College football: Last of a Dying Breed

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of the article can I just say how awesome it is to be a sports fan right now? Football is on TV Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday; Baseball is in the middle of playoff races, Basketball is around the corner. Awesome time to be a sports fan. Even though I have trimmed some branches of my sports tree this is certainly the best time of the year.

Some of my earliest memories with sports was going to high school football
games with my father. At an early age, I would guess what play the offense
would run. At first, it was either run or pass then which direction they
would run, then which type of play (power, stretch, off-tackle). This was
well before the spread took over college and high school football, so many
teams used tight-ends, full-backs and ran the ball 90% of the time. Teams
would find a workhorse back and feed him the ball throughout the game
grinding out four to five yards at a time, run a play-action pass, then back
to pounding the rock. My dad had a name for this: Stupid Football

Stupid football is not a derogatory name, but as the name implies it doesn’t
take a genius to line up in two tight ends, have one or two full-backs in
the backfield and run the ball over and over until the defense breaks. That
is the football I grew up on.

One team in College Football still plays like that: The Stanford Cardinals.

When Jim Harbaugh took over as head coach at Stanford in 2007 he changed the
program in one word: Power. When Harbaugh left for the NFL David Shaw
continued running power. Everyone remembers Andrew Luck at Stanford, but the key to Stanford’s offense has been the tailback: Toby Gerhart, Stephan Taylor, Tyler Gaffney, and now Christian McCaffrey. Each of those tailbacks ran the ball at least two hundred and fifty times a season and a few times over three hundred times. To put it into perspective NFL runners (outside of Adrian Peterson) barely break two hundred and fifty carries in sixteen
games. Stanford plays twelve. In 2009 Toby Gerhart had 343 carries for a
second place finish in the Heisman of that year, in 2012 Stephan had 322
carries, in the 2013 season Tyler Gaffney had 331 carries, last season
Christian McCaffrey had 337 carries for another second place finish for a Stanford running back.

The power play or Power-O is a simple play,
play-side linemen block down, fullback kicks out the end man on the line of
scrimmage and the back-side guard leads the way. Everyone in football uses
the power play; spread teams use the quarterback as a runner with the tailback
kicking out the end man on the line of scrimmage. No team, however, uses
the power play like Stanford. Stanford routinely uses two tight-ends,
full-backs and on several occasions brings extra linemen into the game. Shaw will even overload one side of the formation with extra line-men creating an unbalanced line to run the power play. Many times last season Stanford lined up with extra linemen, two tight-ends and let McCaffery take a wild-cat
style snap in the shotgun and follows blockers to daylight.

Stanford is not the only program to base their offense around running the
football. Alabama has won four national championships running the football
but outside of Derrick Henry last season the Crimson Tide have never had a
running back over two-hundred fifty carries in the Nick Saban era. Also
‘Bama prefers to run the inside zone play over and over instead of power
(Nothing wrong with running inside zone, but how many times have you seen
Alabama go unbalanced? or have three tight-ends in the game outside of the
five yard line), LSU bring extra offensive linemen into the game and
generally uses full-backs and tight-ends but again besides Leonard Fournette
no LSU running back has carried the football over two-hundred and fifty
times. Derrick Henry and Leonard Fournette (barring injury) are going to go
down as some of the best running backs in college football history meaning they arue the exception to the rule.  Arkansas
wants to run the football as well with massive offensive linemen but again
running backs split carries. Now you could say this is a depth issue as
Stanford did not have quality back-ups as some of the SEC schools and had to
use the bell-cow running back, but how many Arkansas and LSU running backs
are tearing up the NFL? Outside of Eddie Lacy Alabama running backs have
been flops in the NFL. LSU backs have been useful peices offensively, but non has carried a offense. In the first two games of the season Alabama has
fully embraced the spread offense by running more zone reads, quarterback
powers and spreading the rock around four different ball-carriers. This all,
however may change after Nick Saban gave offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin
an ass-chewing at the end of the Western Kentucky game.

With nearly every team in the Pac-12 embracing the spread, no huddle
Stanford has doubled down on power and has won the Pac-12 three times in
five years and won the Rose Bowl twice.

The Cardinals are not flashy or
pretty to look at but what they do is successful. With road games at
Washington, at Notre Dame and at Oregon Stanford’s schedule may prevent themfrom competing for the College football playoff but winning another Pac-12 Championship and Rose Bowl is certainly in the cards.

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