So you think you can call plays?
All right, Coach. The headset is yours. It’s third-and-four, the defense just walked a safety into the box, your best receiver has single coverage, and the play clock is running. What are you calling?
Before you answer, here’s another question: What offense are you running?
Chances are, your answer is influenced by the offense you played in—or coached—in high school. Play-calling isn’t terribly complicated when you understand the system. The problem comes when I hand you a playbook written in a completely different football language.
Offensive football has never stopped evolving, although many of the ideas we call “new” have been around for generations. In the 1950s and ’60s, the Wing-T of Dave Nelson and Tubby Raymond used motion, misdirection and blocking angles to make a defense defend the entire field. Bill Yeoman’s Veer at Houston took another approach—rather than block every defender, leave one unblocked and make the quarterback read him. That philosophy helped lead to the Wishbone, developed by Emory Bellard and made famous by Darrell Royal at Texas beginning in 1968. Oklahoma soon became another Wishbone powerhouse. The quarterback’s decision was beautifully simple but difficult to defend: give the ball on the dive, keep it himself or pitch it outside.
The Wishbone was the offense we used in high school. Coach Dale Buck was one of the early high school pioneers. I believe Lovington started using the ’Bone in 1972, with Pat Sorrels as our quarterback. I took over at quarterback the next year. Lloyd Payne and Ed McBride were the halfbacks, while Billy Foster was our fullback. We had a lot of success running the ’Bone. Lloyd had over 1,500 yards rushing, I had around 1,200, and Ed and Billy each had over 600. Coach Buck would move to Guymon, Oklahoma, to coach after the ’73 season, and the offense was never quite the same.
Artesia, under new head coach Mike Phillips, implemented the Wishbone in 1974 and dropped down a classification. Under Coach Phillips, Artesia was almost unstoppable. The Bulldogs would remain a force for decades, although their offense changed considerably through the years. More on that in a later column.
Meanwhile, the I-formation and power-running attacks associated with programs such as USC and Nebraska put the tailback directly behind a lead blocker and dared defenses to stop a physical downhill running game. In 1981 Jerry Brown installed the wing T but switched to the I-formation after a couple of years. In 1986, with Robert Arreola as quarterback, the Wildcat’s offense was very potent and went undefeated, 13-0, for first time in Lovington history.
Then football began spreading out. Mouse Davis helped popularize the Run-and-Shoot, putting four receivers on the field and allowing them to adjust routes according to the coverage. Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense used short, high-percentage passes almost as an extension of the running game. One-back formations removed the traditional fullback and created another receiving threat. By the 1990s, zone blocking—particularly inside and outside zone—was becoming increasingly important, while Hal Mumme and Mike Leach’s Air Raid demonstrated that an offense didn’t need hundreds of plays; it could become extremely difficult to defend by mastering a relatively small number of concepts and spreading the defense from sideline to sideline.
Then coaches began putting the old ideas and the new ideas together. Rich Rodriguez, Urban Meyer and Chip Kelly helped marry spread formations with option football. The Zone Read again left a defender unblocked and made the quarterback read him—something Bill Yeoman would certainly have recognized. Chris Ault’s Pistol at Nevada combined shotgun advantages with a more traditional downhill running attack. Then came the RPO: run-pass option. Instead of simply deciding whether to give or keep the football, the quarterback could read a defender and decide whether to hand it off or throw it. Today’s offenses have become increasingly multiple and hybrid, combining spread formations, West Coast passing concepts, Air Raid routes, power and counter, zone blocking, option football, motion and RPOs.
The current Lovington offense operates out of a Multiple Spread scheme. Led by head coach Josh Bailey, the Wildcats are looking to become more consistent offensively. Pecos Fort coaches the offensive line, affectionately known as the Wild Hogs. The name originated with the first Hog Master, Jeff Cearley. The Hogs and their current Hog Master are doing a great job moving the football—and there’s another future column. Fabian Contreras coaches the running backs. Brook Quinones and Bam DeChesaro handle the receivers. Josh Faith coaches the tight ends while also serving as defensive coordinator, and Lucas Tarin helps with the offensive line. Different coaches, different players and a much different-looking offense from the Wishbone we ran more than 50 years ago. But some of the principles haven’t changed nearly as much as you might think.
That’s what makes the history so interesting. We went from the Wing-T to the Veer, Wishbone, I-formation, Run-and-Shoot, West Coast, Air Raid, Spread, Zone Read and RPO—and somehow we’ve come almost full circle. Today’s offense may have five players spread across the field and a quarterback standing five yards deep in the shotgun, but many of the decisions being made are remarkably similar to those made by a Wishbone quarterback more than fifty years ago:
Who are we going to block? Who are we going to read? And how are we going to make that defender wrong?
The formations have changed. The terminology has changed. The game has changed.
But maybe offensive football hasn’t changed quite as much as we think.
And the Tale Goes On.