Spread Offense, All The Rage In Belt

[MeanGreen61]

Spread offense all the rage in Belt

By ADAM SPARKS

sparks@dnj.com

One philosophy is being fine-tuned at nearly all Sun Belt football programs with one week remaining until the season kicks off.

Troy converted to it last season and won a share of its first Sun Belt championship.

Western Kentucky is installing it solely in anticipation of moving to Division I-A and the Sun Belt in 2009.

North Texas hired a new head coach who had gained national acclaim for perfecting it — on the high school level.

It's the spread offense, and everybody seems to be doing it (or at least a version of it).

"It seems like people have only referred to it as spread in the last five or six years, but I've been doing that a lot longer than five or six years," MTSU offensive coordinator G.A. Mangus said. "A lot of things are called spread, but it's really just the concept of spreading out the defense in 100 x 53 1/3 yards instead of crowding it all up."

The spread offense has a wide-ranging definition. Most call any scheme that includes three or four wide receivers as a spread offense. Some play with one running back, some play with no backs, most play it in the shotgun formation. But regardless of the personnel, the spread offense has a multi-layered meaning because it involves spreading an offensive formation, spreading the football to several offensive players and spreading the defense's responsibilites.

MTSU and Florida Atlantic, which play Saturday in the season opener, are actually two of the Sun Belt teams that used the spread philosophies the least last year. Both teams' use of the style will depend on its personnel, and MTSU coach Rick Stockstill acknowledged that as being a gradual process.

"When coaches are at schools long enough, they can recruit to their offensive philosophy and then you can stay with it," Stockstill said. "It depends on what you have. At Clemon for a stretch there, we had bona fide NFL wide receivers. So you try to get the ball in their hands. But now they've got those two good backs, so those guys are more the focus on the offense."

Troy coach Larry Blakeney recruited players specifically suited for the spread offense, and even added a coach to guide the system in former Kentucky offensive coordinator Tony Franklin. The experiment worked, as Troy won a Sun Belt co-championship last season.

"I felt like we could recruit better and enhance our evolution as a I-A program if we went to the spread," said Blakeney, whose long-time offense had been based on a power running game.

"In 2001, I tried to hire Tony Franklin to run this, but we couldn't do it then. I got him in here, and we've recruited players for it. If I was at LSU or Alabama or Georgia, I believe we could maybe recruit big tight ends, big fullback and have enough skill and offensive-line power to run some different things. But we were trying to enhance our personnel and give us a chance to win on offense."

The spread offense requires speed, and that can come in any size player, even those deemed too small for major conference programs. It also needs several weapons to be effective.

"We'll be a successful offense at North Texas if we can spread the ball around and get it in a lot of people's hands," said first-year North Texas coach Todd Dodge, who ran a variation of the spread for years on the high school level.

"The spread doesn't rely on two good players. No matter what kind of spread you're talking about, it needs numbers to run it the right way."

Indeed, there are many versions under the umbrella dubbed spread offense, and most of them derive from coaching trees and mimicry.

"Football has an influence on itself, so everybody picks it up somewhere," Dodge said.

MTSU's multiple offensive attack is both a result of its personnel and its coaches. Stockstill helped run current West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez's spread offense while both were assistants at Clemson. Mangus was tutored as a quarterback under Steve Spurrier at Florida.

Sun Belt member Louisiana-Lafayette had derived much of its style from head coach Rickey Bustle's past experience coaching Michael Vick at Virginia Tech. This season, ULL's offense will be run by coordinator Blake Anderson, a former MTSU assistant who helped guide the Blue Raiders' no-huddle version of the spread from 2002-04.

"Ours started off when I was at Utah State in 1992, and we put in the Miami Hurricanes' offense, the Dennis Erikson-type stuff," Louisiana-Monroe coach Charlie Weatherbie said. "We used the tight end a lot back then, and then at the Naval Academy in 1995, we used four wide receivers and no tight ends. At Monroe, we do it both ways."

Many other versions exist such as the University of Houston's run-and-shoot and Urban Meyer's spread option attack at Florida. No one can rightfully claim the spread offense's birth place, but plenty have picked up the general philosophy of it.

Two years ago, about half of the Sun Belt ran the spread offense. This season, all will at least borrow its principles within a given game.

"Everybody's doing it in our league because it gives you more options at the line of scrimmage than most other (offenses)," Blakeney said. "You have more versatility with it, and that's why we switched to it last year. Everybody wants an edge, and I think running some kind of the spread gives you that.

"If it didn't give you that, then people wouldn't be movng to it so much."