What's the Rush to Kill the Wildcat? - rudyjuly2's Blog

rudyjuly2's Blog

What's the Rush to Kill the Wildcat?

Posted on September 21, 2009 at 11:54 AM.

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There seems to be this constant complaint about the Wildcat by NFL players, fans and reporters. In the NFL preview issue of SI, both Matt Ryan and Carson Palmer called it a fad that would be over soon. Ron Jaworski recently made these comments on the Wildcat, "I love the Wildcat. It's great. I'm glad Coach [David] Lee is up there working all the plays. Maybe he can give them to the college coaches, because that's where they work. At the NFL level you must have a quarterback that plays from the pocket. He gets the ball into the hands of his playmakers. He reads coverage, hits them in time, hits them in space. They score touchdowns, big plays. Not the Wildcat."

There seems to be this level of anger against the Wildcat that doesn�t make a lot of sense to me. It�s as though proponents of the NFL feel their sport is denigrated by anything other than a pro-style attack. People laughed at Mouse Davis for trying to bring the run n� shoot to the NFL and they hoped he would fail. It didn�t work out that well but at least the Lions offense scored points and moved the ball. Could you imagine if a college coach like Urban Meyer moved to the NFL and tried to implement his version of the spread? Whether or not that would work as a full time offence is certainly questionable but the amount of hatred and ridicule he would face would be high.

Urban Meyer had this to say about the NFL and it�s aversion to the spread. "I think it (the spread) would have worked years ago," Meyer said. "No one has had enough - I don't want to say courage - no one has wanted to step across that line. Everyone runs the same offense in the NFL. A lot of those coaches are retreads. They get fired in Minnesota, they go to St. Louis. They get fired in St. Louis and go to San Diego. I guess what gets lost in the shuffle is your objective is to go win the game. If it's going to help you win the game, then you should run the spread."

Andy Reid faced criticism for throwing the ball a lot with Brian Westbrook in the backfield years ago. Those criticisms faded because his offense worked. Any different offense that doesn�t work will get crucified. If you run a standard offense and suck, that�s fine. At least you are doing the status quo. It�s similar to the basketball coach that gets fired for losing too many games 125-120. The basketball coach that loses all his games 85-80 is much smarter because he played good defense. But both coaches lost by 5. Does that argument really make sense?

The NFL once thought the forward pass was terrible. Running the ball was the way the sport was meant to be played. But times and rules have changed. Fans want to see more passing and the rules were changed to allow receivers greater separation. You started seeing shotgun formations, situational substitutions and multiple receiver sets become standard. College football was slow to change but now seems to have overtaken the NFL as leaders in innovation. There are a ton of ways colleges attack on offense. From a standard pro set to the triple option to a variety of spread attacks by the likes of Urban Meyer and Rich Rodriguez. They have shown that using extra quarterbacks with a different skill set can be a positive and not an afterthought.

The NFL shouldn�t dismiss the tremendous variety of offenses in college football as a fluke or a fad. They aren�t going anywhere. Rather than lament how these non pro-style attacks affect draft projections, maybe they should look at using them in the NFL. The spread, triple-option or Wildcat may never be full time offenses in the NFL. But there is no reason those concepts can�t work on a part time basis. The Wildcat may not surprise anybody anymore but neither does a dive play out of the I-formation. Both require people to block and tackle. The only difference is one set of plays is accepted by NFL snobs and the other isn�t.

Comments

# 1 GoToledo @ Sep 21

Interesting concept. I have been wondering for the last two years or so when someone will try running the spread in the NFL, and if it will work. I bought into the logic that the wildcat wouldn't work because the defenses are just to smart and to fast for that in the league - and boy was I (and many others) wrong. I think it is only a matter of time.

# 2 rudyjuly2 @ Oct 9

Great article on this.
http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2...wildcat-works/