Gets me thinking on a quiet June evening with nothing but voluntary workouts happening? The option offense. I mean the real option, the triple option, the kind where you had to be tough betweeen the tackles and the fullback was the most important man on the field. Not this modern RPO stuff where everybody is just reading one guy and throwing bubble screens. Back in the 1994 season when we were running that veer offense under Pat Sullivan, we had a fullback who would lower his shoulder into a linebacker and then get up and do it again. That was football. That was Horned Frog football.
We used to run the option out of the I-formation and you knew what was coming and you still could not stop it. I remember watching LaDainian Tomlinson in the late 90s and early 2000s and he was a product of that downhill mentality. He would take the pitch and cut upfield and there was no dancing around. You want to know why we won so many games back then? Because we controlled the clock and we controlled the line of scrimmage. Now everybody wants to spread it out and throw it 50 times a game and you lose that physical edge.
The portal has killed the option offense because nobody wants to spend three years learning how to read a defensive end anymore. They want to transfer somewhere and throw for 4,000 yards in a spread system. But I will tell you this, when we host North Carolina this fall and they see our guys hitting them in the mouth, they will remember what real football looks like. The option is not dead. It is just waiting for somebody to bring it back the right way.