PDA

View Full Version : IAOFM - The Elways and the Spread, Part 2



itsalloverfatman
12-02-2010, 12:36 PM
The Elways and the Spread, Part 2
Doc Bear Dec 2, 2010 12:00 PM

Note: This is the second of a three-part series on the history of the spread offense. Part 1 appeared yesterday, and the series will conclude tomorrow with Part 3. Special thanks to TJ for providing the play diagrams that appear throughout this series.

Some coaches have argued that the development of the spread offense was inevitable. That’s not an unreasonable perspective - if the trend in football is to stack your big guys together defensively, some offensive coordinator or head coach is going to spread out their guys to force you to respond, and they’re going to use those open spaces to fling the ball right down your throat. Even so, it took both a tiger and a mouse to really bring the spread into the modern lexicon. The specific form that it took may not have survived in its early form - none of them do, really - but its influence on the game hasn’t slowed, whatever directions it may have taken. While there is nothing truly new under the football sun, Glenn Ellison challenged that axiom, and the way he went about it changed the face of football for all time.

It was 1958 and Glenn ‘Tiger’ Ellison wasn’t happy. Nothing made Ellison, one of the best of his era of high school coaches, happy except winning. His overall record was enviable, sticking to the smash-mouth approach to football that he’d been winning with for years. A former roommate of football legend Woody Hayes at Dennison University, he had taken a job as a line coach for his friend Elmo Lingrel when Lingrel took the head coaching job at Middleton High School in Ohio. He and Lingrel would stay there for 12 years, and when Elmo left, Ellison took over the program and would be there for another 18 seasons.

Ellison's halftime speeches were things of oratorical beauty, displaying his roots as an English teacher with a love of language as well as his passion as a football coach, and earning him the sobriquet ‘Tiger’. His players were known to train and lift all winter; they ran for endurance all spring and dug with picks and shovels all summer, in preparation for the pounding that they would endure in the fall. Ellison was a believer in hitting the opposition over and over again until they couldn’t stand up any longer. But like all approaches eventually do, this one caught up with him. Other teams knew what he would do, and went to great lengths to counter it.

So it was, in the 14th year of his tenure as head coach and his 26th with the program, that disaster struck. Ellison suddenly found his title-winning team in an 0-4-1 hole. The school hadn’t had a losing season since they started playing the sport back in 1911, but he only had 5 games left and was perilously close to the first losing season in school history. Something had to be done.

Ellison stayed up nights until he developed one of the strangest formations in football history. He called it the ‘Lonesome Polecat’, with the center in front of the quarterback, who was alone in a shotgun formation (Hence the ‘Lonesome’ part. But, Polecat? It still eludes me). The rest of the OL was strung out to what is usually the weakside - the left, as you face the defense - while the two receivers were bunched up on the weakside, far to the right. The QB was encouraged to scramble and to find an open receiver. No one had ever seen it that they recalled - but his team reeled off five consecutive victories. That was in 1958.

Continued at IAOFM (http://www.itsalloverfatman.com/broncos/entry/the-elways-and-the-spread-part-2)

NightTrainLayne
12-02-2010, 12:56 PM
The rest of the OL was strung out to what is usually the weakside - the left, as you face the defense - while the two receivers were bunched up on the weakside, far to the right.

I think you meant to type "strongside, far to the right." Just trying to be helpful. :salute:

itsalloverfatman
12-02-2010, 02:26 PM
I think you meant to type "strongside, far to the right." Just trying to be helpful. :salute:

Thanks, NTL. Doc actually typed it as he meant - while the left side is normally the weak side, in this case it's the strong side because the tight end is aligned left in this formation. Since the TE is on the left, the right side of the line is now the weak side.

It is a bit confusing, and when I went to edit this piece myself, it took me awhile to make sure my (and Doc's) bearings were correct, haha. Thanks again.

G_Money
12-02-2010, 02:54 PM
Excellent first two parts. :salute:

~G

itsalloverfatman
12-02-2010, 02:58 PM
Excellent first two parts. :salute:

~G

Thanks, G. I'll pass that along to Doc - I can tell you it means a lot to him.

NightTrainLayne
12-02-2010, 03:03 PM
Thanks, NTL. Doc actually typed it as he meant - while the left side is normally the weak side, in this case it's the strong side because the tight end is aligned left in this formation. Since the TE is on the left, the right side of the line is now the weak side.

It is a bit confusing, and when I went to edit this piece myself, it took me awhile to make sure my (and Doc's) bearings were correct, haha. Thanks again.

Ahh, it does make sense now, but didn't on the first read.

Dreadnought
12-02-2010, 03:17 PM
Great, great stuff. At some point we'll probably want to move this to our "Football 101" section for a permanent home, but for now I think we've got it in the right spot.

Bosco
12-02-2010, 07:29 PM
Good piece. Can't wait to see part 3.

itsalloverfatman
12-02-2010, 07:35 PM
Many thanks, guys. Doc will be flattered.