BOULDER, Colo.—Lamenting the demise of defense in college football? Get used to it.
Some coaches in the high-octane Big 12, with its ridiculously rich crop of great young quarterbacks and four of the top eight teams in the country, say there’s been a fundamental shift in the game and the pendulum might never swing back.
Five-hundred-yard games are becoming the norm.
“It’s out of control. We’re having to change the way we look at defensive stats just because everybody is scoring so many points,” Texas coach Mack Brown said. “I remember the day when we would try to keep from scoring 60 points because we felt like that was really bad. And now you’re seeing 70s.
“So, I don’t know where it’s going to stop, but people are just running up and down the field and scoring a lot of points. And it’s fun for the fans, but those defensive coordinators are pulling their hair out.”
The transformation isn’t just taking place on college campuses but it’s also seen on the recruiting trail across the country.
“I think it goes back to high school,” Texas A&M coach Mike Sherman said. “They used to take all the best players, particularly here in Texas, they took all the top players and always put them on defense. And now, because of the emergence of the 7-on-7 that goes on all summer long—it’s like the AAU basketball—they just keep playing and playing and playing. And those these kids, they enjoy playing offense and scoring points as opposed to keeping people from scoring points.
“So, I think it’s as much a personnel issue as it is a schematic issue,” Sherman said. “People want to see points being scored and these high schools and colleges are just racking up points.”
There’s still some stingy defenses in the SEC, but, considering all the variations of the no-huddle, spread offenses, are dominant defenses going out of fashion?
“I don’t know, I think time’s going to tell,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. “I mean, so many people are running no-huddle. When we started running it four years ago, I don’t think there were five or 10 BCS teams in the nation running it. Now, everybody’s running it.
“Will defenses catch up? They generally do. But there’s not just ‘a’ spread offense out there. You can run the option out of the spread offense, people are now running the ‘I’ formation out of the spread offense. … It’s certainly, I think, great for college football.”
Baylor coach Art Briles compared today’s effectiveness of the spread styles to those of the veer offenses in the 1970s and ’80s.
“I think there’s a lot of similarities in what’s going on, it’s just become a more fast-paced game, and a lot of it’s due to the (clock) rule restraints that we’re under now,” Briles said.
In the Big 12 and elsewhere, defenses just don’t rule the day anymore.
“It doesn’t gall me,” said Oklahoma home Bob Stoops, who cut his teeth on defense. “It’s just different challenges.”
But this isn’t Arena League Football just yet, he cautioned.
“I think at times even this year you’ll see defenses that have their good days … or periods of games that change games,” Stoops said. “I don’t think anybody ever has a stronghold for good on anything. Defenses will continue to match up and be able to handle it.
“But I don’t see quarterbacks going away, either,” Stoops quickly added. “I’m sure everybody has young quarterbacks coming up that are also skilled and good players. So, defenses will have to rise to the occasion, because I don’t think it will go away.”
Iowa State’s Gene Chizik, another coach with defensive roots, said the prolific offenses and great quarterbacks look like they’re here to stay.
“I think that the conference is just so good and so loaded with good quarterbacks who feel really good about the systems they’re in and just the comfort level is beyond anything I’ve seen in a lot of years,” he said. “Is the trend something that I think will continue? I think so. And I think probably because the different schemes that different people have in this conference they’re going to continually attract those types of quarterbacks and those types of athletes. So, I think you’re going to see it for a while.”
It goes back to Sherman’s point on recruiting.
“As you play against these different offenses, you hope defensively that things get caught up, but you’ve got to have a lot of great space players and great athletes to be able to control some of these guys, and that’s hard to get,” Chizik said.
He said the solution might just be to augment one’s own offense to play keep-away from all those great quarterbacks.
Two of the best teams at doing that—No. 7 Oklahoma State and No. 1 Texas—meet Saturday in Austin in a showdown of 7-0 teams.
“What’s amazing to me about the quarterbacks in this league right now is they’re just so accurate,” Brown said. “And as long as the quarterbacks continue to throw the ball like they’re throwing it, it’s going to be hard for defenses to catch up.”
———
TWO-HEADED QB:@ Colorado coach Dan Hawkins, who pulled the redshirt off athletic freshman quarterback Tyler Hansen last week, said he’s going to stick with a quarterback rotation with son Cody Hawkins continuing to share snaps.
Missouri coach Gary Pinkel, whose team hosts Colorado on Saturday, had quarterback Chase Daniel share snaps with his predecessor, Brad Smith, in 2005.
“I think it’s huge because you get some reps on the field,” Pinkel said. “I think it’s very valuable experience. With Tyler Hansen, I don’t think they are as concerned about next year as they are this year in terms of what he can bring to their team. And he came in the other day and did very well. He runs the ball well, very athletic.
“You’re actually preparing for two quarterbacks rather than one.”
That poses problems not only for opponents but the Buffaloes, as well.
“There’s no manual for it, that’s for sure,” Dan Hawkins said. “The great thing is those kids are handling it great. It’s not an issue there and they want to win and we’ll just keep monkeying with it and try to get some points on the board and win some games.”
———
WE-FENSE:@ Kansas State leads the nation with seven blocks in seven games, and it’s no coincidence that coach Ron Prince put an emphasis on special teams when he arrived in Manhattan.
Prince doesn’t even call them his special teams, but the “we-fense,” which shows he holds these units in equal esteem with his offense and defense.
It started with Raheem Morris, who was the Wildcats’ defensive coordinator in 2006, Prince’s first year at Kansas State, before returning to the NFL and rejoining the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as defensive backs coach.
“One of the things he brought with him was this idea that when you go out and play in the kicking game, this was a little bit of a buzz saying or phrase that really symbolized what we believed,” Prince said. “And it was just easier for everybody to understand that you have offense, you have defense, but this is the one time where everybody on the team is going to get a chance to play together.”
Prince figured the Wildcats could make progress by leaps and bounds quicker in the kicking game than anywhere else.
“The top priority for us coming in here was to establish ourselves as very good special teams organization,” Prince said. “We felt that in the short-term, one of the ways for us to get on the map and win some games and perhaps in the short-term be able to play a very exciting style and make some things happen would be in the kicking game while we were still learning our offensive and defensive systems.”
