Many have wanted Jayhawks to run triple-option. Why this new KU scheme could be better
Ian Boyd has a theory when it comes to triple-option football at the Power Five level: Everyone is looking for a guinea pig.
Boyd, X’s and O’s writer at Inside Texas and author of “Flyover Football,” says he heard the rumblings just like everyone else a few months ago when Kansas was hiring a new football coach.
“Everybody wants somebody else to try the triple-option thing. And everybody’s someone else is Kansas,” Boyd said. “Like, no one is worried about what happens to Kansas if it doesn’t work ... except for Kansas.”
So no, Boyd doesn’t believe KU messed up when it went more conventional to hire Lance Leipold. What’s actually interesting, he says, is that Leipold is bringing his own offensive wrinkle to Lawrence — a way to zig on offense when others are zagging — even if it won’t get nearly as many headlines as the triple-option would.
A main part of KU’s offense will be the “wide zone” run scheme. And while the play’s history goes back decades, its college football usage remains rare, especially in the Big 12.
Nothing is guaranteed, Boyd says, but there are reasons to think the Jayhawks can make it work. It’ll allow them to recruit differently. It’ll challenge opposing defensive linemen in an uncommon way. And it’ll potentially create rare defensive conflicts in a football landscape littered with run-pass option plays.
“The triple-option is like, ‘Let’s run the full-court press.’ And this is more like, ‘We’re gonna run the motion offense.’ ... It can be effective if you coach it up really well,” Boyd said of the wide zone. “So do you want to try to get ahead by being the gimmick team, or, ‘We’re just gonna coach something really fundamental really well?’”
‘It’s definitely gonna be a staple’
Before getting to the history — and exactly how it works — it’s perhaps best to know this about the wide zone: KU’s coaches have been damn good at teaching it.
Pro Football Focus tracks every running play from FBS teams. Over the last two seasons, PFF’s stats ranked Leipold’s Buffalo squad as the second-most efficient “outside zone” running team in the country.
First, if you were wondering, was Ohio State.
The impressive numbers don’t stop there.
Buffalo led the entire nation in rushing average a season ago with 6.7 yards per carry. As part of that, Bulls running back Jaret Patterson ran for 409 yards and eight touchdowns in a single game against Kent State, setting new NCAA records in the process.
So no ... one shouldn’t expect Leipold and his staff to shift from the wide zone scheme that worked so well as a mainstay in their previous stop.
“It’s definitely gonna be a staple,” Leipold said.
“The outside zone is our bread and butter,” said KU running back Amauri Pesek-Hickson.
“It’s something,” offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki said, “that we’re majoring in for sure.”
Interestingly enough, its origin at Buffalo came about over chicken wings and cold beer.
Kotelnicki, who had already been Buffalo’s offensive coordinator for four seasons, was interviewing applicants in 2019 to fill his offensive line coach opening. One of those candidates — Scott Fuchs — spoke with him informally during dinner at a Buffalo, New York sports bar.
“OK, you’ve got 10 run plays,” Kotelnicki asked him. “What are you going to call?”
Fuchs laid out his plan then. He’d had all sorts of philosophies he’d previously taught at places like North Dakota State and Wyoming, but at that point in his career, wide zone was what excited him most.
“That, I think, really clicked with him,” Fuchs said.
There was reason for Fuchs to think it could be successful.
He originally became interested in the running scheme two years earlier at Wyoming while trying to expand his knowledge; he believed it was part of his coaching book that was unfulfilled.
The more he studied, the more the design appealed to him.
By moving his offensive linemen — and getting them to run at defenders on the perimeter — his teams were forcing defenses to make decisions quicker than they wanted to. The new setup was able to attack all types of defensive fronts, while Wyoming’s O-linemen also were proving they could win with speed and a mastery of simple concepts that allowed them to play fast.
“We’re going to do a really finite number of things, and we’re going to do them well,” Fuchs said. “That’s the goal.”
Fuchs had help along the way. He consulted often with longtime NFL offensive line coach Howard Mudd, which included the two talking a few years ago at Denver Broncos training camp.
The wide zone, it turns out, has a long history in professional football.
And perhaps an intriguing future in the college game as well.
Super Bowl success
Boyd says almost all talk of wide zone starts with the late 1990s Denver Broncos ... and running back Terrell Davis.
Denver won multiple Super Bowls with an offensive line — and running game — mostly unlike the others. With smaller offensive linemen in the 290-pound range, coach Mike Shanahan’s Broncos sprinted their way to success, beating defensive linemen to spots while creating running lanes that way.
The NFL still has some wide zone disciples today. That includes the Rams’ Sean McVay and 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan — Mike’s son — whose run games have led to some of the league’s most effective play-action passes.
College copycats using it for primary offense have been rarer, Boyd says. Chip Kelly ran it at Oregon, which was effective because the Ducks didn’t always have a recruiting pipeline to the biggest and strongest offensive linemen.
And that’s one reason Boyd sees this as a potentially smart path for KU.
The Big 12 recently has had offenses relying heavily on inside zone runs and run-pass option plays (RPOs). The formula for success there relies on bigger O-linemen — think 6-foot-4 and 320 pounds — who can move defenders downhill on interior runs while remaining hard to get around on play-action passes.
Over time, Big 12 defenses have adjusted ... and caught up. Boyd says Oklahoma in particular — under defensive coordinator Alex Grinch — overhauled its defense to feature speedy defensive linemen while moving them all over. In many instances, big, lumbering offensive linemen haven’t been able to keep up.
One can see, then, where KU’s plans might eventually provide a bit of an advantage.
Running wide zone means KU can feature smaller offensive linemen — like the Broncos — provided they can all sprint and then be ready to run again the next play. (As a side note, some of KU strength coach Matt Gildersleeve’s summer efforts to slim down offensive linemen — like Armaj Reed-Adams, who lost 27 pounds of fat — falls directly in line with KU’s effort to have linemen better fit the mold.)
And importantly, Boyd says, a wide zone scheme — while tougher to run RPOs out of because of angles needed to make it work — can potentially have a path to success against the Oklahoma types who are trying to stop opponents in an inside-zone/RPO world. Quicker O-linemen can try to beat interior defenders to a location, then make them pay when they don’t get their assignments exactly right. Smaller linemen also should be easier to recruit throughout KU’s Midwest base, and then potentially are able to play without having to beef all the way up to 320 or 330; as an example, four of KU’s five projected starters for the season opener against South Dakota are less than 300 pounds.
KU isn’t the only school making the offseason switch. Baylor just hired BYU’s Jeff Grimes as offensive coordinator, with a full commitment to making wide zone the base of its offense.
The Jayhawks, as one would expect, still will only be as good as their execution.
And if this whole thing works, it won’t just be because of wide zone runs ... it’ll also be about what those open up.
What to watch for
So how can you spot a wide zone run when KU takes the field this season?
Perhaps the biggest tell for a casual fan: The running back takes the ball and starts to run toward the outside leg of one of his tight ends.
Kotelnicki and Fuchs — over time — have specific teaching points they prefer. An offensive lineman, for example, could carry out what Fuchs calls a “butt block,” hustling to get in front of a defender before sticking his backside into him.
Another lineman might execute a “pillar” — meaning he’s striking a hand on a defender to help his teammate get to him, before proceeding up to block a linebacker.
One of the main overall goals: Gain leverage on a defender, then use proper blocking technique to always keep your helmet between him and the ball carrier.
The running backs have rules of their own. Under Kotelnicki, they’re asked to stay on that path toward the tight end for five steps to set up their blocks before potentially bursting upfield through an opening. They also are told to stay in phase with the center, meaning Buffalo transfer Mike Novitsky (No. 50) will play a huge role.
Pesek-Hickson describes the rule succinctly this way: “Follow 50.”
From a big-picture standpoint, the play — it’s one noggin in KU’s “Six-headed dragon” offense that Kotelnicki has spoken about this preseason — wants to stress the defense by getting everyone moving. Kotelnicki speaks often in coaching camps about the importance of “distortion,” and by getting players on the run, KU’s potential to puncture an open running lane increases.
Part of the beauty is its unpredictability. Even a running back doesn’t know when he gets the carry where the play might hit, as he’s asked to read his blocks and, on that fifth step, make a cut depending on how the defense has committed.
And once the defense expects KU to run wide zone ... well, that’s when things can really open up.
While RPOs have become a popular way for college teams to put defenders in run-pass conflicts, they’re not the only way. If linebackers and safeties expecting the wide zone begin to flow to one side of the field, KU can counter with a play-action pass. A popular one is a “flood” concept, which sends all the receivers to the side opposite of the run fake.
In the simplest terms: KU gets defenders to commit to run responsibilities on one side of the field, before going with a play-action pass in which their pass duties are on the opposite side.
This type of countering off the wide zone, Kotelnicki says, is where a team can create some explosive passing plays.
The path forward
Now comes the uncomfortable truth: This will likely take some time to work.
During coaching clinics, Fuchs has previously talked about his offensive linemen “hierarchy of needs” — a seven-step pyramid that describes a player’s level of understanding with their current system.
When asked two weeks ago where KU’s players were on that standard after the team’s 14th practice, Fuchs said it was still somewhere between stages 2 and 3 — with most knowing what they should do, while still struggling to always put that into practice against certain types of defensive setups.
“It’s not just as simple as run out there and go this direction or go that direction,” Fuchs said of the players’ responsibilities. “But I would tell you ... I am very excited about the progress that we’ve made in 14 practices. That’s less than a whole spring ball, and they’ve done a really good job picking up what we’re doing.”
Time should be on KU’s side. Boyd says the program is “definitely playing the long game” while installing wide zone, knowing the dividends could be greatest once it’s fully understood.
Like any system, Boyd says there can be reasons for concern if you want to look that direction. Analytics tell us passing — in general — is much more efficient than running, so a structure that prioritizes rushing might at some point have diminishing returns.
There are positive wide zone examples too, though. Boyd says Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, for instance, has thrived using a model to what should be available to Leipold at KU: Get offensive linemen, beef them up in the weight room, run primarily wide zone and build a consistent winner.
Ferentz, for reference, has a 168-106 career record in 22 years with the Hawkeyes, posting at least six wins in 19 of his last 20 seasons.
Boyd, in general, sees Leipold as a more “self-aware” hire than KU’s recent football coaches, believing that reliance on the wide zone is a reasonable way KU can build.
The execution will have to be precise. And that probably won’t come right away.
But the wide zone isn’t a gimmicky gasp, Boyd said, nor is it a long-shot hope.
“That’s how you build a great offense when you don’t have a ton of elite players is run-pass conflicts. You give your guys a leg up,” Boyd said. “And that’s just kind of where some teams are trending right now (with wide zone), because it’s a little more novel.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2021 at 5:38 AM.
