Defensive coordinators beware, an offense is spreading around the country.

It’s exciting, brings fans to the games and keeps athletic directors happy. On top of all that, it wins. It’s the spread offense and it’s showing up everywhere from former bottom-dweller Texas-El Paso, to perennial powerhouse Florida.

“Football coaches discovered the field is 53-yards wide,” Northwestern coach Randy Walker said. “It took us about a century, but we figured it out. We discovered that you can spread the field and put speed at the ends of the field and make it difficult on defenses.”

In a few short years, the offense has gone from a quirky innovation to a nationwide craze.

“Now there’s the new option version of it, and the four-wide, motion-a-guy-in-the-backfield version of it,” said Bobby Petrino, Louisville’s coach who runs what he calls the “spread attack.” “People kind of keep changing, keep evolving back to option without saying you’re an option team, so it doesn’t hurt you in recruiting.”

Clemson coach Tommy Bowden was one of the first coaches to gain recognition for running a successful spread offense. He said after it worked for a couple teams, coaches around the nation began to see how they could adapt the offense to their system.

“I think a lot of it’s kind of going through a cycle right now,” Bowden said. “It’s kind of a hot style offensively. Coordinators want to move up to head coach, head coaches want to move up to larger schools and they run that offense because it’s (athletic director) friendly.”

A year after NU made the move to the spread, it won a share of the Big Ten conference title.

And because it worked, the offense caught on around the country.

“When we started in 2000, there were three or four teams using it,” NU offensive coordinator Mike Dunbar said.

“Now everybody’s got some element of it.”

COPY CATS

There are innovators in football, but plagiarists work just as well.

When coaches see something they want to apply to their offense, they go straight to the source to see how it works. This made Walker a popular coach the spring after he won the Big Ten.

Florida coach Urban Meyer and Bowling Green coach Gregg Brandon both attended NU’s spring practices to learn its offense. The pair coached Bowling Green at the time with Meyer as head coach and Brandon as one of his assistants.

“They came, spent two or three days and they got everything we have,” Walker said. “We gave them our offense.

“We had a lot of coaches here that spring.”

A year earlier, it was Walker who was asking a coach for help.

He decided not to stick with the offense he brought from Miami (Ohio) and zeroed in on what Clemson ran the previous season.

“Everybody’s trying to find a niche, just like we were,” Walker said. “I always say coaches are the biggest plagiarists in the world.”

Brandon said he still uses a running game almost identical to that which he studied at the Cats’ spring practice a few years ago.

Meyer, who moved from Bowling Green to Utah to Florida with the spread offense, agreed NU’s offense formed a base for his version of the spread.

“I think going to Northwestern was significant,” Meyer said. “But that was quite a while ago, and it has adapted and evolved.”

That adaptation means while coaches learn from each other, their own systems are still largely original.

Coaches don’t seem to mind the thievery because they too are always looking for a new ploy to help their systems.

“There are no new ideas in football,” NU defensive coordinator Greg Colby said. “Everything everyone is doing, everyone else has done before.”

NOT JUST A GIMMICK

Texas-El Paso coach Mike Price was one of the early coaches to use the spread offense. He said there is one major factor that causes so many programs to move to the spread offense – it works.

Last season the nation’s top three offensive teams, Louisville, Bowling Green and Utah, all used a version of the spread offense. The element of surprise was all but used up when Walker’s spread took the Big Ten by storm en route to the title, so now teams rely on the athletes on defense not matching up to what the offense utilizes.

“The defenses are getting so fast, and it’s getting so hard to sustain and keep your blocks on the defense,” Price said. “With the spread offense, you have more vertical seams to hit quicker, so you don’t have to keep that block. In the I-formation, you had to keep it forever.”

Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez gameplans against a few versions of the spread offense in the Big Ten.

“Difficulties are with four guys wide, you’ve got to move people out of the box,” Alvarez said. “The most you can have close to the box is six.

“There are only so many places you can line up when you have six guys.”

He added some spread options use a quarterback run, which forces defenses to split their focus between two running backs.

“If you can’t run it in (the quarterback) position, I don’t think you’re in the right offense,” Walker said.

Last offseason Meyer made the move from Utah, where he went 12-0 using his version of the spread, to Florida.

He said he is not running the exact offense he ran in Utah, but it is still a spread attack which has led the Gators to a 5-1 record.

NU senior quarterback Brett Basanez’s interpretation of the offense might explain Florida’s slow offensive start.

“It helps you see the field, but at the same time, you have a lot of stuff to worry about because they’re spread all over the field,” Basanez said, “They’re not packed into a little box.”

FAD FAVORITE

Although the spread offense has not created any additional Big Ten championships for NU since 2000, the Cats are in the midst of one of the more successful runs the program has seen. If NU notches three more wins, it will secure a three-peat of at least six-win seasons for the first time since 1931.

Though the offense has served Walker well, he is not worried about having to change styles again if defenses begin to catch on to the spread.

“I’ve coached for 30 years and I’ve seen so many different things,” he said. “I started out as a veer coach, to conventional-I, to one-back, to shot-gun and now I run a spread.”

The more exposure defenses have to the spread offense, the more coaches adapt to its nuances.

“You can see now what’s happening down at Florida, where they played two (Southeastern Conference) games and scored one touchdown,” Bowden said. “They eventually catch up with the running ability and the other things that you do out of a one-back offense if you don’t have additional blockers to put a hat on defenders.”

After watching his offense become No. 17 in the country his last season at Washington State, Price received a job offer from Alabama. He is now at Texas-El Paso in the process of revitalizing the dormant program using a similar spread attack to that which gave him fame in the first place.

But even he has faith in defenses’ ability to react.

“I think it’s a big cycle, the defenses probably will catch on,” Price said. “But I think it’s here to stay for a while, especially the shotgun and all the options the quarterback and tailback have off of that series.”

Meyer believes the spread offense will continue to work because of its adaptability.

“I think the spread offense, as is terms for other offenses, is a product of the media and the fans,” Meyer said. “It’s certainly no
t the plays called, it’s the personnel doing it. It’s all based on the coach’s ability to adapt to the personnel, not the players adapting to the system. You have to evolve with the personnel you have.”

Meyer adjusted his offense this season to adapt to senior quarterback Chris Leak’s style. Leak is less adept at running from the quarterback position than Meyer’s former signal caller at Utah, Alex Smith, who is now with the San Francisco 49ers.

NU has made few major adjustments from its original interpretation of the offense and has vaulted to sixth in the country halfway through this year.

But it hasn’t been quite so helpful on the other side of the ball.

Said Colby, “It ought to be illegal to be able to run the dang thing.”

Reach Abe Rakov at [email protected].