texas seems to have decided to jump on the bandwagon of teams running various "Wildcat" packages in their offense by adding the "Wildhorn" package to their offense this season. They debuted the "Wildhorn" against Texas Tech last Saturday.

texas' Wildhorn formation

 Notice anything funny here? Virtually every other team running the "Wildcat" package is running a simple single-wing motion series. There is a tight end, there is a wingback, there is a tailback in the backfield to receive the snap, and a motion man coming across the formation to present the threat of the sweep (the tailback taking the snap is the off-tackle thread). See Arkansas running the Wildcat after the jump....

Notice the tight end aligned on the right side, with the wingback aligned behind him? That is vintage single-wing football. Notice how Darren McFadden is the only back in the backfield? Felix Jones will come across the formation as the motion man to present the sweep threat.

Felix Jones goes into motion

This is vintage single-wing football. This is NOT what texas is running with the "Wildhorn", despite the name given to this package by the coaching staff. This is the Q Package, redux, as Greg Davis admits here (go to the 2:10 mark of the video). So, what is texas running? Well, from the formation given above, it looks like Left Doubles with Chiles at QB and D.J. Monroe at TB, while Colt McCoy splits out wide left at the top of the screen (In texas' offensive parlance, formations side is dictated by tight end alignment. In this case, the tight end is aligned on the left side of the line, with two wide receivers on the right giving you the doubles look). This is a normal formation in texas' offense, and texas even runs a variation on the zone read (instead of TB attacking the 1-hole and QB attacking the 5-hole, the QB takes 1 and the TB sweeps to 5) from this formation (again, see video).

So, while texas seems to have tried to jump on the bandwagon with a name change for an old formation (and excited their fanbase with the possibities in the process), I think we can expect more of the same from their offense. While I like the halfback reverse pass from McCoy-to-Kirkendoll, I don't think we'll see much of this package from texas during the rest of the season. They may try it out against Oklahoma, but once defenses remember that Chiles can't pass, I think they'll be effective shutting down the running game, and this package will join the Q package as another experiment destined for the back pages of Davis' playbook. Davis' attempt to be "trendy" and "with it" regarding current offensive football just doesn't quite get it done.