Notre Dame came out in an uptempo spread offense to start the game against USC. Among other things, this is something many of us here at OFD have been clamoring for, well, since Brian Kelly has taken over as head coach. It seemed especially useful when used by an offense that needs to be simpler than usual (given physical limitations). Also for some of us at OFD (mostly yours truly), we believe it is the direction that all college football offenses are going to tend towards, since it provides so many advantages over traditionally-paced (slow) offenses.
The usual types of teams that are running hurry-up-no-huddle (HUNH) offenses have mobile quarterbacks, and are almost exclusively spread teams. There's plenty of positives to running the HUNH: preventing the defense from substituting (taking advantage of matchups), wearing the defense out, catching defenses in bad formations. However, these all pale in comparison to the biggest advantage (in my opinion) of the HUNH offense -- taking away a defense's ability to call complicated coverages/blitzes or make checks at the line of scrimmage.
There are plenty of reasons why the Irish had yet to use the hurry up, but Brian Kelly put them most succinctly in his post game press conference:
"...I thought we got some really good things out of [the tempo]. We had been trying to settle on a few plays that we really felt like Tommy could handle well without putting us in a position where we had to check anything. I didn't want to check anything with him, and I didn't want to be in a position where he had to pull it. And that's not easy."
Ideally, if you are going to run a HUNH offense, you are going to rely on plays that have multiple options: pass plays that have man beating and zone beating concepts to opposite sides of the field, packaged plays that give a run/pass option based on a pre-snap read, and the now ubiquitous spread option packages. If you have a QB who can do all 3, and any combination of the above (see: Marcus Mariota), you'll have a much easier time selecting 4 or 5 packaged plays to run over and over and over until you've broken the game open."
When you are trying to do the same with a QB who can't "pull it" as Coach Kelly puts it, you have to be more selective in your playcalling. The best thing about the spread option (in most cases, specifically the zone read) is that if it's run correctly, the playcall is never wrong. This is essential to the HUNH offense, because it allows the QB to call it and haul it, and simply make the read the defense gives him, with no need to make a check or look back to the sideline for a playcall after lining up (the "meerkat" offense).
If the QB can't be a run threat, but there is a running play called, and the defense stacks the playside of the line - the QB needs to make a check, wasting time and letting the defense potentially get a new call.
Now that you know why the HUNH without a mobile QB is a little more difficult to run, let's take a look at how Brian Kelly and Tom Rees (are we in agreement that he became Tom on Saturday?) did it out of the gate against the Trojans anyway. Let's look at only the "call it and haul it" plays that were called (the first 4 plays of the game), and how each one fits into the modified HUNH approach.
