The wishbone

[rangerous]

I certainly don’t understand all of the nuances with football offenses.  I was watching a YouTube about the wish bone offense and was wondering why it fell out of favor.  Maybe some of the football gurus can explain why.  It seems to me that a team using something out of the norm is going to be at an advantage.  That’s why the niners and the doltfins were successful with the pistol for a time.

[JetPotato]

That Wildcat fad died as quickly as defenses adjusted to it. Bottom line: defenders in the NFL are too fast for the wishbone to work. It's about exploiting poor defense, so it works at your local high school. The plays take long to develop, and even the worst NFL defenders are going to be able read what's going on and get over there.

[UntouchableCrew]

Just now, rangerous said:

I certainly don’t understand all of the nuances with football offenses.  I was watching a YouTube about the wish bone offense and was wondering why it fell out of favor.  Maybe some of the football gurus can explain why.  It seems to me that a team using something out of the norm is going to be at an advantage.  That’s why the niners and the doltfins were successful with the pistol for a time.

I think that having an offense that is difficult to prepare for is a big advantage, especially when you have less talent that everyone else. It's why the military academies all run the triple option in college. College teams that try to run what everyone else runs with less talent tend to struggle. "Lower half of the conference programs" usually want to run something a little different. Of course, football is a copycat sport so your once novel "hurry up no huddle" or "veer and shoot" suddenly gets ripped off and the teams with the most talent start running it.

That was part of Nick Saban's offensive explosion in the latter half of the 2010s -- he was getting nicked by more gimmicky offenses at Auburn and Ole Miss so he started to run some of the same stuff -- and destroyed them.

At the NFL level, however, with defenses as fast as they are, the advantages of the option are kind of negated. Bunching players closer to together in the formation is generally easier to defend than spreading them out and creating space. It's "annoying" to prepare for but you aren't going to score a ton of points.

It would be a really interesting tactical gameplan for a team with an athletic QB to come out and run that stuff in a big spot though. Dolphins did it to NE in 2008 with the Wildcat and blew them off the field. Wildcat then worked until it didn't... But yeah, would be amazing to see the Ravens pull that on the Chiefs in a big playoff game.

[RoadFan]

My High School ran the Wishbone in the 80s and 90s.   
 

The head coach used to say “only 3 things can happen when you pass, and 2 of them are bad.”

[Bugg]

Wishbone is boring.  Not fun for the players nor to watch. Friend who is a long term high school coach says at this point it's a gimmick, like playing rugby on a football field. But Oklahoma and Nebraska for a very long time had great success running it.   Funny feeling as drug testing kicked in, got a lot harder to have a battalion of ready to go 300+ OL monsters in your weight room every year. And OL is the hardest thing to recruit and project because guy are still growing at 18/19. 

[dbatesman]

[RutgersJetFan]

21 minutes ago, dbatesman said:

L...look at his little paws.

[rex-n-effect]

Defenses never got great at stopping the wishbone but they got better at stopping the run, which made the scheme a lot less effective. Teams figured out they could run pass-heavy offenses which allowed them to move the ball more quickly and incorporate a lot of the same confusion and misdirection as the wishbone but in a passing offense. As we've seen with the Jets this year, trying to run the ball on 50% of your downs requires a lot of perfection in the run, pass and avoidance of penalties or player mistakes. The best defense to the wishbone it turns out was a lighter and faster offense.

Additionally, high school QBs realized the wishbone involved taking a lot of hits and risking a pro career. It was advantageous to go to a pass-forward offense college, so wishbone teams were slowly depleted of talent opportunities. 

 

[New York Mick]

6 hours ago, RoadFan said:

My High School ran the Wishbone in the 80s and 90s.   
 

The head coach used to say “only 3 things can happen when you pass, and 2 of them are bad.”

3 things can happen when you run and two of them are bad

[New York Mick]

As far as the wishbone goes, it doesn’t help sell tickets, gambling or fantasy football so they’ll never allow it to take place. If it started to work they’d change the rules. 

[JohnnyLV]

13 hours ago, RoadFan said:

My High School ran the Wishbone in the 80s and 90s.   
 

The head coach used to say “only 3 things can happen when you pass, and 2 of them are bad.”

In the NFL that's not true. Especially on long shots and undergrowth balls two of the three things are good

[Lith]

13 hours ago, RoadFan said:

My High School ran the Wishbone in the 80s and 90s.   
 

The head coach used to say “only 3 things can happen when you pass, and 2 of them are bad.”

Either you played for Darrell Royal, or your coach stole the quote.   I am going to assume it was the latter.