Sitting here watching the NFL Draft coverage and seeing all these SEC guys go off the board, and it gets me thinking about what we've lost in this sport. Everybody wants to talk about five-star recruiting hauls and portal classes, but nobody appreciates the option offense anymore. I remember back in the late 80s when we had that Washburn offense under Coach Bachman, and we ran that triple option out of the wishbone like it was going out of style. And you know what? It was beautiful. Three backs in the backfield, the quarterback reading the end every single snap, nobody knowing who had the ball until it was too late.
That 1991 season when we ran for over 300 yards in four straight games against MIAA competition, that was football the way it was meant to be played. You didn't need a quarterback throwing for 4,000 yards and a dozen different receiver sets. You needed a fullback who could take a pounding between the tackles, a quarterback who could make the right read on the option pitch, and a couple of speedsters on the outside who could take it the distance when the defense got too aggressive. The old Nebraska teams under Tom Osborne, the way they ran that option to perfection, that was art. Now everything is spread formations and RPOs and quarterbacks checking into different plays at the line of scrimmage.
You watch these spring games now and it's all seven-on-seven drills and pass skelly. Nobody runs the option anymore. Nobody teaches the mesh point, the pitch timing, the way the dive back has to sell his block to freeze the linebacker. These kids coming up through the portal don't know what a true option pitch looks like. They've never had to make that split-second decision on whether to give, keep, or pitch. It's a lost art and it makes me sad. The option offense was about discipline and execution and trust in your teammates. You couldn't just transfer somewhere else if things got hard. You had to learn the reads, you had to earn the coaches' trust, you had to prove you could handle the pressure of making the right decision when a 250-pound defensive end was bbearing down on you.
I know the game evolves and I know why coaches don't run it anymore. The passing game is more efficient, the rules favor the offense, all that stuff. But I miss the days when you could watch a team grind out a 17-14 win on the ground, running the option for 60 minutes, and feel like you'd watched a real football game. Not this track meet stuff they play now where every possession is a scoring drive and nobody plays defense until the NFL. Give me the old Washburn option attack any day of the week. That was real football.