Spread 101: You spread out the defense to hammer them inside

The underlying reason for the spread offense's takeover of college football in the 21st century is that it made it easier to run the ball.

I’ve offered spread 201 and spread 301 but never actually laid out spread 101. The reason why you spread a defense out and the principle that allowed the offense to become so popular in the first place.

As I quickly learned in flag football, the easiest way to build an offense in the game of football is to drill your team to be able to run the dang ball. A sophisticated and high level passing attack is very difficult to master and requires a few different key ingredients, but anyone can and should be able to run the ball against an average opponent with the right blend of cohesion, toughness, and scheme.

When you think back to the original spread teams that emerged in college football and put the scheme on the map, they nearly all of them ran the football. The Oregon Ducks of Chip Kelly, the Bob Stoops Oklahoma teams, the Vince Young Texas Longhorns, and perhaps most importantly the Urban Meyer teams culminating in the Florida Gators who won two titles in a three year span.

Florida’s success with Tebow and Urban Meyer against SEC competition brought a lot of credibility to the spread offense in general.

“Oh I see, it doesn’t have to be finesse ball, it can be smash mouth…because now they can’t put as many defenders in the box…”

Pretty simple stuff but it changed football and had a lot of ramifications for how the game is played today.