I asked Emporia State coach Garin Higgins to teach the spread to me, a self-proclaimed dummy. I found out more than I could ever comprehend and also found out dummies are part of the offense.
But you can’t be a dummy to run the spread.
The spread starts with the no-huddle. As soon as the referee sets the ball, the Hornets want to be at the line of scrimmage ready to take the snap.
“We want to try to control the tempo of a game,” Higgins said. “So we do no-huddle. We have fast speed, where we’re trying to go as fast as we can. We have regular speed, which basically means we’re taking as much time on the clock as we would as if we were huddling, and then we have what we call dummy speed.
“Dummy speed means we’re just trying to fake a snap count and see how the defense lines up and then decide what type of play we want to run.”
This is the point where every player on offense turns to the sidelines and gets a signal from a coach. The coach either signals to run the play that’s been called or changes the play. The Hornets disguise their signals by having several coaches signal a play, but the players know to only concentrate on one coach.
“We try to disguise it and all that stuff,” Higgins said. “That’s why I’m nervous talking about it right now. Every coach is like that. They all feel like the CIA is watching them.”
Higgins calls a play depending on how the defense is lined up.
“We’re trying to take advantage of how many players a defense has in the box, meaning if they have too many in the box, our first priority is to throw the football,” Higgins said. “If they’ve got not enough people in the box, then we’re going to run the football. That’s the first thing.”
If the defense has six players in the box, the Hornets are going to probably run the ball. Where they’re running and whether they decide to switch to pass also depends on where the defensive ends and safeties are lined up.
“These guys are what I call skybox players or invert players. Safeties I guess is the laymen’s term,” Higgins said. “How close are they playing to the line of scrimmage? The tighter they play into the box, then we need to be trying to throw the football with some kind of combination route.”
Higgins said he wants to run the ball 60 percent of the time, but he has to keep the defense honest with the pass. He also wants to get the defense to spread out and not leave as many players in the box.
“We’re not good enough to just line up in the I-formation and just come right up at you,” he said. “We’ve got to do some things to try to disrupt the defense, such as run the option. You don’t see it a whole lot, especially in this league so now defenses are basically seeing I-formations all the time until they come to us and they’re seeing a different type of scheme.
“Hopefully we can use that to our advantage. We might not have the talent level that we need to get to right now, but teams have got to work on the option game. Defenses have got to have responsibilities. You’ve got to have somebody on quarterback, somebody on pitch, somebody on dive.”
And somebody to make sense of it all. Luckily, that’s left up to Higgins and not the local sportswriter.
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