Earlier this season, the Miami Dolphins went to a “wildcat” formation, wherein the snap goes to a running back and the quarterback is in the slot. This creates new opportunities for the offense and chaos for the defense.
After the Dolphins shocked the world by beating the Patriots behind a five-touchdown performance by wildcat back Ronnie Brown (four rushing, one throwing), the entire league was suddenly boning up on the formation. Offenses tinkered with it; defenses were obsessed with stopping it.
Where did the wildcat craze come from?
Mike Tomlin, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ head coach, has an interesting answer. From an interview on the Steelers’ website:
What has made it in vogue in the N.F.L. this year is that Arkansas did it, and they did it with Darren McFadden. Everybody watched tape of McFadden and Felix Jones leading up to the draft. Arkansas didn’t have a mobile quarterback, they had a passer, so they put McFadden back there. People in this league saw that if you don’t have a mobile quarterback you can still attack people in this way, by putting the back back there and splitting the quarterback out. I think it all stems back from everybody watching Arkansas tape in preparation for the draft.
I don’t follow college football, but I am guessing this is hardly the first college wrinkle that the N.F.L. has imported lately. I’d appreciate it if you college fans could tell us about some other notables. (One possibility, though slim: Penn State head coach Joe Paterno is coaching from a skybox because of an injury, and just yesterday opined: “I’m not sure that’s not the best place for a head coach. … I have a better view of the game from up there than I ever do on the sidelines.”
I am traveling this weekend to Pittsburgh for my annual father-son Steelers game. They play the Giants; both teams are 5-1; it should be a good game.
The biggest question about the Steelers is whether Hines Ward, Troy Polamalu, or Ben Roethlisberger has the hardest head.
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When I was in high school our team used a variant of the single wing formation from the 1920s that had, in the 1930s, morphed into the short punt formation. That we were running it in the 1960s created significant problems for defenses that were set up to face the ubiquitous variations of the T-formation in which the quarterback receives the ball directly from the center while squatting behind him. Then came the shotgun formation for obvious passing situations or when the defensive line was overwhelmingly strong against the passing game.
The point is, there is only a certain amount of real estate behind the offensive line. At the beginning of the play, there are only four players able to occupy that real estate. Just as baseball has contrived an enormous variety of ways to move the ball around the four bases, so has football derived the same. And the limits are the same now as they were 100 years ago. So for all the new terminology (“wildcat”, veer, power-I, and dozens of others,) they all just amount to the same thing-moving the ball as fast as possible to the weakest point in the defense in the hands of the fastest possible player. All the discussion about fancy formations just proves there is nothing new under the sun.
Quite simple actually. Miami assistant coach Steve Bush ran the Wildcat when he was a high school coach, and he brought it to the Dolphins this year.
Once NFL defenses adjust to it (which will probably take them a full season), Wildcat will be a thing of the past.
The most important import was smaller faster defensive players. Especially at Linebacker. Jimmy Johnson believed speed killed and made Miami one of the greatest college Defenses of all time. Then moving to Dallas, brought the same philosophy and ended up with Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irivin (read Jeff Pearlman’s, “Boys Willb Boys”. Johnson’s defensive model stopped the run in college which opened the door for the spread offensive formation.
Both the Big Ben-era Steelers & the Michael Vick-era Falcons employed the “Wildcat” regularly in the past ten years. This is the first I’ve heard of the play being referred to as some sort of resurgent strategy.
For Justin Stringfellow (#1), if you are correct and no on outside the US cares about the NFL, may I take this to mean that no one attended the “NFL in London 2007” game (between the Dallas Cowoboys and Miami Dolphins? And if, in fact, no one attended that, is there any particular reason there will be an “NFL in London 2008” this coming Sunday between the San Diego Chargers and New Orleans Saints?
I suspect these games have been/will be attended by folks from the UK, meaning that there ARE some folks in your country who are interested in American Football — despite your claim otherwise.
DJH- The Giants played the Dolphins last year, not the Cowboys.
And the Wildcat is a common formation found in high school that has trickled up. I do not think it is directly attributable in anyway to what Arkansas did.
As someone else pointed out, a lot of high school and college tactics don’t translate in the NFL. Take the option, for instance.
In college football last year, there was a OK game that was lost due to a horrible phantom call. The ref even got death threats! This has trickled into the NFL as well – just ask Ed Hochuli.
Arkansas unveiled the Wildhog almost exactly two years ago to the day against Ole Miss. It’s origin has been traced to a high school coach who is now the offensive coach at Tulsa (Gus Malzahn). Malzahn adopted an old NFL formation – the single wing, with some new twists.
Of course, having two first round RB’s (McFadden and Jones) helped cement it at Arkansas.
There are college innovations that haven’t worked in the NFL — run and shoot offense, wishbone, the spread, etc. This one appears to work in small doses, but no one has used it more than just as a diversion.