The Spread is Close to Dead

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Blitz
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The spread offence was first introduced as an innovative offence that would enable an underdog team to compete with more powerful teams at the college level. By moving away from a power running game, where an underdog team would struggle against a powerhouse defense, the spread offence gave less talented teams a shot at victory.

All the spread initially needed was a smart quarterback who would release the football quickly and some speedy receivers spread across the field. The fullback was removed from the offence and an additional receiver was added. Spread offences, at times, also took their tailback out of the offence and added another receiver to the mix. The concept was that the offensive line was mainly needed for pass blocking; the running attack was used sparingly to keep opposition defenses off balance, as the spread was mainly a passing offence.

With receivers spread across the playing field, the strategy was to find seams in the opposition zone defense and to find them quickly. The strategy also was based on the belief that it would be more difficult for teams to blitz, needing their linebackers to help out in defending the passing attack. The spread offensive philosophy also maintained, with fewer defenders in the box, that a fast tailback could break a running play for a long gain, once he got past the initial line of scrimmage.The quarterback lined up in the shotgun, enabling him to have already established his drop and to get rid of the football faster.

The spread offence spread to the pros, with a number of NFL teams adopting the spread, including the New England Patriots, who were one of the first to see its advantages. In the CFL, John Hufnagel created the CFL version of the spread offence. Using five and six receivers, he was able to create mismatches with fast receivers being covered by slower linebackers.

As pro teams as New England and Calgary enjoyed success with the new offence other teams began to copy and soon the spread offence was being employed by most NFL and CFL offences.Jacques Chapdelaine, who came over with Wally Buono, to join our Lions, was a spread offence addict, having learned the intriqicies of the offence from George Cortez in Calgary and he had adapted it from the Hufnagel playbook.

However, as pro defenses began to see more and more of it and as they struggled to stop it, they learned to adapt to it. In the CFL, innovative coaches as Dave Ritchie, here in B.C. and Rich Stubler, in Toronto, made numerous changes to defensive strategy and personnel, in order to shut down its advantages.

Those changes were numerous. They included many different types of defensive strategy. One of those was to only rush three defenders on passing downs while dropping nine into coverage. They mixed this up by blitzing while using a zone defense behind the blitz to take away the long pass. They tightened coverage, with the advantage of many defenders, defending the pass in layers. Not having to worry about the opposition running game as much, they went with lighter, faster defensive ends who could get to the quarterback more quickly and they moved to using bigger defensive tackles or nose guards, who could plug the middle, since the spread offence focused on the inside running attack.

Personnel changes also included using a nickel back as a hybrid linebacker who was usually a converted pass defender. Defenses also began to take out one or two linebackers and bring in additional defensive backs on passing downs. New positions arrived on defense, from dime backs to the eighth back, or rover position.Finally, defenses began to mix coverages and even began to drop defensive ends and defensive tackles into coverage, while blitzing a linebacker or defensive back into coverage to mix the blitz. We saw players like Brent Johnson intercept a football 25 yards deep on occasion.

The spread offence has passed its nadir but coaches as Chapdelaine were stuck into it but he was not alone.As defenses changed their strategies, quarterbacks were not able to read defenses as quickly or find receivers wide open quickly. The blitzes soon began to become effective and our Leos were a good example of the quarterback position enduring tremendous punishment as the sack totals piled up and the concussions and injuries to the position mounted.

The running attack was also simplified in the spread offence. Its main running play was the zone read, with the offensive line zone blocking in unison and the tailback mostly focused on the cutback play. However, defenses stopped reacting to the offensive line slanting one way with their blocks and the tailback stepping that way as well, before making his cutback. The defensive line began to stay home on the backside of the play and the big defensive tackles began to mob the running back.

Without a strong running game, without the ability of successful play action to keep a defense guessing, with little motion (most receivers were lineup up with the slot back getting a running start) defenses could key against the pass and pass defenders could just tee up to pass rush the quarterback. The quarterback, mostly stuck in the pocket, became an easier target. As Dean Valli commented during our early losing streak last season...that when a defense knows that you are going to pass from the pocket 20 times in a row, they can just line up and take their shots.
What was obvious was that pro offences needed to adapt again but innovation and change often doesn’t happen easily and often has to be forced. Defenses were forced to change to stop the spread and offences needed to be forced to move away from the spread offence.

In the NFL, New England was one of the first teams to move away from the spread offence and go multi-formational. They reintroduced the tight end to their offence and began to use two tight ends often.
In the CFL, coaches such as Marc Trestman began to tinker with the spread offence and began to adapt.

However, the most sweeping change took place right here in B.C. with our B.C. Lions. 'Chap Ball', as I often referred to it, was devoted to the spread offence, more than any offence in the CFL. However, its weaknesses had been exposed. Without the ability to run outside, our running game was swallowed up by its simplistic strategy of running between the tackles, using the singular zone read play. Our quarterbacks were being pressured and sacked at will, as defenses mainly used the zone blitz against us, dared us to throw deep as they covered us tight, knowing we liked the shorter passing attack.

Without an effective running game, they ignored any play action play as a run. They gave Geroy Simon special attention and tried to take away our first read. By taking away the quick pass to our favorite receivers, the blitz got to us.
Even during the days of having all-stars as Rob Murphy and Jason Jiminez, along with experienced center and guard Angus Reid and Kelly Bates, we led the league in giving up the most quarterback sacks. Our offence was predictable and our tendencies well known to opposition defenses.

And then, starting the 2011 season at 1-6, after two disappointing seasons prior to last year’s horrible start, we got a bye week. The fans were starting to howl and the press and media began to focus on the coaching staff’s lack of success, rather than continuing to buy their previous constant response that our lack of success was due to a lack of player execution.,

Chapdelaine said he was going to take a mirror to himself and look at what we were doing. Whether the offensive strategy changes came from Wally taking the reins off Chapdelaine or whether Chapdelaine was visited one night by the three Ghosts of Football Past, Present, and Future is hard to determine but something began to seriously happen and we began to win.

The simple explanations were that the addition of Arland Bruce had created a new dimension to our offence or that Lulay began to emerge as a leader and quarterback who could get it done. However, they were only a part of the story of the new offence that began to emerge.

'Chap Ball' began to slowly fade into background as a new offence, which I entitled 'Jaques Ball', took its place. It was different in so many ways and by the end of the season it was obvious that we had changed to a new brand of offence that was multi-dimensional, used a variety of personnel packages, was focused more on a better run/pass balance, and had so many new elements that we had not seen before.

What was different?

First of all, our entire blocking scheme was changed from a zone blocking scheme to a completely different approach to both run and pass blocking. Secondly, our vanilla running attack was completely revamped into an arsenal of running plays from direct snaps, Wildcat formations, pitch tosses, shovel passes, etc that left defenses stunned. We had introduced the receiver reverse earlier in the season and it remained a part of the arsenal. Suddenly we could attack the edge with our running attack and that caused defenses lots of problems.

We began to use more and more formations that protected our quarterback on first down. We began to use Lumbala more and more either as a tight end or off-set in the backfield to provide extra protection for the pass as well as being able to block for the run. We also added another blocker by using a lineman as an extra blocking tight end on first downs.

We began to use a tremendous amount of motion in our offence, with receivers moving all over the place prior to the snap. With our running game more dangerous and the additional motion, we now began to use a lot more misdirection play action which enabled Lulay to roll out or move the pocket for his passes. The new blocking scheme combined with the improved running attack and play action bought Lulay more time to throw. He had more time to read the defense and the receivers also had more time to get open. Mismatches were also created with the motion and often the receivers had a running start on the defensive back who was trying to cover them.

Harris became an important weapon in the passing attack. Most of the time, in the past, we had kept the tailback in to block for the passing game and then we had begun to use Jamal Robertson on swing passes to negate the blitz but opposition defenses were on to that strategy. Instead we began to use Harris out of the backfield in a number of ways, including slipping him upfield to find the seam in the zone.

Our passing attack began to evolve more and more as we used our receivers in multiple positions. We began to use wide bunch formations, to stack receivers, and to not have receivers locked into position or even to one side of the field or the other until just prior to the snap of the football. And to add misery to opposition defenses, we even ran specific plays like a fake dive, fake reverse, and deep throw that we had never done in the past. We still used the spread offence but it was only now a part of a multi-dimensional package.

And finally we introduced so many anti-blitz strategies that it became very difficult to sack our quarterback and Lulay’s mobility just made it that much tougher for the defense to come up with a quarterback sack. Lulay also began to run upfield more and to his left, reducing his tendency to run wide and deep to his right. When things broke down, he took off and made defenses pay.

No longer were we a predictable, vanilla, spread offence team. We had emerged into a dangerous, attacking, unpredictable, and exciting offence. I have often wondered how quarterbacks like Dave Dickenson, Casey Printers and Buck Pierce would have played in this present offence. We know that we were able to win and lead the league in touchdowns in 2007 and all we did that season was make our running attack more of a feature so my feeling is that our quarterbacks of the past would have been so much better with the present tools that Lulay has been given.

And so, as this story unfolds, Chapdelaine has gone from being the most beleaguered offensive coordinator in the league to its best. Dickenson is stuck in the spread offence in Calgary and Marc Trestman is trying to get ahead of the curve again in Montreal. Cornish is struggling with the vanilla running attack employed there in Calgary. Chap’s offence will be the one that is the most copied in the weeks and seasons ahead in the CFL.

Rather than being a particular style of offence 'Jaques Ball' incorporates the best of many styles with a multi-faceted and innovative approach. It’s an offence that attempts to utilize all our offensive personnel at their strengths and it can hurt a defense in so many ways.

The stories that are written in the press focus on the talents of Simon, the development of Lulay into a top tier quarterback, the emergence of Harris as the CFL’s most dynamic tailback, the dedication and impact of Arland Bruce, or the emergence of Gore. However, the most important aspect of our offensive success, which began last year and played such a key role in our Grey Cup season, as well as playing such a key role in our domination of Calgary on Saturday night is our new offensive system and play calling.

It may have taken too long in arriving but now that it has arrived, it’s a treat to watch. From the ashes has emerged an offence that is full of fire and explosiveness that is giving defensive coordinators nightmares.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
TheLionKing
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Good post Blitz. As a Lions fan it's been extremely frustrating to be subjected to Chap Ball for several seasons and the excuses that it's difficult to teach running plays and it's not about playcalling or schemes but the execution. It is worth noting that alot of the "innovations" implemented by Chapdelaine is not new but a resurrection of plays that's been around for years. Remember Damon Allen, Doug Flutie and the shovel pass ? tight ends with Tony Gabriel, receivers having a running start before the snap of the football. Anyone remember Ray Elgaard ?
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WestCoastJoe
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Thanks for posting that, Blitz. Great history of the evolution of offences. :thup:

Many elements involved. Run and Shoot. Coached against that back in the day. Made you adjust or it lit you up. West Coast Offence. Matthews' Basketball on Grass, spread the field, let the athletes run. Hufnagel's adaptation. Shotgun of Tom Landry, although he called it the Spread. No Huddle offence at end of game, then Bud Grant started using it at any time in the game. Don Coryell's Air Coryell. Sid Gillman to Al Davis, vertical game.

The Lamborghini was humming last game, and has been for almost a year now. :thup:

It's good to see Jacques ahead of the curve. We were stuck in a simplistic reliance on execution, and deception be damned mode. Full circle now. Between Wally and Jacques we decided to open it up, and the fans, and the players are the Bene ficiaries. :)

It will evolve again. But it might be status quo for a while. The defences are very good now too. What we got on O vs Calgary, going full bore, clicking, hitting on all cylinders, against a tough D is about the max vs top D, IMO. If the O is not on its game, or lacks talent, the D will still dominate, as we have seen a number of times this year.

The nice thing is, we have an OC and a DC, on top of their games, leading the curve. Happy Days, Rammer. :wink:

Still a tough league. Can lose any game out. Not so good to expect to run the table now.
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notahomer
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Football is neat in how things come/go. A style of offense does well until the defense adapts often by changing how but sometimes who (I'm talking prototype players, not actual individuals). I don't know how a defense will stop a 'jaquesball' type offense (kinda hope they never do :cool: but thats not football). What I really like about the Lions current offense is the running game. Its really cool watching a guy like Harris. You think he's stopped and wham he spins off and gets a few more yards.....
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Toppy Vann
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Great review.

The death of chapball was long overdue and likely gone forever as I too agree JC is looking to be the CFL's Dean of OCs these days.

The Chap was stuck in his scheme with little variation on the theme of their offense for too long. Whatever happened in the team review last year was what fans had wanted for a few seasons here. Had they shown this propensity for change in the latter years of the Wally coaching era this team would be building a bigger trophy case. Wally in retrospect seemed too much a defender of the status quo despite fans and media screams to the contrary. It was a mistake to let the fans and media lead the conversation on schemes versus a HC coming out after game saying the production on offense isn't good enough and this week we'll look at film and make the necessary changes.

While we didn't get the Cornish type comments from his last game which seem to suggest he is not happy with their schemes we did end up with uncoachable former all stars in Jason Jimenez and IIRC Dean Valli complaining about passing too many times in a row.

I wonder a bit if Calgary isn't a bit stuck as Dave D is still so much seeming to be comfortable with his schemes versus finding variations that take the focus off the RB to find holes to varied plays and schemes.
"Ability without character will lose." - Marv Levy
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cromartie
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I'm going to skip the part about the Lions recent history because it's much covered ground here.

I agree that Calgyra on offense is behind the times. But you have to grade on the curve of a bad offensive line for two years running and the fact that their starting QB is done for the year. Even if it's rooted in an outdated scheme base, prior to facing our defense they were the highest scoring offense in the league.

In Montreal, I have a great deal of faith in Trestman's ability to scheme. That said, he's caught a bit between a rock and a hard place. He too based his offense on a spread type system that Calvillo is comfortable with, his adaptation was to disguise the offensive patterns prior to the snap of the ball and to do some innovative things with a smaller running back that our offense adopted just well enough to punch Stefan Logan's ticket to the NFL. Trestman's stuck, however, because Calvillo is not going to learn an entirely new offense at this point in his career.

Remember that all things are cyclical. The spread, at the US college level at least, really just incorporated pieces of Mouse Davis' Run and Shoot, which, in turn, was adapted by Hufnagel. To revisit the past through the Lions lens for just a second, one of the things I'm pleased to see is the use of single and double tight end sets a great deal more than we've seen in previous seasons. In previous seasons we had one pass play to Lyle Green, arguably the most wasted talent in a Lions uniform in the past 10 years in my opinion, run twice per season, run out of a TE formation. That play was a left over from the Steve Burratto years. Now, we regularly run and play action out of both one and two TE sets.

One of the many reasons this works is because the linebackers are smaller, and/or teams are frequently in the dime. So utilizing a Lumbala and a Cronk in that position creates blocking mismatches that open up the running game. On play action, it draws defenses between the hashes, leaving our receivers in single coverage. It's the counter to the spread.
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WestCoastJoe
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I recall coaching against Run and Shoot back in the day. It forced you to use a LB to cover a receiver. A radical idea at the time. And not nice if you just wanted to go with your standard 4-3 defence, and have your outside LB on area D and run stopping primarily. And the receiver went in motion all the way across the backfield, so your guy had to lock on and run with him. If you were not ready, the mismatch killed you. So you were forced to use a hybrid LB, as is done here with Reddick, Shell or Banks (previously).

Tom Landry always said that if his personnel was better in the early days in Dallas his team would not have been stopped. I believe it. He was very innovative. In those days it was a lot of T formation versus 4-3 defence, and knock heads. Then along came Tom Landry. Staubach in the Spread, although he came along when Dallas had the personnel to contend. Motion. Sets. Everything he could think of to throw you off. Now when you combine that with great personnel, and execution, you have dynamic offence.

Cromartie referred to the Lumbala dive. I thought that was brilliant game planning and play calling. Lumbala is not going to make anyone miss, nor is he necessarily going to find a hole in the line. He ain't no Andrew Harris. But if the D ignores him, and you see a tendency, and you time it right, then the big guy can plunge in there, and run until a little old DB cuts his legs out. Beautiful stuff. Great design by JC, and great play call. :thup: That is when a defence thinks, "Oh my God. We are being sliced and diced. Lumbala just ran for 13 yards on us, untouched until the take down."

There are still some coaches who believe execution is enough, without deception, or without forcing the D to think and react. But I don't see any of those coaches anymore in the CFL.
Blitz
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cromartie wrote:I'm going to skip the part about the Lions recent history because it's much covered ground here.

I agree that Calgyra on offense is behind the times. But you have to grade on the curve of a bad offensive line for two years running and the fact that their starting QB is done for the year. Even if it's rooted in an outdated scheme base, prior to facing our defense they were the highest scoring offense in the league.

In Montreal, I have a great deal of faith in Trestman's ability to scheme. That said, he's caught a bit between a rock and a hard place. He too based his offense on a spread type system that Calvillo is comfortable with, his adaptation was to disguise the offensive patterns prior to the snap of the ball and to do some innovative things with a smaller running back that our offense adopted just well enough to punch Stefan Logan's ticket to the NFL. Trestman's stuck, however, because Calvillo is not going to learn an entirely new offense at this point in his career.

Remember that all things are cyclical. The spread, at the US college level at least, really just incorporated pieces of Mouse Davis' Run and Shoot, which, in turn, was adapted by Hufnagel. To revisit the past through the Lions lens for just a second, one of the things I'm pleased to see is the use of single and double tight end sets a great deal more than we've seen in previous seasons. In previous seasons we had one pass play to Lyle Green, arguably the most wasted talent in a Lions uniform in the past 10 years in my opinion, run twice per season, run out of a TE formation. That play was a left over from the Steve Burratto years. Now, we regularly run and play action out of both one and two TE sets.

One of the many reasons this works is because the linebackers are smaller, and/or teams are frequently in the dime. So utilizing a Lumbala and a Cronk in that position creates blocking mismatches that open up the running game. On play action, it draws defenses between the hashes, leaving our receivers in single coverage. It's the counter to the spread.
Totally agree with you that Lyle Green was the most underutilized talent in a Leos uniform that I've ever seen. He could have been a John Henry White but had no place in ChapBall. Also agree that Montreal's Cavillo also dictates, to a degree, the style of offence that Montreal can run.

There is a big difference between the run and shoot and the spread offence. The run and shoot was a specific offence, with specifid rules whereas the spread is basically a concept in terms of formations - within the spread offence there are many offensive systems that are utulized. For example there can be a huge differences in the way that Chap ran the spread offence and the way that Trestman utilized it. The run and shoot had the quarterback directly under center and not in the shotgun....the run and shoot did not believe in a shotgun sanp.... and every play was an audbile, with the quarterback making the run or pass call based upon the way the defense lined up. In the run and shoot all receivers ran option routes....in other words they did not have any set pattern to run and determined their rouutes on the fly, based upon their reads...and the quarterback had to read the receivers route and then throw the football.

I've never preferred one offensive system over another...whether it was the Power I offence or the West Coast, the Ran and Shoot, or the Spread. My own choice would be an offence that has all elements from single and double tight ends and fullbacks in power formations to the utilziation of the fullback out of the backfield and the advantages of the quick passing attack of the West Coast to the spread offensive formation and its ability to widen the field and create seams in zone defenses. I also like the tight bunch and the wide bunch and stack receiver formations and their advantages and I love a lot of motion and misdirection. I guess I like an offence incorporating all elements in q mullti-dimensional offensive system with mulltiple formations and concepts..as Chap tends to be doing more of now.

However, it a team wants to run a specific offensive system...the successsful teams are usually the ones that use it first, when its its innovative and defenses are not used to seeing it often. As soon as it becomes the flavor of the day for most teams, defenses will have begun to adjust to it and the specific offence loses its advantage.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
Dusty
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I came across this article earlier this week and immediately thought of ho much it applies to our Lions. The article is about the reasons why the Green Bay Packers offence is not working this year. It echoes what Blitz and other Lionbackers have been saying about what the Lions need to do to break away from the spread offence. I found the article useful as it talks about the types of plays that Packer coaches should be getting Aaron Rodgers to run. Since Tedford has a Rodgers connection, I thought the article was very topical...... as a mater of fact, after reading the posts here this year on this subject, I had a Deja Vu moment... all over again....

Anyways, here is the link to the article...... Hope you find it a good read...

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/11/02/aaro ... nfl-week-8
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