Paul Johnson, the man who turned around Navy Football by bringing back the triple option, was recently hired as the new head football coach of Georgia Tech. I would guess we are going to see whether not the triple option will be effective with BCS-caliber talent. I say it will and GT will play for the national championship within five years. Johnson's brand of the triple option, the flexbone, makes players better, and I am unaware of any other offesnsive scheme that does so as effectively. Even the "spread option" that is in fashion today relies primarily on the pure athleticism of your QB (i.e. Vince Young, Chase Daniels, Tim Tebow, Juice Williams, and Pat White,) rather than any talent enhancing tactical superiority. Navy, with IAA talent AT BEST, has been one of the leading offensive teams statistically of the past five years in IA football. Only a great system could do that.
I think we will see much more passing from Johnson next year than we ever saw at Navy with its noodle-armed QB's, but the focus will remain basic dive/QB/pitch triple option and the so-called "mid-line" option where the QB follows the FB through the guard-tackle gap that has led the nation in rushing four of the past five years. (Or something close to that, not sure.) Navy will continue to run flexbone option and has hired Johnson's longtime offensive assitant to be its new head coach. It will be interesting to see how Navy can perform without its saviour... Even if they have his playbook.
Mutiple sources confirm that Army will integrate the option, in some form, into its offense next year. It has been reported, however, that Stan Brock is wary of running a pure option based attack like Navy because he thinks it is too "slow" and doesn't allow you to catch up if you fall behind. As I have said repeatedly, this is a bogus claim as Navy had nearly as many scoring drives under two minutes than Army had in total all year! If I'm exagerating, it's not by much... I cannot see Army having any success with a conventional passing game, as could a Georgia Tech. It takes a lot more talent to throw the ball than run it, so Stan is best advised to keep the ball on the ground with the TRIPLE option. Passing should be done almost exclusively out of play action in order to get receivers open deep. I think Navy averaged twice the yards per catch that Army had last season and a much higher completion percentage, as well.
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