Sherman Clever Like A Fox

I have made no secret of the fact that I'm not a particular fan of the West Coast Offense (WCO). I think the rise of the WCO in the NFL ranks has stagnated creativity in the League, making every game look like a carbon-copy of every other game on Sunday. The only difference is the players and the score, but the schemes are remarkably similar. When Mike Sherman arrived at A&M, he committed himself to playing a pro-style offense, featuring the WCO scheme. Last season, with a porous offensive line, we actually morphed into more of a spread offensive attack, to stretch the field and take advantage of the talent we had at WR in Ryan Tannehill and Jeff Fuller. However, we were able to see some of the Sherman wanted our offense to look like early on in the season. In an earlier post, I broke down A&M running the basic Power play against New Mexico.

 One of the reasons coaches like running a pro-set is because it features 21 personnel a majority of the time, and with two back and a tight end, you have the power running game personnel on the field. As Rick Neuheisel said in his interview with Bruins Nation last week, going with the pro-set allows you to be more physical, to pound on the defense. So, why switch to the pro-set now when everyone and their brother is going to a one-back, spread scheme for their offense? Well, the switch to spread offenses has forced defenses to get smaller and faster. The big, physical linebackers are being discarded in favor of overgrown safeties who are quick enough to cover receivers and RBs out of the backfield, yet strong enough to stop the run. The trade-off with replacing strength with speed is that you lose the ability to handle a true power-running game.

We've seen this before; in the late 1980s-early '90s, many college programs were employing the run-n-shoot offense. The move to this wide-open offense forced colleges to recruit more defensive backs to cover the four WRs being deployed all over the field, and to employ more speed on defense. The result was teams replacing LBs with DBs in recruiting. When Nebraska, who stuck with their power-oriented option attack under Tom Osborne, would face these teams with their light linebackers and speedy DBs, the result was often akin to a steamroller going downhill. We are seeing a similar situation today; with everyone running the spread, defenses are trying to get lighter and faster to catch up, so we may have again reached a time where the power-running game can reign supreme.

I was reminded of this when I saw a clip from texas' spring game the other day:

Notice the left guard for texas, he pulls and is really slow getting to the point of attack; even when gets there, he isn't physical and fails to really put a hat on anyone. Nevertheless, this play is a successful one, gaining 9 yds on first down. Now, where does Sherman come into this? Notice the defensive alignment: texas has switched to a 4-2-5 scheme to handle all of the spread offenses in the Big 12. One of the weaknesses of the 4-2-5 is that you are fielding a 6-man front to stop the running game; with 21 personnel, you have 5 OL and a FB to block the 6-man front. Even if the defense brings down the extra safety to give them seven in the box, the offense has the advantage, because they can zone playside and blow that light safety off the ball. Sherman knows this, and has set up his scheme to take advantage of this situation.

So, while I'm still not a huge fan of the WCO, I can see where Sherman is going with this offensive scheme. If we can field a dominating defense that can shut down opposing offenses, we can employ a power-running scheme to take advantage of the talents of Bradley Stephens, Cyrus Gray, and Christine Michael. We can take advantage of all of these small, quick defenses that are built to stop the spread, and get back to playing the type of hardnosed football Aggie fans know and love. It also won't hurt recruiting to let the best HS players in the nation know that we're running an offense they'll play in if they make it to the League.