OwlSportsWatch.com - Naval Attack Deployment: Triple Option

October 7, 2009

David Mooney
OwlSportsWatch.com Publisher

Maybe you have to be a purist to enjoy watching Option football. Whatever the case I know when the Rice Owls used it not too long ago I loved to see the Owls march up and down the field, 3 to 4 yards at a time, wearing down Defenses. That was on a good day however, and alas those days were too few and the Option gave way to the Spread.

Nonetheless, if not at Rice, the Option Offense remains alive and well at other colleges in Division I football, namely at places like Navy. And in their case, its been run with a considerable amount of success.

Navy has finished 8-4 the last two seasons, including wins over Pitt and Notre Dame in 2007 and regular season victories over Rutgers and Wake Forest last year.

Current Georgia Tech Head Coach Paul Johnson helped "right the ship" for the Middies before sailing off to Atlanta after the 2007 season. However, replacement Ken Niumatalolo has kept the team right on course.

Both deployed the Option Offense. Why? Because it can work if run correctly.

Fire the Torpedoes

The generally accepted virtues of utilizing the attack are as follows:

+ Relies more on execution and discipline rather than blue-chip talent

+ Tires out Defenses, thusly leveling talent differential

+ Grinds up game clock, at 3 to 5 yards per rushing attempt an Option drive can take 12-15 plays to score. And even if the Offense doesn't score, the number of possessions/scoring opportunities is reduced for the opposing team

+ Requires the Defense to play assignment football rather than instinctive football. Thusly, the game becomes very mentally challenging for opposing teams. And if too much concentrated focus is put on stopping the run, Receivers can run free into the Secondary for the occasional big pass play.

+ So few teams run the Option in college football, therefore teams have to do extra preparation to gain practice reps.

Abandon Ship

Obviously Option football can be a great equalizer. But their also disadvantages to this style of Offense - there's a very slim margin for error:

- Their is a high number of exchanges with the football with handoffs and pitches. Thus ball security becomes an issue.

- With an Offense that typically gains 3-4 yards a carry, penalties can kill a drive. 3rd and 9 is a bad situation for an Option team because Passing isn't usually a strength.

- By the same token, if the Defense yields a big lead, the Offense may struggle to catch up because passing is required to score quickly enough to catch up before the end of the game.

- Turnovers can be quite costly as well - they lead to points, and as pointed out above playing catch up is hard to do with the Option.

Key To Naval Supremacy

So the biggest question we ask is why does Navy have so much success with the Option when Rice did not?

Here's a couple of theories.

First, Navy has been able to recruit quite well for their needs. Unlike Rice, Navy recruits the entire country. As a result, they've found the keys needed to be successful running the Option - namely a good Quarterback that can also pass (Ricky Dobbs), and good Fullbacks (Alex Teich, coincidentally from Conroe Caney Creek).

Secondly, discipline. Not that Rice wasn't disciplined but we're talking about a military academy. You'd be hard pressed to find a higher degree of discipline anywhere.

Put the two together and Navy has the perfect weapon in it's assault on college Defenses.

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