You want to know what I miss most about this sport? The option. I mean the real triple option, the veer, the wishbone, the stuff that made defenses earn their paycheck. Watching these spring game highlights and all I see is spread RPO nonsense where the quarterback makes one read and hands it off or throws a screen. Back in the Jim Wacker days we ran enough option to keep defensive coordinators up all night and we didnt need five-star athletes to do it. We just needed guys who could read a defensive end and make a split-second decision.
The beauty of the old option game was that it didnt matter if you were outmanned on paper. You could take a bunch of hard-nosed kids from Texas high schools who ran the veer since they were 14 years old and make a top-25 team out of them. I remember watching us run the option against Texas in the old Southwest Conference days and watching their sideline panic because they couldnt figure out who had the ball. Now everything is about throwing for 400 yards and running these fancy mesh concpts. Give me a good old-fashioned speed option pitch any day of the week.
The death of the option offense is one of the great tragedies of modern football. These kids today dont know how to block on the perimeter or carry out a fake to save their lives. And dont get me started on the quarterbacks. They all want to stand in the pocket and throw deep balls to get drafted. Nobody wants to put their head down and make a defensive end commit the wrong way. That was real football.