Well I know what’s about to happen here…. I am going to be labeled as another Bammer with an axe to grind against the HUNH offense. Here goes anyway.

I have never liked the HUNH offense. It’s not because Auburn is enjoying success with it now and it’s not about Alabama losing a football game. I was too young to understand its implications when the Bengals were running it in the late 80’s, but I was fully aware of its impact when the Buffalo Bills were running it in the early to mid 90’s with Jim Kelley, Andre Reed, and Thurman Thomas. I was playing then and I understood the game. I have always been an offensive minded person. I like to see RB’s make those long tackle breaking runs. I love to see a receiver beat his man, catch a bomb from the QB, and take it to the house. That gets my blood flowing. I do however respect the defensive side of football.

Now I will tell you why I do not like the HUNH offense. The HUNH gives the offense a competitive advantage in the fact that the offensive coaches can run the same play out of multiple sets and map out up to ten plays ahead. The goal is to snap the ball as quickly as possible and catch the defense with the wrong personnel on the field, in the wrong position, or not set at all. Sorry guys that is an unfair competitive advantage all day every day. The defense has to be able to line up, read the formation and react to the play in just a matter of seconds over and over and over while not being able to substitute proper personnel into the game. I know the Auburn fans don’t want to hear it, but that’s an unfair advantage for the offense. You are basically neutering a defense when you allow that to go on, and that’s not what football is about. If you don’t believe, it’s a competitive advantage you can look at the results on the field. Look at the top 5 defenses that got shredded last season by HUNH offenses. There is a reason these teams are putting up video game type numbers…… because they have a clear and concise advantage over the defense.

Todd mentioned above about people having an agenda. Well sure these coaches have an agenda…… the one’s against it have an agenda, and the one’s for it have an agenda. Saban has an agenda because he’s tired of seeing his defenses rolled on because they can’t get the correct personnel onto the field, and Malzahn has an agenda because he’s winning Auburn University football games with it. I listened to the Matt and Scott show on WJOX and Mike Leach was being interviewed and he was just railing on and on about this rule. Why? Because he can see his competitive advantage slipping away if this rule is passed. His squad doesn’t have the talent to line up a beat most of the BCS conference teams, so he uses the only tool he has at his disposal to try and win games. Of course he’s against it because without the HUNH Leach won’t have a job for long. So both sides have an agenda.

As far as the rule is concerned I don’t know if it’s the answer or not. I’m sure there is an answer out there but I feel like for it to be fair, it needs to suit both sides of the argument. Unfortunately I don’t think anything will suit the pro-HUNH crowd except allowing them to keep running it. My personal opinion is that I wish these anti-HUNH coaches instead of hiding behind the veil of player safety would just man up and tell the world that it’s not about player safety, that it’s really about them being tired of their defenses being handcuffed. They would look a lot less like douche bags IMO. I believe things need to be done in the right way and if I were on that Rules Committee and they approached me with that safety BS, I would flat out make them show me documented data of more injuries during games that feature teams that run the HUNH offense. If they couldn’t do that, I would laugh them out of the building.

Like I said, I know I am going to be accused of not liking it because Auburn is enjoying success with it, but I just wanted to give my opinion on the matter since it’s such a hotly contested debate. I don’t know if this rule is the answer but I do know that the offensive side of the football has a clear competitive advantage when running the HUNH offense, and I don’t believe that’s what football is all about. There are other things I don’t like about the game, such as the defense being allowed to jam receivers on the line and the amount of grab ass CB’s are allowed to do nowadays. I loathe the targeting rule mostly because the refs seem to be too stupid to correctly call it. Those are discussions for another day though.

Oh…. while I am thinking about it. Todd mentioned that they had figured out a way to stop the wishbone. Actually that’s not factually correct. There were a few defenses that slowed it down considerably like the Miami 4-3-Over defense introduced into the 80’s by the Canes, which basically introduced speedy players to counter the triple option nature of the wishbone offense instead of using powerful but slow players. Several teams continued to run the wishbone after that including Oklahoma who ran it well into the 90’s. There are 2 reasons the wishbone died out. One was that there was a drop in players that were drafted in the NFL that came from wishbone type systems (this was probably due to far fewer teams running it than anything), so it developed the stigma of career killer. A lot of schools abandoned it because they couldn’t recruit the kids they needed to run it because of that stigma. The other was ironically, the no huddle high-octane offenses that we are debating today.