Obviously that Joe Montana fellow went on to have a pretty big influence on the game of football as the maestro in San Francisco’s “west coast offense” that utilized the I-formation but emphasized quick rhythm passing.
Then the spread offense killed the I-formation, which has led to major and poorly understood ramifications for the RB position. The I-formation became a favorite style during that period over the wishbone or other option systems, even with passing teams that saw the the formation’s ability to force a defense to commit numbers to the box to stop a star RB as a positive in creating leverage to throw it down the field. Texas went 11-1, Campbell won the Heisman as the bell cow of their offense (his carries doubled), and the Longhorns had a shot at the national championship but lost to Joe Montana’s Notre Dame 38-10 in the Cotton Bowl. In the I-formation the defense didn’t get a choice, stopping Earl meant beating blocks and then tackling him. The design of the option is essentially to ask the defense to pick their poison. Earl got the dive IF the QB’s read told him to handoff, otherwise the ball was going off tackle or to the perimeter. The wishbone was a devastating concept, but it made the usage of a single talent like Earl Campbell conditional on how the defense played the offense. His first move was to tell Campbell to lose 20 pounds and get in shape because they were going to feature him the following season in a new formation, the I. After 1976 Darrel K Royal retired and Fred Akers took over as HC. From 1974-76 Texas was running the wishbone offense, in which Earl Campbell was a 240 pound fullback running the dive option. One of these things is not like the other.
0 kommentar(er)
