Back(s) To The Future: Georgia Tech And The Return Of Option Football

The roots of option football are at least seven decades deep, and run back to a coach at the University of Missouri named Don Faurot, who invented a system known as the "split T" largely because he didn't have a back who could throw an adequate pass. Such is the overarching stigma of the option in 2015: It is viewed as an antiquated and over-the-hill offense utilized by programs whose insufficient talent leaves them no choice, by the service academies and Division III programs and small high-schools in rural areas who simply don't have the players to install a more modern system with a strong-armed quarterback.

This is where Scott Jazdzewski tends to dismiss the conventional wisdom. And sure, part of this is a sales pitch: Jazdzewski is a high-school football coach in Georgia who also runs camps and workshops that teach a common variation of the option known as the flexbone. But even in this day and age of the spread offense—especially in this day and age of the spread offense—Jazdzewski is a believer in the central validity of his product, and in the notion that classical ideas always wind up cycling back for good reason.

"I always contend that if you can succeed in this offense with inferior talent," Jazdzewski says, "what could you actually do with legitimate talent?"

Which brings us to this coming Saturday, and Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets began their season with a pair of overwhelming victories over inferior competition, and will travel to Notre Dame for their first true test of the season. The result of that contest will not provide a definitive answer to Jazdzewski's question, but the game could be a big moment for the gospel of the option. Last year, after a couple of down seasons that put coach Paul Johnson's job in jeopardy, Georgia Tech went 11-3 and won the Orange Bowl over Mississippi State. If the Yellow Jackets beat the Irish on Saturday, they become an immediate playoff contender; and if they make the playoff, all those arguments about the option being too inherently conservative for modern football will suddenly seem like the antiquated line of thinking, instead of the other way around.

In a sport that is often given to groupthink, there is a visually thrilling element to watching Georgia Tech execute its option attack in 2015. It is the ocular equivalent of a Wes Anderson movie, both deeply, meticulously anachronistic and entirely fresh. Nobody on the major-college level is doing what Georgia Tech does, in part because no one has the system mastered quite like Johnson and in part because a tightly formed run-heavy attack, in the modern era of the spread offense, tends to complicate the recruiting process. This is why, for years, Ohio State coach Urban Meyer has co-opted elements of Johnson's option attack out of a spread formation; and this is why Meyer—perhaps the most skillful recruiter college football has ever known—will not allow his offense to be stigmatized like Johnson's. "He'd tell me, 'I don't want to get labeled an option guy,'" Johnson told Yahoo's Pat Forde.

"The stigma attached to the triple option is that it's not a fun offense, kids won't want to play in it, kids won't transfer here, kids will transfer out, whatever it is," Jazdzewski says. "Then there are booster clubs to contend with. Will the people pulling the purse strings support an under-center option team? But if you get in the [shotgun] and run triple [option], that gets a pass. There's something about seeing the ball in the air, whether it's being thrown or snapped back to the quarterback."

Johnson is one of the few major-college coaches who doesn't seem to care about those labels. He never has. He's employed his system at smaller schools like Georgia Southern (where he won two Division I-AA national championships) and Navy, where his former assistant, Ken Niumatalolo, now runs the same attack; last season, Johnson's seventh at Georgia Tech, was his most successful. This year's team is potentially even better.

Last Saturday, in a 65-10 victory over Tulane, the Yellow Jackets ran the ball 56 times for 439 yards, an average of 7.8 yards per carry; perhaps just as important, quarterback Justin Thomas only threw nine passes, but completed seven of them, for a pair of touchdowns. The option relies on simple leverage, on a numbers advantage, and on the notion that young men playing football will eventually succumb to a lack of discipline and get drawn out of their lanes. If the Yellowjackets can mix in a deep pass when the defense cheats toward the line of scrimmage, the whole thing potentially becomes as deadly as it was when schools like Oklahoma and Nebraska were operating out of the wishbone throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

It's possible, of course, that blowout wins over Tulane and Alcorn State signify nothing, and that Tech's success so far this season will prove illusory. But the truth is that preparing to face a pure option team like this is altogether disconcerting for defenses that have been increasingly constructed to combat the spread. Contemporary college defenses are built to answer a different set of questions than the ones the option asks.

"I think it's a drastic change of pace," Jazdzewski says. "What often gets overlooked is how hard it is to prepare for this offense in a conventional practice week. It's a lot for the defense to cover in a week, and they have to train a scout team to run the offense in practice. This is usually the hardest thing to do, is actually get a good look from the scout team."

And so there's something to be said for bucking convention, and not just by utilizing the methods that Tech employs. In every major conference, there is a change-of-pace program that strikes fear into opponents, that utilizes physicality and the running game and provides a challenge for defenses that are built to stop the spread. If you're recruiting undersized linebackers who can run out in space, says Jazdzewski, and if you're recruiting pass-rushing defensive linemen, what do you do when you come across a team that traffics in bulk and leverage? This is why Stanford—even after an early-season loss to Northwestern—remains one of the most dangerous opponents in the Pac-12; this is why a bulked-up Arkansas squad, even after last weekend's shocking loss to Toledo, could still present a challenge to the remainder of the SEC West.

And this is why Georgia Tech, if it proves itself this weekend, could be a legitimate national contender. Eventually, all classical notions come back around. There's no more fitting place to prove that than at Notre Dame.