The wishbone formation, also known simply as the bone, is an offensive formation in American football. The style of attack to which it gives rise is known as the wishbone offense. Like the spread offense in the 2000s to the present, the wishbone was considered to be the most productive and innovative offensive scheme in college football during the 1970s and 1980s. [1]
While the record books commonly refer to Emory Bellard developing the wishbone formation in 1968 as offensive coordinator at Texas, [2] the wishbone's roots can be traced back to the 1950s. According to Barry Switzer, it was Charles “Spud” Cason, football coach at William Monnig Junior High School of Fort Worth, Texas, who first modified the classic T formation in order “to get a slow fullback into the play quicker.” [3] Cason called the formation “Monnig T”. Bellard learned about Cason's tactics while coaching at Breckenridge High School, a small community west of Fort Worth.
Earlier in his career Bellard saw a similar approach implemented by former Detroit Lions guard Ox Emerson, then head coach at Alice High School near Corpus Christi, Texas. Trying to avoid the frequent pounding of his offensive line, Emerson moved one of the starting guards into the backfield, enabling him to get a running start at the opposing defensive line. Bellard served as Emerson's assistant at that time. During his high school coaching career in the late '50s and early '60s, Bellard adopted the basic approaches of both Cason and Emerson, as he won two 3A Texas state championships for Breckenridge in 1958 and 1959 and a 4A state title at San Angelo Central High School in 1966, using a wishbone-like option offense.
In 1967 Bellard was hired by Darrell Royal and became offensive coordinator a year later. The Texas Longhorns only scored 18.6 points per game in a 6–4 season in 1967. After watching Texas A&M—running offensive coordinator Bud Moore and Gene Stallings' option offense—beat Bear Bryant's Alabama team in the 1968 Cotton Bowl Classic, Royal instructed Bellard to design a new three-man back-field triple option offense. Bellard tried to merge his old high school tactics with Stallings' triple option out of the Slot-I formation and Homer Rice's variations of the Veer, an offensive formation created by Bill Yeoman.
When Texas introduced the new offensive scheme at the beginning of the 1968 season, Houston Chronicle sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz stated it looked like a “pulley bone”; Royal agreed but changed the name to “wishbone”. [4] Royal quickly embraced the idea of the wishbone, though it did not immediately work, as the Longhorns tied their first game running the new offense and went into halftime of their second game against Texas Tech trailing 21–0. This led Royal to make the first of two changes which proved key to the future success of the wishbone. He replaced initial starting quarterback Bill Bradley, who proved to have trouble with the reads and pitches that were key to the new formation, with James Street, who nearly led the Longhorns to a comeback win. Then, while analyzing film from the Texas Tech loss, an assistant noticed that fullback Steve Worster was reaching the line of scrimmage too soon. At the assistant's suggestion, Royal and Bellard then had Worster start a step farther back from the quarterback. According to Bradley, "When we moved Worster back and James took over, we just caught fire." [5] Texas won its next 30 games, leading to two national championships using the formation. [6] In 1971 Royal showed the offense to Bear Bryant, who was so enamored with it that he installed it at Alabama complete with his own touches.
Bellard later left Texas and – using the wishbone – guided Texas A&M and Mississippi State to bowl game appearances in the late 1970s. At Mississippi State Bellard “broke the bone” and introduced the “wing-bone”, moving one of the halfbacks up to a wing formation and frequently sending him in motion. Another variation of the wishbone formation is called the flexbone . [7]
Ironically, the longest running wishbone offense was run not by Texas but by their arch-rivals, the University of Oklahoma, who ran variations of the wishbone well into the mid-1990s. Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer has been credited by some for having “perfected” the use of the wishbone offense and former OU quarterback Jack Mildren is often referred to as "the Godfather of the wishbone" by University of Oklahoma football fans. [8] In 1971, the Oklahoma Sooners wishbone offense set the all-time NCAA single-season rushing record at 472.4 yards per game, a record which still stands to this day. [9]
The wishbone's reliance on execution and discipline, along with its ability to eat up the game clock, make it a favorite of programs that routinely play opponents with superior size and speed, such as the three service academies. [10] Air Force saw tremendous success running the option game out of the wishbone. In 1985, Air Force climbed to #2 in the country, just barely missing the national championship game, under head coach Fisher DeBerry. Army saw success using the wishbone under head coaches Jim Young and Bob Sutton in the 1980s and early 1990s, leading to the school's first four bowl appearances (10–6 win over Michigan State in the 1984 Cherry Bowl; 31–29 win over Illinois in the 1985 Peach Bowl; 29–28 loss to Alabama in the 1988 Sun Bowl; and a 32–29 loss to Auburn in the 1996 Independence Bowl) and the first of the program's two 10-win seasons. [11]
Phil Jack Dawson, then head coach of Westbrook High School in Westbrook, Maine, developed an effective defense against the wishbone offense then in use by Texas, called “backbone defense”. [12] Dawson contacted Ara Parseghian, then head coach of the University of Notre Dame, and convinced him to use it against Texas in the 1971 Cotton Bowl Classic. Notre Dame beat Texas 24-11.
In the National Football League, during the strike season of 1987, the San Francisco 49ers used the wishbone successfully against the New York Giants to win 41–21. Coach Bill Walsh used the wishbone because of his replacement quarterback's familiarity with a similar formation in college. [13] The Cleveland Browns also utilized the wishbone at the pro level in a 2018 28–16 win over the Atlanta Falcons. [14]
While run-based option offenses, including the wishbone, are as of 2022 [update] now used only by a small number of NCAA Division I programs—mainly the service academies—wishbone principles still influence college football to this day.[ citation needed ] The original architects of the pass-oriented Air Raid offense, Mike Leach and Hal Mumme, explicitly employed wishbone principles in the offense's creation. In a 2018 ESPN story, Ken Niumatalolo, then head coach of Navy, noted that modern spread option offenses also conceptually borrow from the wishbone. Some coaches are convinced that the wishbone could still work in the modern college game. One of them is Switzer, who in the aforementioned ESPN piece specifically named 2016 Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson as a quarterback who would be "perfect in the Wishbone", adding, "There's a lot of them [quarterbacks that could run the formation] out there, with the great speed and quickness that can also throw the football. They're out there by the dozens. They're just playing different positions." In the same piece, Leach said, "Nobody has ever truly stopped the Wishbone. There's a point to where people have lost interest in the Wishbone. But nobody ever really successfully stopped it." [5]
The Oklahoma playbook describes the quarterback, the architect behind the Wishbone, as, "a running back who can throw." [15] They must also have an aptitude for the option and the decision making that lies within the play design as well as durability (cannot miss a practice).
The fullback is required to be able to handle a physical pounding because he is frequently hit without having the ball; he must also be quick with excellent stamina, and be a good blocker.
The wishbone was designed to run a triple-option with a lead blocker. The purpose of an option is to eliminate one defender without blocking him. Ideally, the defender must make a choice to eliminate one of two offensive players. This is a double option. This option offensive scheme forces a defender to choose one of two offensive players who can advance the ball and then allows the other offensive player to carry the ball, making whatever choice the defender made the "wrong" choice. Because of this aspect of the defensive player taking himself out of the play by his choice, the offensive player that would otherwise block that defensive player can now block a different defender, placing severe pressure on the defense to cover the dive, the quarterback run, the pitch or the pass to a receiver.
The triple-option, then, eliminates two defenders without blocking them. This frees two offensive linemen to block different defenders, usually inside defenders. This isolates the dive key and the pitch key for the QB to "read" and should leave only an outside support defender (usually a safety) and the cornerback to cover the End, who is running a deep pass route. As Pepper Rodgers and Homer Smith stated in "Installing Football's Wishbone T Offense", "To run a Triple Option with a lead blocker is the reason for the Wishbone formation." [16] It is the "extra blocker" concept that drives the success of the wishbone and its derivatives. The cornerback must cover the outside receiver. The support/safety must support the run defense and (usually) covers the pitch back. The defensive end typically attacks the quarterback and a defensive tackle is assigned the fullback dive. These assignments must be made before the play begins and that totals eight defensive players to both sides of the ball.
As stated above, however, the offense now has linemen that can be released to block other defenders, usually inside. The play is designed to handle five defenders on either side of the ball. Thus, the defender least able to affect the play, the offside cornerback or deep safety, is not blocked by design. The offensive linemen, now free to block inside, can block the first down lineman to the playside and the first linebacker to the playside. Emory Bellard once said, "If the threat of the fullback can be applied to the defense, the offense is sound.". [17] Then, the lead back principle takes over. The lead back can block the defensive end or the safety and there is then a one-on-none possibility for the offensive player with the ball. In order to stop this attack, the defense must defeat blocks or flow defenders to the playside.
This makes the wishbone a "complete" offense. The offense expects to get a one-on-none in the running game and a one-on-one in open space with the passing game. The safety, who must support the run and also defend against the pass, is under tremendous pressure in this attack. The basic wishbone triple option play accounts for every defender on the field. Every defender is threatened before the basic play begins. There is an invitation to overplay or compensate on the basic play and overplaying or making a misstep on the basic play leaves the defense open for counters that leave no one to make up for the mistake.
The wishbone has the quarterback taking the snap from under center, with a fullback close behind him, and two halfbacks (sometimes called tailbacks) further back, one slightly to the left, and the other slightly to the right. The alignment of the four backs makes an inverted Y, or “wishbone”, shape. There is typically one wide receiver and one tight end, but sometimes two wide receivers, or two tight ends.
The wishbone was designed to facilitate a running, option offense. It allows the quarterback to easily run the triple option to either side of the line. The quarterback first reads the defensive tackle or linebacker who is unblocked. As he reads the tackle/linebacker, he rides the ball in the fullback's gut. If the defensive tackle/linebacker looks to tackle the fullback the quarterback pulls the ball out and runs down the line to his next option read, usually the defensive end/outside linebacker. If the end/linebacker looks to tackle the quarterback, the ball is pitched to the trailing halfback. The lead halfback is a lead blocker usually looking to block the outside defensive player, a safety or corner. The tight end to the option side 'arc' releases to block the safety.
The Oklahoma–Texas football rivalry is a college football rivalry game between border rivals Texas and Oklahoma. The two teams first played each other in 1900, and the rivalry has been renewed annually since 1929 for a total of 119 games as of 2023. The rivalry is commonly referred to as the Red River Shootout, the Red River Rivalry, or the Red River Showdown. The name refers to the Red River, which forms part of the border between Oklahoma and Texas.
An option offense is an American football offensive system in which a key player has several "options" of how each play will proceed based upon the actions of the defense. Traditionally, option-based offenses rely on running plays, though most mix in forward passes from an option formation as a change of pace. A successful option-based offense can keep possession of the ball for long periods of time, giving the opposing offense fewer possessions and keeping the option team's defense rested. However, because passing is often not a strength of the system, it can be difficult for option-based offenses to come back from a large deficit or to score quickly when needed.
The flexbone formation is an offensive formation in American football that includes a quarterback, five offensive linemen, three running backs, and varying numbers of tight ends and wide receivers. The flexbone formation is derived from the wishbone formation and features a quarterback under center with a fullback lined up directly behind the quarterback. There are two smaller running backs called slotbacks aligned behind the line of scrimmage on each side of the offensive line. The slotbacks are sometimes incorrectly referred to as wingbacks. But in order to be a wingback, there must be a guard, tackle and tight end all on one side of the center on the line of scrimmage and then the wingback off the line of scrimmage.
The 2006 Oklahoma Sooners football team represented the University of Oklahoma in the 2006 NCAA Division I FBS football season, the 112th season of Sooner football. The team was led by two-time Walter Camp Coach of the Year Award winner, Bob Stoops, in his eighth season as head coach. They played their homes games at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma. They were a charter member of the Big 12 Conference.
The split-T is an offensive formation in American football that was popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Developed by Missouri Tigers head coach Don Faurot as a variation on the T formation, the split-T was first used in the 1941 season and allowed the Tigers to win all but their season-opening match against the Ohio State Buckeyes and the 1942 Sugar Bowl versus Fordham. Jim Tatum and Bud Wilkinson, who coached under Faurot with the Iowa Pre-Flight Seahawks during World War II, brought the split-T to the Oklahoma Sooners in 1946. After Tatum left for Maryland in 1947, Wilkinson became the head coach and went on to win a record-setting 47 straight games and two national titles between 1953 and 1957.
Larry Jack Mildren, was an American football player and politician. He was an All-American quarterback at the University of Oklahoma, and professional football player with the Baltimore Colts and New England Patriots. A native Texan, he was later an oil company owner, elected as the 13th lieutenant governor of Oklahoma, and enjoyed a career as a successful bank executive in Oklahoma.
Emory Dilworth Bellard was an American college football coach. He was tjhe head football coach at Texas A&M University from 1972 to 1978 and at Mississippi State University from 1979 until 1985. Bellard died on February 10, 2011, after battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis since the fall of 2010.
James Brown is a former American football quarterback. He was the starting quarterback of the Texas Longhorns from 1994 to 1997. At the time, he was only the second black quarterback to guide Texas through an entire season, and is credited for "opening doors" for future black quarterbacks at Texas, such as Casey Thompson and Vince Young.
The 1985 Oklahoma Sooners football team represented the University of Oklahoma in the 1985 NCAA Division I-A football season. This year was Barry Switzer's 13th season as head coach. The Sooners ended this season with 11 wins and a sole loss coming to the Miami Hurricanes in Norman, in a game in which the Sooners lost starting quarterback Troy Aikman for the season. The Sooners were forced to place their trust in freshman quarterback Jamelle Holieway and a physical defense featuring three All-Americans, who led them to a Big 8 Conference title and a national championship. This was Oklahoma's sixth national championship and 34th conference championship in school history.
The 1975 Oklahoma Sooners football team represented the University of Oklahoma in the 1975 NCAA Division I football season. The team was helmed by Barry Switzer in his third season as head coach. After sailing through their first eight games, Oklahoma suffered a surprising home loss to Kansas, which snapped a 28-game winning streak. With only two regular season games and a bowl trip left, any hopes for a repeat national championship looked slim.
The 1974 Oklahoma Sooners football team represented the University of Oklahoma in the 1974 NCAA Division I football season. This was the first of three national championship squads for head coach Barry Switzer. Only one opponent played the Sooners within 14 points and four failed to score a touchdown. At the same time, OU led the nation in scoring offense with an average of 43 points per game to finish the season as the only undefeated team in the country at 11–0.
Mike Jay is a former American football quarterback for Texas A&M University.
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Donnie Little is a former American football quarterback. He was the quarterback of the Texas Longhorns from 1978 to 1980, and in 1978 was the first black quarterback to play for The University of Texas. He is credited with "opening doors" for future black quarterbacks at Texas, such as James Brown and Vince Young.
Martin Ray Akins is a former college All-American football player and politician. He started as quarterback for the Texas Longhorns in the early 1970s and was the only Longhorn quarterback to start three seasons directing the wishbone offense, and the only wishbone quarterback to ever be an All-American. Akins helped quarterback Texas to 3 Southwest Conference Championships.
Eddie Phillips is an American former college football player who started at quarterback for the Texas Longhorns in the early 1970s. In 1970, he led the Longhorns to the national championship while leading the Southwest Conference in total touchdowns. Despite an award-winning, record-breaking performance in the 1971 Cotton Bowl, Texas lost, breaking its 30-game winning streak and handing the AP crown to Nebraska.
Andrew Benjamin White, Jr. was a manager of advanced computer projects at the Los Alamos National Laboratory where he served as the Deputy Associate Director of the Theory, Simulation and Computing Directorate, and the Roadrunner Project Director from 2006-2012. Before that, he founded and served as Director of the Los Alamos Advanced Computing Laboratory (1989-1998) and Program Manager for the Department of Energy (DOE) High Performance Computing and Communications program. As a college student he had been a quarterback for the University of Texas Longhorns football team. He started one game in 1966 against the Oklahoma Sooners.
Samuel George Ehlinger is an American professional football quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Texas Longhorns, where he led the team to the 2018 Big 12 Championship Game and two bowl games. He was selected by the Colts in the sixth round of the 2021 NFL draft.
The 2019 Kansas Jayhawks football team, representing the University of Kansas for the 130th season, was led by first-year head coach Les Miles. Members of the Big 12 Conference during the 2019 NCAA Division I FBS football season, the Jayhawks played their home games at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Their season was chronicled by ESPN+ in the docuseries Miles to Go: Les Miles and Kansas Football.
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