motioning Percy Harvin around.

  7. ChrisApplewhite said:

    August 8th, 2008 at 9:37 pm

    “Meyer’s running game is based on the single wing, not the flexbone. He studied the shotgun option game at Notre Dame, and used the motion series from the SW to give him an outside threat on the option.”

    One, no it’s not. Two, he didn’t study the shotgun option at Notre Dame, he create his version there and immediately took it to Bowling Green. Three, he used the motion guy for a lot of things, but mostly as the pitch man in a similar fashion to the flexbone.

    Four, just to make sure we both look like jackasses here, saying the option came from the flexbone rather than the single wing is like saying humans came from homo erectus rather than apes.

  8. ChrisApplewhite said:

    August 8th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

    Actually, I was unclear in what you meant when you say he studied the offense at ND. He did look at Randy Walker and RichRod’s offenses while at ND, but I thought you meant studied it as in learned it from Kevin Rodgers at ND.

    Regardless, all he did at BGSU and Utah was take the zone read, add a flexbone wing motion to it, and ran the veer. I don’t really care where those elements came from.

  9. Beergut said:

    August 9th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    CA,

    Yes, it is.

    “Q. At some points last season, did you run double team blocks at both sides of the point of attack for Tebow? Do you have any single wing in your background anywhere, way back?

    COACH MEYER: Single wing? No, I don’t believe I have seen single wing. I studied it as we just developed it when we were at Bowling Green. ”

    http://blog.al.com/keepingscore/2008/07/full_transcript_florida_coach.html

    If you can’t look at Florida offense, especially their short yardage packages for Tebow, and see the single wing, I don’t know what to tell you.

  10. Beergut said:

    August 9th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    There are several coaches who added orbit motion to the zone read to add an extra option threat; I’m not sure if Meyer was the originator of that.

  11. ChrisApplewhite said:

    August 9th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    Sometimes I wonder if you actually read what anyone says before you pull out your 1921 football almanac and start listing terms.

    Urban Meyer has single wing packages in his offense. Single wing turned into the T. the T into the wishbone. The bone into the split veer. The veer into the flexbone, etc.

    His “running game” is not based on any one of those anymore than the other. It’s all option, baby.

    When he has a more complete team, he runs different things. When he has one guy, he sticks him at QB and pretty much runs a modern single wing. However:

    “Urban Meyer did a lot of that spread flexbone motion stuff at Utah.”

    Please describe, in your best 50’s noir gumshoe dialect, where this statement contradicts anything regarding the presence of any old single wing stuff.

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