just thinking since the last time we won the national championship we ran the option and we had a killer defense 88... we need to bring it back with dayne and tommy backups and a option qb starter everett golson..
think about it option to either cam, riddick, wood or keep it, then you still have the spread offense so you can pull it down and hit floyd/cam/riddick/wood deep.. with the new defense i think this would be the winning formula.. we could switch to running to passing qbs in the game/season..
If you remember '88 you'll remember an offense that was deep in RBs and OLs, Vinny Cerrtato's RBs and OLs. His talent was so deep that Dorsey Levens left ND after a couple of years because he couldn't get PT with guys like Rice, Mirer, Johnson, Culver, Bettis, Watters, Ismail, The Brooks Brothers, et al sharing the carries. The OL was just as deep with Heck, Grunhard, Heldt, Ryan, Brown, Jurkovic, McGuire, Taylor, Ruddy, et al. Holtz had a stable of OLs and RBs to POUND, POUND, POUND. When defenses stuffed the box he threw a pass - vertically.
When Cerrato's last recruiting classs left after the '93 season, Holtz option attack lacked the material to POUND, POUND, POUND. Holtz had already made the decision to move to a passing attack as given enough time to prepare for the Option Attack good teams stopped it. Mirer was more a passer than Rice. Powlus was to be the heart of Hotlz new offense. But ND lacked the skilled receivers to make a passing attack go AND the OLs were road graders recruited for a pure running attack.
OL Coach Moore fought Holtz's revised attack claiiming that OLines can either run block or pass block but they can't dominate at both. Given the NCAA limit of 20 hours of practice time he had a point. Holtz early OLs were effective road graders. The transition to pass blockers was painful. And it stayed that way when Davie tried to do both. Willingham's Olines didn't seem to be effective at either. See Weis for a more recent example of not being able to do both well.
When Holtz went to South Carolina he didn't install the Option Attack. He had moved on. So did OU, NU and other Option Attack teams with the primary exception of the service academies. The game had moved on. If I recall correctly most if not all struggled making the transition.
An occasional Option play can work well because it's unexpected. A diet of switching QBs to run two different types of offense negates the element of suprise and requires your OLine to be able to both well.
Add to that Crist has been lost to knee surgery in back to back seasons. Is he really a viable running QB at this point?
Mike Ragone was a fabulous TE before undering two knee operations. Melvin Dansby was a gifted DE before two knee surgeries. All three have talent, all three have heart.
I like the flexibility that Kelly's offense showed at UC with QBs with different skill sets but he did that, I believe, within the framework of his system not with mixing offensive schemes like Holtz's '88 Option Attack.
