Gets me every time I watch this draft coverage and see all these spread quarterbacks going early? It makes me miss the old option offense. I remember back in the early 80s when we ran the veer under Coach Warren Powers and you could just watch defenses completely lose their minds trying to figure out who had the football. There was nothing prettier than a perfectly executed triple option where the fullback takes the dive, the quarterback reads the end, and then either pulls it or pitches it to the trailing back. That was real football, not this seven-on-seven nonsense they run now where everybody throws it fifty times a game.
We had some good years running that stuff at Missouri. The 1983 season when we went 7-4 and beat Oklahoma in Norman, that was a masterclass in option football. We controlled the clock, we kept their high-powered offense on the sideline, and we physically beat them down. You cannot do that with these air raid offenses where three incompletions in a row and your defense is back on the field gasping for air. The option offense was about toughness, about discipline, about knowing your assignment and executing it perfectly every single time.
I look at what Oklahoma State is doing over there with fifty portal transfers and I just shake my head. They could learn something from the old days. You do not need fifty new faces to run the option. You need a quarterback who can read a defensive end, a fullback who is not afraid of contact, and two slotbacks who have enough speed to turn the corner. That is it. That is the whole system. And it worked for decades before NIL and the transfer portal turned everything into a free agency circus.
The best part about the option was how it leveled the playing field. We did not need five-star recruits to make it work. We took kids who were tough and smart and taught them how to execute. Remember when Nebraska used to run that option and win national championships with guys who were not even on any recruiting board? Tom Osborne built a dynasty on that system. Now everybody wants to throw the ball sixty times a game and call it innovative.
I will take a well-run option attack over any of these modern gimmick offenses any day of the week. It was football the way it was meant to be played. Tough, physical, and beautiful in its simplicity.