Inside the Playbook: Meshing Spread and Single Wing Concepts

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Introduction
Ohio State and Urban Meyer are best known for their spread offense. Meyer though, has taken the run-based spread and brought it full circle. Today what I want to do is compare Ohio State's offense to Michigan's offense. No, not to Al Borges's offense. No, not even to Rich Rodriguez's offense. I want to compare Ohio State to Fritz Crisler's 1947 Single Wing offense. In this article we're going show you one of the most innovative offenses of the day, by comparing it to one of the most explosive offenses of yesteryear. It will be light on words, but heavy on diagrams and old timey video.

Getting the Differences Out of the Way
Let's start by getting the differences out of the way. No offense to Crisler, but his passing concepts wouldn't cut it in today's game. While Meyer has a relatively simply passing playbook, it's vastly more advanced than the single wing playbook. Well, besides the jump pass; that's straight from the single wing.
Another significant difference is the personnel. The single wing looks like this
Slide1_medium
While a typical spread formation in Meyer's system looks like this
Slide1_medium
So Meyer is running a sort of spread out single wing. Well, I guess that makes sense.
Within the run offense itself is two fundamental differences. The first is the blocking scheme. Meyer is a big proponent of zone blocking, as most spread coaches are. If zone blocking existed at that time (I'm almost certain it did not), then it certainly wasn't prevalent or understood well enough for major universities to be using it.

The second thing, a thing that is both fortunate and unfortunate, is the distinct lack of a spin series from OSU. Here's an example of what is referred to as the "spin" portion of the single wing:



A couple schematic notes: the dashed blue line shows who the snap is going to. Typically, the ball will be snapped straight back and the back will adjust to it, but this is the easiest way to show who is receiving the snap.

The green lines and dashed lines indicate an option. In the OSU version of the plays, the option will actually be options from a single play call. From the old single win plays, each option will typically be its own play with its own blocking scheme, unless otherwise stated.

Keeper Off Tackle
Both teams will run a simple off tackle play with the person the ball is snapped to. For OSU, this is the QB. In the single wing, this is more often than not the FB.

OSU out of the spread:
Slide2_medium


The same play in the single wing:
Slide2_medium


*     *     *     *     *     *     *

To look further into how OSU's spread-to-run offense borrows heavily from the old fashioned single-wing offense, follow the link to Maize n Brew.


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