Is Notre Dame moving to a 4-2-5 defense?

COLLEGE FOOTBALL’S BRUTAL ORIGINS

When Rutgers “lit up” Princeton 6-4 in 1869 in the first football game ever played, the game’s early defensive DNA was established.  It was brutality at the line of scrimmage and ruthless, often sadistic  tackling. The game’s early thuggishness prompted President Teddy Roosevelt, the Roughrider himself,  in 1905, to threaten the presidents of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, “Da Three U’s” of their era, with abolishing football.

THE FORWARD PASS APPEARS

Notre Dame stepped in in 1913, on All Saint’s Day no less, and Gus Dorais completed 14 of 17 passes, many of them to Split Norway’s own Knute Rockne, to rout Army and introduce the “forward pass,” effectively, to college football.

But the run still ruled.  The single wing, with its spinners, buck laterals, blocking quarterbacks and wingback reverses reigned supreme until Knute Rockne, inspired by the precision  and footwork of Radio City’s Rockettes, introduced the box formation as a way to keep ahead of the defenses.

T FORMATION CHALLENGES THE SINGLE WING

In the mid-30’s Clark Shaugnessy introduced an upgraded version of the T formation to George Halas and the Bears and Halas went all in.  It even impacted a fight song, as
“Bear Down Chicago Bears” includes a paean to Shaugnessy:

“We’ll never forget the way you thrilled the nation

With your T formation”

The T led to the Split T, the Wing T, and that irascible rascal the Double Wing, all constant efforts to stay ahead of the defenses. In South Bend, Frank Leahy, over the howls of Rockneites, Knights Templar and Tories, scrapped Rockne’s box formation and transformed to the T formation. The howlers shut up. Leahy won a bit at Notre Dame.

The die was cast and the single wing faded into oblivion in the late 50’s in D-1 football.

But it was still about running the football.  When Ara’s student Schembechler and Woody Hayes played their initial editions of the 10 year war, each tried to  bludgeon the other with the off tackle play.  Guile and space had little to do with it. Bighorn Sheep brought more subtlety to their skirmishes than Bo or Woody. The game was fought between the tackles.  The results bore witness to the witless offenses.  The first six games in that stubborn series were

• UM 24 OSU 12
• OSU 20 UM 9
• UM 10 OSU 7
• OSU 14 UM 11
• UM 10 OSU 10
• OSU 14 UM 12

That’s right, the teams TOGETHER averaged less than a touchdown per quarter.

SID GILLMAN, VERTICAL PASSING, THE BONE AND THE VEER

Sid Gillman, who was Ara Parseghian’s coach at Miami, began perfecting the Vertical Passing game, and sowing the seeds of the West Coast Offense while coaching the LA Rams of the NFL  and the LA/San Diego Chargers of the AFL. Gillman’s schemes and aerial dreams influenced West coast Pac 8, then Pac 10 Football, but it stayed local at the college level.

Passing was subject to great experimentation at Stanford where players like Frankie Albert, John Brodie, Jim Plunkett and others were lighting it up, and with the 1966 Heisman trophy winner, Steve Spurrier, who after a quarter century of incubation would introduce a terrifying, dominant passing attack at his alma mater, the University of Florida.

But a star had appeared in the Southwest, and Emory Bellard brought the wishbone to Austin.  The wishbone was quickly coopted and perfected in Norman.  The shift was from power to speed, from between the tackles to around the end, from brute force to guile and timing.  And in that offense, and its stepchild the veer, the seeds of modern spread football were sown.  The search was for players like Jack Mildren, Thomas Lott, Slick Street,  Jamelle Hollieway, even Turner Gill, option magicians who didn’t need to throw the ball.

John Jenkins at Houston produced a blip on the screen with his run and shoot, but passing and running offenses were still miles apart.

Ara Raoul Parseghian preferred a little of both, as did his successor at Notre Dame, Dan Devine.  There is a reason their balance sent Bear Bryant to the grave with an 0-4 record against the Irish.

ARA MOVES FROM THE 4-4-3 TO THE 4-3-4

Ara allowed Johnny Ray to implement a suffocating 4-4-3 which led the Irish to the ’66 championship while allowing only 3 offensive touchdowns all year.

But Ara had to deal, after ’66, with John McKay’s fearsome USC teams and their sophisticated, Gillman-influenced   passing attacks, as well as those from West Lafayette and Bob DeMoss.

So Ara retooled his defense from a 4-4-3 to a 4-3-4, which was in place for the 1973 championship Ara won. What was more significant was that the “3” in ’66 were Smithberger, O’Leary and Schoen, and the “4” in ’73 were Bradley, Rudnick, Townsend and Barnett.

DESEGRATION AND ATHLETICISM

Brown versus Board of Education was decided in ’54 but it was LBJ’s Civil Rights Act in 1964 that lent both teeth and federal power and dollars to ending segregation in America. Separate but equal was a lie which had been buried.

The southern conferences, the ACC, SEC and SWC   began to integrate, schools began to integrate and black athletes began receiving the same equipment, nutrition and coaching which Caucasian athletes had enjoyed.

The ’69 Texas Longhorns were the last all-Caucasian roster which won a national championship.

A SWIRL OF INFLUENCES

The wishbone and veer had moved running from power to speed, timing  and space.

All American kids, even fast ones, could now compete.

Passing leagues and 7 on 7’s were coming into vogue.

Nike and Adidas were honing skills with summer camps and skill coaching, allowing football players to close the skill and coaching gap which Howard Garfinkel and Tom Konchalski had brought to basketball.

RUN, PASS or BOTH?

A wishbone or veer quarterback had to be highly skilled and proficient in the nuances of the option.  A pro style passing attack required the ability to read defenses, stay in the pocket and throw into tight windows.  There were specialists in one or the other, but not both.

GOODBYE FULLBACK

With the end of the iso play, and the use of multiple wide receivers and dual and triple TE sets, the fullback went the way of the Bison.

SPREAD OFFENSES

It took a while to develop but the modern spread provided opportunities to be explosive in both the running and passing game, if you could find the right quarterback.  But the spread quarterback was throwing into vastly wider windows, often on the run. If the quarterback had some modicum of running ability and further had the ability to either throw on the run or scramble, reset and throw, the offense had a tremendous advantage over the defense. The quarterback needed some passing ability but did not need to be Aaron Rodgers or Phillip Rivers!

Spread quarterbacks were more abundant than “pure” pro style passers.

Urban Meyer, in an offense he jointly designed with Mike Sanford while they were both assistants at Notre Dame, made a firm commitment to the spread with a dual threat quarterback.  It started with Alex Smith, who helped take Meyer and Utah’s Utes to a BCS bowl victory, and continued with Tim Tebow at Florida.  But it was another Meyer recruit who  was the prototype for the modern spread quarterback. Vince Young of Texas was another of the spread pioneers,  a magnificent college player inadequate for the pros. But a kid from Atlanta, who had trouble in Gainesville, wound up at Blinn JC and became a one year wonder at Auburn.

Cam Newtown was the prototype, the archetype, and easily took Auburn to the national title.  He was quickly followed by Johnny Manziel, Pat White, Denard Robinson, Nick Marshall, Marcus Mariota, Robert Griffin,
Everett Golson, Dak Prescott, Trevonne Boykin, Jameis Winston and a trio of spread qb’s at OSU, Braxton Miller, Cordale Jones and JT Barrett.  America’s best returning quarterback is Deshaun Watson of Clemson, who helped hang 40 on Kirby Smart’s last defense at Alabama.

In the last two final fours. There were only two “non-runners” Connor Cook of MSU and Jacob Coker of Alabama. Winston, Mariotta, Jones, Sims, Baker Mayfield and Deshaun Watson all had some wheels as well as the ability to pass.

HIGH SCORING IS HERE, FOR NOW.

These are the determining games for the last three years

• FSU 34  Auburn 31
• Oregon 59 FSU 20
• OSU 42 Bama 35
• OSU 42 Oregon 20
• Bama 38 Michigan State 0
• Clemson 37 Oklahoma 17
• Bama 45 Clemson 40

Every game, even the embarrassing shutout of over-their-head Michigan State against Alabma, 38-0, the lowest scoring of the games listed above, was higher scoring than the highest scoring of any of the games in the ten year war between Bo and Woody. Bo and Woody? Recquiescat in pace.  Long live the spread!

THREE WIDE IS THE NEW NORMAL

AND FOUR AND FIVE WIDE IS NOT THAT ABERRANT

Asking safeties to be outstanding in run support against the speed in space the spread provides, to contain the quarterback,  AND cover receivers one-on-one is a bridge or two too far. You need quicker players, quicker than linebackers or “traditional” safeties to cover slot receivers and chase down quarterbacks. You need a Honey Badger, a S’ua Cravens or a Shawn Crawford.

Thus the “slot cornerback.”  At Notre Dame, with a healthy Shawn Crawford, it is NEARLY a starting position. A linebacker must yield to Crawford. Ergo, 4-2-5.

NUMBERS DON’T LIE

ON THE 2016 Notre Dame roster, when the frosh arrive, there will be 16 defensive backs, 8 linebackers.  What does that data suggest?

In the NFL last year,  roughly 30% of the defensive sets had 4 DBS, 50% had 5 DBS and 20% had 6 DBS. This allocation is seeping, slowly but noticeably, to college football.  At Notre Dame this Spring, the dime package had Redfield and Studstill at Safety, Crawford still manning the slot and Drue Tranquill as sort of a Minotaur, half man, half bull, part safety, part linebacker, part blitzer, part Brian Van Gorder’s weapon of mass destruction.

Ara changed from the 4-4-3 to the 4-3-4 because it was the right thing to do.  This morphing into a 4-2-5 is organic, dynamic, correct, natural, more gradual than precipitous.

Remember Brian Kelly’s DNA is as an outstanding linebacker, albeit at Assumption. He more than anyone else knows when it’s time for linebackers to decrease so that defensive backs and defensive performance, may increase.

The 4-2-5?  It is an idea whose time has come.

Go Irish!!