The Most Important Game in the History of the Spread Offense, and its Legacy

The 2000s were undoubtedly the decade of the spread offense. We’re still feeling the reverberations of the tectonic shifts; what began in backwater practice fields, the synthesis of old ideas with new ones, is now omnipresent — overexposed, quite possibly — on most levels of football, and even the NFL is now beginning to adapt. Some of this charge is led by innovative coaches; some by fan request; some simply by players too good to not be part of a changing landscape.

The spread was not born on November 4, 2000, when lowly Northwestern, coached by the late Randy Walker, defeated Michigan, but that was the day it no longer belonged to the fringe: It had been conceived long before, from a variety of parents, but that day it was born to the world, live on our TV screens. I’ve previously written about the game and what it meant going forward.

Northwestern defeats Michigan 54-51. This is shocking enough. Northwestern scored fifty-four points against a Michigan team known for great defense and great defensive talent. Doubly shocking. Quarterback Zak Kustok threw for 322 yards and four touchdowns. Not so shocking from a spread quarterback in victory. We’d seen the run and shoot before; Drew Brees, also in the Big 10 playing for Purdue, commonly put up big passing numbers in a spread-to-pass system. Indeed, don’t they always have to throw for this much to win? That’s why they get in the gun, right?

But wait, there’s another stat.

Northwestern Rushing: 332 Yards; 6.64 average per carry. 332 yards.

What? Three-Hundred and Thirty Yards rushing?

How did they do that? Yes their running back had a huge day, but the yards that also made everyone sit up and take notice were the 55 yards from Northwestern’s quarterback, Zak Kustok – hardly Vince Young or Pat White [or Cam Newton] in raw athleticism. But the light went off across the country. If Zak Kustok can do it, maybe my guy can too. And even if he’s not superman just the threat that he can make the defense pay if they over pursue by getting me eight yards, then let’s do it.

And if by the threat of the quarterback, that opened up my runningback for the huge day, then we’d really have something. The gateway for the ubiquity of the spread — by definition, a system with multiple receivers — was not by appealing to every coach’s impulse to be Mike Leach and throw it 50 times a game; believe it or not, most coaches do not want to be Mike Leach. Instead if you could show them how to run the ball for 300 yards and score 54 points against an historically great rushing defense, that is something people will sign up for. Walker and his offensive coordinator, former Oklahoma offensive coordinator and current Indiana head coach, Kevin Wilson, were traditional, power, tight-end and fullback guys. If they could make it work — against that opponent — well, there was hope for everyone.

More than a decade later, maybe the spread is already past its prime.

We’re all still waiting to see if and when it will leave a lasting mark in the NFL; so far we’ve only seen the briefest, often haphazard and disorganized, of hints. But that game not only ushered in an age of the spread, it also ushered in the age of information: Not only were the ideas themselves different, there were more of them than ever, and they could be passed along, combined, pondered, and reformulated at a rate faster than ever before. The game was dramatic not only because of what it was — a great football game, where a “David” used used an underdog strategy to topple a “Goliath” — but when it happened: Immediately before the internet, the cloud, iPhones, iPads and all of the good stuff that has increased our interconnectedness over the same time period. Instead of having to spend four years visiting spring practices to learn a new technique, all the cut-ups, all the drills, all the background, the history, film and information one needed were accessible immediately, at minimal cost.

So even if the age of the spread is in decline — and I’m not convinced it is, though it is clearly no longer so novel and “contrarian” that it immediately gives an edge to any team that uses it — the other age, the one of football information and ideas that crash together and pick up velocity as they go, continues, and will only increase. As I’ve also previously written:

Ferment is abroad in football. The possibilities widen; new ideas are accepted and implemented within hours of conception. People are interested now in not just who their favorite players are, but what are these fascinating schemes. With the internet comes accessibility: now your high school runs what your favorite college team or professional team is not sophisticated enough to do. The ideas come from everywhere. The innovators are born on disparate staffs and the ideas ebb, flow, and crash together constantly, daily, hourly. Now even the big, famous schools and teams must wade into the waters to hire those comfortable with its movements.

This ferment is ideal. A decade or more ago ideas were stagnant. Football was only for the purists, and if you failed to replicate the Platonic ideal, then you hadn’t been schooled properly. Five years later, the beginnings of the ferment — turbulent, muddy, a vigorous undercurrent. Ten years later — today, now — the waters are flooding, spilling onto that once sacred ground.

The ideas stir. They stir football itself. This reexamination of all that came before — restless, relentless. The search for good ideas, new ideas, ideas never before dreamed of. This — the ferment — is not a fad. It cannot be. It is football itself.

A-Train did fumble, Navarre fumbled a possible game tying FG too.