Option football in the pro's

[Legal Jacket]

Also just want to make it clear I recognize there is a lot of room to disagree on this one. Not saying any of yall are wrong or are bad people, just that I have a different opinion.

 

[AE 87]

On the first point - I just think we reach a ceiling quicker on the undersized linemen who are fast. I think we are getting pretty close to that ceiling - especially with our line from last year. There are certainly bigger and faster linemen in the pros, but not as many as you would want to see to offset the number of defensive guys who are bigger and faster. I think one of the reasons you see more pass heavy offenses in the NFL is that its much easier to assemble a group of fat, slow, immovable mountains than it is to assemble a group of fast, but still strong, OL that can block downfield. Even if you can get guys more in the 310-330 lb range, which I think is what you'd have to find, I think the conditioning to do what we do would start taxing them too, so you'd have to have a backup set of OL to switch out (as opposed to keeping your fat, immovable objects in the whole game since they don't have to move). It would get more expensive for a team to sign decent linemen - especially since guys who are big but also somewhat fast are a rarity to begin with.

In short - I don't think the gain in OL talent, especially for what we want to do, comes close to the increase in what you see on the defensive side going from college to pros.

On the second point - I think our scheme would be weaker at the pro level because the positions I feel that are the strongest, relatively, in the pros are exactly the positions that we have the biggest trouble against. May that's true of all offenses, but stacking our line with a bunch of guys who are slightly undersized, because we need them to block downfield in our run game, has caused fits even at the college level in our pass blocking, and therefore our passing game. That would only get worse at the next level.

And let me be clear - I'm not saying it wouldn't work at all. I'm just saying I wouldn't expect it to put up 40 points a game. I wouldn't be surprised if you could field an average NFL offense with pretty good players. I would just have a hard time seeing a team able to afford enough quality players to make our offense work.

No worries.
I'm on my phone, so I won't respond in full. Your response to my second point seems to ignore what I had said in my first. I just don't think you fully appreciate the current raw talent differential between GT's O and many of the Ds we face. The scheme does better with less, but it isn't magic. The talent differential would be less at the next level.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

I think several of us have tried to make the same point in different ways. There is no reason to assume that defenses in the NFL are far superior to offenses in the NFL, which is what you have to assume to explain how a scheme which has worked at every level would suddenly stop working at the NFL level.

The second point which several of us have pointed out is that Tech is ALREADY at a talent disadvantage on offense compared to the factory schools, yet seems to perform pretty well in spite of that. Again, averaging 37 points a game isn't bad when one realizes the talent disparity Tech is operating with in most games.

Again, I can respect the attempt by Legal, as well as appreciate the concept he is putting forward, but I cannot scrape together any evidence that would even remotely support the premise. So at best it remains a theory without a test.

 

[Legal Jacket]

Fair enough - AE and Stinger and others make very good points. I think we can all agree that it's something we would love to see put into practice, but for now all we are left with is discussing it in theory.

Unless you count Madden - I ran the spread option in Madden 25. Worked pretty awesome. Then again, I had Russell Wilson, CJ Spiller, DeMarco Murray (was the year before e was good), and Shane Vereen as my backs (can't remember the WRs - they were good but not great).

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

I don't want to see it put in practice. If it is we lose CPJ. Let's just keep this at the theory level.

 

[txsting]

I think A back is the position that would really improve in the NFL. As it is, we are sort of forced to use undersized backs who have some limitations. IF they didn't have those limitations, they would be playing traditional tailback positions at other schools. At the NFL level you could really choose the level of size, speed, hands, blocking ability that you like. At Tech, even the best of our A backs were guys who got beat out at BB or didn't have a lot of other options. We have to develop guys like crazy so they can at least be decent as juniors and seniors.