The evolutionary history of the
OptionThe

Football’s option tactic — the act of scheming your way into forcing one guy to choose between tackling you or tackling your teammate — is part of basically every offense in football now. Most of its biggest innovations came at the college level. Here’s how we went from basically rugby to the classic triple to RPOs, with some other reads along the way too.

1869

Rutgers plays Princeton in football’s first-ever game

Nobody really knows how to play, so everything’s a misdirection.

1903

Pop Warner, realizing he’ll never have the size at the Carlisle Indian School to compete with Ivy powers, develops trickery

Here, he pulls off the the greatest bullshit trick play ever, the hidden ball trick against Harvard. After discovering this isn’t against the rules, Warner produces an altered jersey that allows the team to hide a football in the back of a dude’s shirt.

This was after Warner painted footballs on the stomachs of all jerseys so nobody could tell who handed off to whom, leading to a touchdown. That play was actually invented by John Heisman back in 1895.

1906

Warner “invents” the Single Wing offense

First used to devastating effect thanks to Jim Thorpe, the offense — predicated on misdirection, deception, and creating favorable two-on-one blocking situations — becomes one of the most popular of the era. With direct tailback snaps and multiple players in motion, figuring out who has the ball is difficult for defenses.

The Single Wing gets tweaked all over college football, with two of the more successful variations at Notre Dame (Box) and Pitt (Sutherland), and other famous practitioners like Bob Neyland at Tennessee, Herbert “Fritz” Crisler at Michigan, Wallace Wade at Alabama and Duke, and Bill Alexander at Georgia Tech.

Hell, there will be high school teams still basically running this offense more than a century later.

How the option works

1940

The modern T-Formation is popularized by Clark Shaughnessy at Stanford and with the Chicago Bears

If you want to get technical about it, the T was really the original formation (they called it the “regular formation” in the 1890s). But as head coach at a variety of schools in the 1930s and 1940s, Shaughnessy adds wrinkles — motion, mainly — to this standard.

From Doug Farrar’s “The Genius of Desperation, The Schematic Innovations that Made the Modern NFL”:

Shaughnessy was the University of Chicago’s head coach and he told Halas that he had watched several Bears games that season and that he had some ideas regarding the use of the T formation that might open things up for Halas’ team. Named this because there are three running backs behind the quarterback in the shape of a T, the formation allowed the quarterback to drop back to pass, gave different rushing options, and offered new sleights of hand.

But knowing it needed to be tweaked, Halas rearranged the place cards at his table so he and Shaughnessy could sit together, and heard him out. Halas had been working with the T formation since his freshman year at the University of Illinois in 1914, but it was time for new ideas. As happens with any static offensive scheme, defenses had figured out the T. Shaughnessy told Halas that he had some additional elements — “hidden-ball stuff, but with power” — to try out.

Shaughnessy uses his version (with the passing offense more easily deployed from it) to upset Nebraska in the 1941 Rose Bowl. Combine that with Halas’ explosive success — his Bears beat Washington, 73-0, in the 1940 NFL Championship — and the Single Wing is virtually extinct by the late 1950s, also in part because of innovation elsewhere in the Midwest.

1941

Don Faurot at Missouri is credited for building the “option” as we know it

Faurot had nearly seen his passing quarterback, Paul Chrisman, win the Heisman in 1939, but as Mizzou’s athletic director, he’s taking on brutal road trips to pay athletic department expenses. In the 1940s alone, his Tigers will travel to Ohio State eight times, Minnesota three times, and SMU three times, plus Michigan State, Texas, Wisconsin, and Illinois.

Knowing his charges will be outmanned — he follows a “Missourians only” model for recruiting, which means brand loyalty and talent disadvantages — he wants to add an extra layer of deception to his offense. As he would write in “Secrets of the Split T”: “If we couldn’t beat them down to size, then we might bewilder them!”

Former basketball player Faurot models what would become foundational option concepts after a 2-on-1 fast break: If you isolate one defender by leaving him unblocked, then have the quarterback read his actions and either pitch to a running back or keep the ball, you have more blockers for everyone else. And you can always make the unblocked defender guess wrong.

He calls it the Split T because, well, it’s a T-formation with wider line splits. The formation and the “option” idea open up a world of creativity so broad that coaches will spend decades building on them.

Why option teams are awesome underdogs

1943

Faurot shares his secrets

Mizzou had won 13 of 15 games at one point during the 1941-42 seasons — film study wasn’t really a thing, which made preparing to defend this weird offense a slow go — and capped 1942 with a win over Iowa Pre-Flight, a wartime team of enlisted all-stars.

In 1943, Faurot enlists and takes over as Pre-Flight’s head coach. Instead of running some vanilla concepts with a bunch of all-stars, Faurot uses his Split T, teaching its concepts to assistant coaches Jim Tatum and Bud Wilkinson.

1946-56

Tatum and Wilkinson spread the Split T and mix it with better talent

As head coaches at Maryland and Oklahoma, respectively, they bludgeon Faurot’s teams by mixing the concepts he taught them with recruits who, well, aren’t all from Missouri. Faurot goes 0-17 against them. The low point is either a 74-13 loss to Maryland in 1954 or a 67-14 loss to Oklahoma in 1956, the year of Faurot’s retirement.

By the end of the 1950s, Tatum and Wilkinson combine for four national titles and 13 top-five finishes.

1951

David Nelson develops the Delaware Wing T

Thanks to Nelson’s innovation, later perfected by assistant Tubby Raymond, Delaware rides this hybrid between the Single Wing and the T formation to small college domination. The quarterback goes under center (like in the T), but uses many of the misdirection strategies and blocking assignments of the Single Wing. Nelson and Raymond combine to win 382 games for the Blue Hens, creating one of the most successful FCS programs and a blueprint for later option and spread innovations.

Iowa and LSU adopt the Wing T in the 1950s to great success.

The story of the longest drive in football history, fueled by the option

1965

Bill Yeoman invents split back veer at Houston

The “veer” would take on many meanings, but here’s what it means in Southeast Texas in the mid-1960s:

  1. Two backs in the backfield, split to each side of the quarterback.
  2. Three options for the quarterback — a triple option, if you will. Either hand it to one back diving up the middle (if the defense’s interior is ripe), keep it, or pitch it to the back who has swung wide behind the QB (if the read defender is focused on the QB). Five-plus decades later, this concept will be a part of every level of football.

Here’s a more immediate result: lots of points. Lots and lots of points. Still an independent, Houston had won just four combined games in 1963-64. They win four in 1965 — he unveils the offense midseason, “when it looked as if we were all about to be fired” — then surges to eight in 1966.

Early in 1967, the Cougars destroy No. 3 Michigan State on the way to second in the polls. They beat No. 5 Georgia, too, though they slip out of the top 10 with an upset loss to Tulsa.

In 1968, they get their revenge. After scoring 54 on Tulane, 71 on Cincinnati, and 77 on Idaho (and tying top-10 Texas and Georgia teams), they post an even 100 on the Golden Hurricane. It gets so bad that even a member of future country group the Gatlin Brothers scores.

Yeoman’s success continues into the 1970s, earning Houston three top-10 finishes and an invitation to the Southwest Conference (plus a spectacular list of NCAA violations in the 1980s). But while veer concepts thrive in one formation or another, one particular formation gains considerable traction.

1968

Emory Bellard and Texas unveil the Wishbone

When Texas head coach Darrell K. Royal names Bellard his coordinator in 1968, the Longhorns needed some life. They had gone just 19-12 over the last three years.

Bellard’s first task is to use a wealth of backfield talent. The Horns don’t have a QB who can pass, but they have a lot of guys who can run. Bellard starts with an old-school T-formation, then has all-world fullback Steve Worster line up closer to the QB, so he can hit the line faster on dive plays.

This seems like a small change. But it opens up a world of potential in terms of options, blocking (with an extra back in the backfield, you can have a lead blocker and fake the dive at the same time), and deception.

After an 0-1-1 start, Royal and Bellard promote James Street to first-string quarterback. The Longhorns rip off a 30-game winning streak and four top-five finishes in five years.

1969

Bellard shares his secrets

Often, innovations take a while to expand beyond small outpost schools.

But with the Wishbone immediately turning blue-blood Texas into a title contender, it takes basically a year for it to become college football’s dominant offense. From Bellard’s autobiography, “Wishbone Wisdom”:

In the spring after that 1968 season, our coaches’ offices were full with coaches from about every college in America. Maybe not every college, but it felt like it was. About a third of them were trying to find out how to defend against the Wishbone. And two-thirds were there to try to put it in.

In the spring of 1971, Alabama’s Bear Bryant sneaks to Austin for a tutorial, then installs the Wishbone under cloak and dagger, unleashing it with great effect on USC in the season opener (and basically the next 100 or so games after that).

That same year, flagging Oklahoma coach Chuck Fairbanks sends a coordinator by the name of Barry Switzer to check it out, too. “Wishbone Wisdom”:

Darrell said: “I think Chuck is fixing to get fired. I want to help him out. Barry Switzer is going to call you. I want you to tell him how to run the Wishbone.”

I asked if I should just show them how we lined up.

“No,” Darrell said, “I want you to show them everything about how we run the Wishbone.”

So I gave Oklahoma our entire Wishbone offense. Oklahoma took that and added speed to it. They became the most prolific offense in the nation. We had plenty of speed, but we didn’t have the kind of speed that they had. In fact, nobody had the kind of speed that they had at that time. Oklahoma’s Wishbone beat Texas five years in a row in 1971-75.

This means in both the 1950s and 1970s, Oklahoma used the generosity of rivals to lay waste to college football via the option.

How EA Sports programmed the option into NCAA Football and Madden

1981

Nebraska, under Tom Osborne, starts to see real success from a Wishbone and I-Formation fusion

One blue blood zigs when others were zagging. Osborne, seeking to borrow some of what made Oklahoma’s Wishbone so successful without handicapping his downhill running, works Wishbone concepts into his patented Power I, thus remaining unique among option offenses.

The process starts in the late 1970s, but by the early 1980s, after the Cornhuskers beat out Oklahoma for Texan quarterback Turner Gill, things really take off. Osborne continues to upgrade his recruiting, and in an evolving landscape for college football offenses, his old-fashioned Power I dominates.

At its peak in the ‘90s, Nebraska fields some of the most successful offenses of all time, including a destruction of Steve Spurrier’s pass-first Gators in 1995’s title game. Nebraska slowly incorporates plays from Ace, Shotgun, and other formations, but the I remains the bread and butter.

The spread offense has changed football forever

1982

Fisher DeBerry and Ken Hatfield “break the Wishbone” at Air Force

DeBerry was a successful option coach at Wofford, Appalachian State, and as an Air Force assistant, but he takes the offense to the next level by “breaking the Wishbone” and flexing his slotbacks out wide, near the tackles.

Deemed the Flexbone, this forces defenses to defend more of the field horizontally, which would inspire much of the modern spread offense. Air Force’s Flexbone carries the Falcons as high as fifth in the AP poll over two highly successful decades.

Eventual national champ and spread innovator Urban Meyer will be among those reaching out to DeBerry for advice.

How Army and Navy prepare for each other despite using the exact same offense

1985

Bill McCartney reaches out to DeBerry

McCartney struggles in his first three seasons at Colorado, going 7-25-1 while trying to be something of a “BYU of the Big Eight” by throwing constantly. Coordinator Gerry DiNardo would say “they were absolutely desperate,” and McCartney calls DeBerry, among others, for advice.

The early Wishbone installation doesn’t go well. From Tim Layden’s “Blood, Sweat and Chalk”:

DiNardo met with DeBerry, [Arkansas head coach Ken] Hatfield and [Arkansas State head coach Larry] Lacewell in the winter of 1985 and installed the option at spring practice. He took the practice tape to Lacewell to view during a national coaches’ convention. When DiNardo walked out of the room with his tape, Lacewell said to his fellow coaches, “I feel bad. They’ll be lucky to win a game.” The transition was comically painful. DiNardo recalls a preseason gathering in Denver with a booster club. One of the gentlemen in the audience stood up and, having heard of the conversion to the wishbone, said to McCartney, “Please tell me the first play of the season isn’t going to be a dive up the middle, because I don’t think I can stand that.”

McCartney let the question hang and then answered: “You might want to come for the second play.”

Somehow, the changes work. CU goes 7-5 in 1985 and averages seven wins per year over the next three seasons. And with recruiting both improving and fitting the system, the Buffaloes surge to 11-1 in 1989, then share a national title at 11-1-1 in 1990.

Quarterback Darian Hagan finishes fifth in the Heisman voting in 1989, running back Eric Bieniemy third in 1990, and running back Rashaan Salaam wins it in 1994 during McCartney’s final season. Even in a conference dominated by the option, CU finds a recipe that stands out.

1999

Rich Rodriguez and Woody Dantzler, a match made in football heaven

In 1991, a young and desperate NAIA coach experiments with tempo. Glenville State’s Rich Rodriguez is 28 years old and 3-15-1 as a head coach when he decides to get weird and create an offense solely based around the two-minute drill. He moves his quarterback into the shotgun because, as he put it, “We had a shorter quarterback, and I thought I could get five dumpy linemen who could get run over slowly.”

From there, Rodriguez’s career takes off. Glenville State nearly wins the NAIA national title in 1993, and in 1997, new Tulane head coach Tommy Bowden brings Rodriguez in as coordinator.

According to Rodriguez, the creative juices flow even stronger when he begins working with FBS athletes:

It worked better! That was the pleasing part. We still had some dumpy linemen who got run over slowly, but we had some more athletic guys up front, and we found that we could find some quarterbacks, guys who could both throw and run really well. It opened up options for us in the QB run game.

In 1998, Tulane goes undefeated as Shaun King throws for 3,500 yards and rushes for more than 600. And when Bowden gets the Clemson job in 1999 and takes Rodriguez with him, RichRod finds his perfect template: a sophomore named Woody Dantzler.

Dantzler is an OK passer and an excellent runner, and he takes perfectly to the zone read that Rodriguez had begun to play with by accident at Glenville State. Again, from “Blood, Sweat, and Chalk”:

One afternoon (Glenville starting QB Jed) Drenning bobbled a snap on one of these zone-blocked running plays. Unable to get the hand-off delivered to the running back, Drenning tucked the ball himself and saw the backside defensive end crashing down the line of scrimmage to tackle the running back—who, in fact, did not have the ball but was behaving as if he did—from behind. On a broken play the quarterback customarily follows the running back into the assigned hole and tries to salvage yardage. But Drenning, seeing the end closing, instead ran wide into the area vacated by the end. “It was just an instantaneous reaction thing,” says Drenning.

After the whistle, Rodriguez casually asked Drenning, “Why did you do that?”

”Do what?” said Drenning.

”Why did you run that way?” Rodriguez said.

”The end pinched,” said Drenning.

Rodriguez makes it part of his offense. And in 2001, Dantzler becomes the first FBS quarterback to throw for 2,000 yards and rush for 1,000 in the same season.

He soon has lots of company. Missouri’s Brad Smith averages a 2,000/1,000 season from 2002-05. Texas’ Vince Young posts FBS’ first 3,000/1,000 season during the Longhorns’ 2005 national title run.

The zone read quickly becomes a staple of the generic college offense, helps college quarterbacks to further statistical boundaries, and eventually becomes an NFL mainstay. NIU’s Jordan Lynch nearly posts a 3,000/2,000 season in 2013, Deshaun Watson posts a 4,000/1,000 during Clemson’s national title run, and 2017’s Lamar Jackson combines 3,660 passing yards with 1,601 rushing yards, nearly doubling Dantzler’s feat.

The forgotten moment when the RPO changed football forever

2008

As the zone read filters up to the NFL, the modern version of the old-school triple option lives on in FBS

The zone read is a modern option concept for a modern football offense. It’ll catch on in the NFL, eventually bringing the run/pass option up from college as well. The typical RPO has three options and builds on the old-fashioned triple principles, fully modernizing innovations that began decades earlier.

How the RPO works differently in college and in the NFL

But the old-fashioned triple option remains a part of Division I football all along, largely because of the service academies.

At Air Force, Troy Calhoun succeeds DeBerry in 2007 and marries NFL-style zone blocking with triple option concepts. When it works, it works.

At the other two academies, Paul Johnson becomes the biggest influence. When he takes over at Navy in 2002, the Midshipmen have enjoyed one bowl in the previous two decades. Hampered by weight restrictions and recruiting limitations, Navy needs to figure out how to use opponents’ advantages to their disadvantage (remember: “If we couldn’t beat them down to size, then we might bewilder them”). So they bring in the former Hawaii and Navy coordinator, who had won two FCS national titles at Georgia Southern with the Flexbone.

After five straight bowls and breaking the longest rivalry losing streak in football history against Notre Dame, Johnson lands at Georgia Tech, which had been stuck in pro-style hell. The Flexbone makes the Jackets unique, wins the ACC title in 2009, and stomps Mississippi State in the 2014 Orange Bowl.

Why the triple option is still alive in high school football

2019

Every team all the way up to the Super Bowl now uses option tactics to some degree, whether in the shotgun, pistol, or otherwise

Recruiting blue-chippers to such an old-school system is hard, so the pure Flexbone fraternity in Division I remains small.

But while the old-school triple lives on as a base offense, the zone read and RPO prove there’s still a place for decades-old option concepts at every level of football.

The future of the RPO, as explained by 11 coaches