ESPN Magazine A-11 Article

[newmdref]

I read this article a few days ago and saw it as an example of coaching ingenuity but "Offensive Revolution".....Not. Hey, I get it, if I was the coach of, what appears to be, a lilly white (and I am white), undersized, man handled HS football team that was taken to the wood shed just about every game I would be searching for some way to neutralize my opponents as well especially since I lacked the ability to go head to head with them and be successful. The scrimmage kick formation or any variant of it as a base offense in college or the NFL will never happen and it should be stopped at the HS level. Players play football and people watch football in person or on TV because its a battle not a track meet or a magic show. I grew up in Baltimore and still live in the area. I am obviously a Ravens fan and I don't think we scored a touch down in the 12 years prior to this year, lol. Hell we won a Super Bowl with a defense, a kicker and an offense who's sole purpose was to give the defense time to rest. You can't swing dead cat around here without hitting something purple with Ravens on it, proof enough thats its not all about scoring, offense and trickery unless you have 40 players under 5'10" and 160lbs.

[OverAndBack]

Cue Kurt in 4....3....2.....1.....

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by newmdref

The scrimmage kick formation or any variant of it as a base offense in college or the NFL will never happen

They dont need it in the NFL, because they can report in in/eligible number variations.

If they wanted something like it, they wouldn't use such a Rube Goldbergish means as a scrimmage kick formation numbering exception, they would simply abolish or alter the eligible receiver numbering rule they adopted decades ago. And I could see them doing that, because at the time they adopted the rule they picked up most of their rule chages from the colleges, while nowadays rules changes are as likely to come down from the pros into the colleges as vice versa.

As to the semi-prediction made by the article regarding roughing the passer, if the NFL did that it would probably wind up making the avg. offense more conservative than now. That's because if they adopted the kind of strict liability that exists now re contacting the kicker, they would surely have to adopt a similar caveat that it would not apply if the passer left "usual passing position". Which means that rather than passing up that additional protection for their expensive passers, teams would station them in "passing position" permanently.

Robert