The Wildcat offense could have been one more thread connecting the branches of football. It was carried by an innovative high school coach to his first college job and amended there. But the coach who inherited the direct-snap Wildcat took it to his new NFL team, which had two great playmakers - and neither was a quarterback.
That is how the Miami Dolphins' quarterbacks coach, David Lee, and head coach Tony Sparano, grasping for hope on a long, quiet flight after a terrible loss, ignited their offense with a gadget play - a direct snap to the running back. The Wildcat struck the NFL like a lightning bolt and has resulted in a score almost a third of the time the Dolphins have run it, and it is spreading like wildfire.
"They're causing a lot of problems,"
Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak said of the Dolphins, his team's opponent today.
The New England Patriots and the San Diego Chargers were the first victims of the Wildcat, and versions have been spotted from Oakland to Jacksonville.
Teams have used unbalanced offensive lines before, and they have long run trick plays with direct snaps to someone other than the quarterback. What is relatively new to the NFL is the direct snap to a running back.
In his 2003 book, "The Hurry-Up, No-Huddle: An Offensive Philosophy,"
Gus Malzahn wrote about a warp-speed spread offense, the one that made him an Arkansas high school guru and helped him land a job as the offensive coordinator at Arkansas in 2006.
But at Springdale High School, Malzahn had also used a variation on the single wing, a play that dates to Pop Warner, in which the tailback does everything from run to pass to punt. Malzahn's single wing 2.0 - tailored for a talented quarterback and wide receiver - helped him win a state championship at Springdale and outscore opponents, 664-118, in 2005.
"I'm just like any other coach, I've always tried to steal ideas,"
said Malzahn, now the offensive coordinator at Tulsa, which entered Saturday with the highest-scoring offense among major college teams. "We were looking for ways to get the best players on the field."
At Arkansas, the Wildcat became the formation it is today. Houston Nutt, who was Arkansas's coach in 2006, recalled that his brother Danny Nutt, the running backs coach, suggested that running back Darren McFadden take the direct snap that makes the Wildcat go. McFadden had played some quarterback in high school, and Arkansas had another elite running back, Felix Jones.
"I said: 'Come on. Yeah, right,'"
Houston Nutt said. "Here's what I'm worried about: the snap count. You play in front of 100,000 people. He's not going to be able to do the snap count or control the motion and worry about the play clock. Now you're going to put it on him?"
Yes.
"It didn't take off until you put a great, great player in it," said Houston Nutt, who as Mississippi's coach now uses the Wildcat about 10 plays a game.
In 2006, Malzahn said, Arkansas ran the Wildcat 80 times with McFadden, the Razorbacks' equivalent to the Dolphins' Ronnie Brown.
In this offense, a tight end and a guard line up to the left of the center, and to the right is a guard and two tackles to form an unbalanced line. The quarterback is sent out wide as a flanker. One running back lines up in the shotgun behind the center while the other lines up as a receiver on the left side and goes in motion before the snap.
The running back (McFadden at Arkansas and now with Oakland, Brown with Miami) takes the snap and can hand off to the other running back. He can also fake the handoff and run the ball himself, or, as Brown has done once this season, fake the handoff, roll to the left, then take advantage of the misdirection to throw a touchdown pass to the tight end.
Lee took the Wildcat to Miami from Arkansas - he inherited it from Malzahn. Desperation was the mother of this offense because the Dolphins lacked the firepower to scare opponents. Their coaches were determined to get their best players - Brown and Ricky Williams - on the field at the same time.
"We did it out of what we think is necessity and utilization," Dan Henning, Miami's offensive coordinator, said recently. "We've got to utilize it all because there's a turnaround taking place here. There's a big turnover in personnel. The object was how can we utilize them in the best manner without banging one around all of the time blocking for the other. This fits that package."
When the Dolphins unveiled the Wildcat against the Patriots, gaining 119 yards on six plays, with three rushing touchdowns and one passing touchdown by Brown, the Patriots were flummoxed. The gaps that defensive players are trained to fill are skewed in the formation, creating confusion along the line. The quarterback position is usually ignored by run defenses, but when a running back lines up in that spot, he becomes a threat.
Kubiak said last week that he had emphasized the importance of having all 11 defensive players eyeing the Dolphins' huddle to see where each player heads before reaching the line of scrimmage.
The Chargers - with the element of surprise gone - had some success containing the Wildcat last week. The Dolphins ran it 11 times for 49 yards, with Brown running for one touchdown.
Still, of the 17 times the Dolphins have used the Wildcat, they have gained at least 4 yards nine times and scored five touchdowns.
The Dolphins have hinted that more is to come, perhaps reverses, or a pass or a handoff to quarterback Chad Pennington, lined up at receiver, who could throw the ball.
