Should the be barred from football and why?

I think these offenses are part of the evolution of football and the latest trend just like the Wish Bone, West Coast Offense, Delaware Wing T, and other offenses before it. A lot of these offenses utilizes many concepts that came before it. Auburn's offense is a Delaware Wing T ran out of the spread formation and adds a run/pass option element to it. Gus Malzhan himself was an Wing T guy back in Arkansas and created his spread directly from his Wing T concepts.

In my honest opinion, it's up to the defenses to find ways to stop and dominate the spread offenses. Just barring something that defenses these days can't stop just sounds silly to me. It would be like people wanting to bar the forward pass way back in the day.

They are fun to watch. I'd be ok with banning them if you could eliminate TV timeouts.

Is this something that people are actually talking about? I've never heard it mentioned before.

These offenses are within the rules of the game. They're catching on like wildfire because of its effectiveness. They can be stopped. It's within the rules of the game to use them, as well, so I would be against banning them. It's up to defenses and defensive coordinators to come up with schemes to stop it.

At some point, I think you will see new rules requiring officials to allow defenses to substitute without getting caught with players scrambling to get off the field before the ball is snapped. As it stands now, there appear to be times when the officials almost seem complicit in helping offenses to hurry, other times when they slow them down.

(01-05-2014 06:17 AM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  Should the be barred from football and why?

No, definitely not. However, the clock stoppage on every single first down should be. Also, the constant offensive pass interference (rub routes) should be called more often than they are. However, hurry up offenses should definitely not be banned.

(01-05-2014 06:26 AM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  I think these offenses are part of the evolution of football and the latest trend just like the Wish Bone, West Coast Offense, Delaware Wing T, and other offenses before it. A lot of these offenses utilizes many concepts that came before it. Auburn's offense is a Delaware Wing T ran out of the spread formation and adds a run/pass option element to it. Gus Malzhan himself was an Wing T guy back in Arkansas and created his spread directly from his Wing T concepts.

In my honest opinion, it's up to the defenses to find ways to stop and dominate the spread offenses. Just barring something that defenses these days can't stop just sounds silly to me. It would be like people wanting to bar the forward pass way back in the day.

I agree with nearly everything you wrote. However, your history lesson is incomplete. With each of those evolutions, rules changes accompanied them.

For example, in the earliest days of the sport, offenses were allowed to shift and assemble themselves as much as they wanted, much as defenses do today.

The famous Notre Dame Box relied heavily on these shifting motions and was the forerunner to the Wing T. However, rule changes were eventually implemented that prevented offenses like the Notre Dame Box from ever occurring again because it gave offenses too great of an advantage over defenses and was deemed unfair.

The motion rules seen today resulted from these rule changes. Currently, wholesale formation shifts can only occur before the offensive formation is set, and said formation must be in place for at least one second before a snap or motion can occur.

The purposes of motion are to allow the offense to change formations and, in Canadian football, a chance to gain momentum on the defenders. In the US, pre-snap forward motion is deemed to give the offensive player too great of an advantage and is therefore banned.

(01-05-2014 02:01 PM)ken d Wrote:  At some point, I think you will see new rules requiring officials to allow defenses to substitute without getting caught with players scrambling to get off the field before the ball is snapped. As it stands now, there appear to be times when the officials almost seem complicit in helping offenses to hurry, other times when they slow them down.

These rules already exist if the offense subs players.

An official will stand over the ball and allow he defense to get set.

However, getting caught in a substitution isn't something that only happens when you face hurry up teams. When we beat FSU in '06 our staff noticed they were lackadaisical getting on and off the field and getting their play call in so we took advantage of it for a big gain.

(01-05-2014 02:01 PM)ken d Wrote:  At some point, I think you will see new rules requiring officials to allow defenses to substitute without getting caught with players scrambling to get off the field before the ball is snapped. As it stands now, there appear to be times when the officials almost seem complicit in helping offenses to hurry, other times when they slow them down.

As stated above, if you substitute on offense, the defense gets time to substitute. The reason the offense has the advantage is that defensive players have to run, nearly full speed, for the entire play. On offense, only the ball carrier and a couple of blockers have to. Thus defenders tire much quicker.

One thing that will help restore the balance is to adjust the rules to allow more contact. I don't mean collision inducing contacts that affect safety, I mean eliminating the touchy pass interference and defensive holding calls that are called now. Other than that, spacing out the field is just using what is available and that has lead to more scoring. I am of the belief there is currently too much scoring and it will eventually reduce interest, but that is a topic for another day.

I don't know if maybe the rules can be tweaked, but I'd say let's wait it out a bit, at least until after tonight. Tempo teams haven't really been shown to dominate championships yet, and on the contrary have laid an egg in plenty of big games.

I'm not a real deep metrics buy, but my gut feeling is that high tempo has the effect of exaggerating certain advantages, so if you can't cover receivers or win the line of scrimmage against Oregon or Baylor or Clemson, you might lose 66-10 instead of 38-14. It's like the old wishbone...if those teams had a 15% advantage on you, you would lose by half a hundred.

It's a good tool to have, and I think it minimizes upsets probably. You look at a game like FSU's loss last year to NC State...maybe that's less likely to happen to a tempo team because you can knock them out early, or at least quickly take away a lot of their game plan.

But I'm not at all convinced that it's an advantage, let alone an unfair advantage, against teams of equal or greater talent. I haven't really seen a lot of instances where a tempo team runs the better team off the field. It's just an offensive philosophy like any other. I still think it comes down to controlling the line of scrimmage and calling and executing the right plays.

(01-06-2014 03:38 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  I don't know if maybe the rules can be tweaked, but I'd say let's wait it out a bit, at least until after tonight. Tempo teams haven't really been shown to dominate championships yet, and on the contrary have laid an egg in plenty of big games.

I'm not a real deep metrics buy, but my gut feeling is that high tempo has the effect of exaggerating certain advantages, so if you can't cover receivers or win the line of scrimmage against Oregon or Baylor or Clemson, you might lose 66-10 instead of 38-14. It's like the old wishbone...if those teams had a 15% advantage on you, you would lose by half a hundred.

It's a good tool to have, and I think it minimizes upsets probably. You look at a game like FSU's loss last year to NC State...maybe that's less likely to happen to a tempo team because you can knock them out early, or at least quickly take away a lot of their game plan.

But I'm not at all convinced that it's an advantage, let alone an unfair advantage, against teams of equal or greater talent. I haven't really seen a lot of instances where a tempo team runs the better team off the field. It's just an offensive philosophy like any other. I still think it comes down to controlling the line of scrimmage and calling and executing the right plays.

Over the long haul, it seems to me the biggest common denominator for championship teams is the ability to control the line of scrimmage - especially with your offensive line. Historically, only a few schools have been able to do this consistently. The rest try to find ways to minimize their weakness in this area, and one of the ways they do this is with spread offenses.

It's sort of an admission that our guys can't dominate your guys physically, so we need to use guerrilla warfare tactics to even the odds a bit. Was it cheating for David to use a sling against Goliath? Eventually, Goliath figures out how to counter the new tactics, and some innovative coach will come up with the next hot scheme. It's been that way for a hundred years. And Goliath wins more than he loses.