Well, I got pantsed by this one. When Paul Johnson retired, I junked my planned option mega article. Then I missed a potential clue when I noticed Tech working on cut block drills in the summer. As has already been lamented, the Flexbone triple-option offense returns with Furman. Unfortunately for Tech, the defense it will put on the field is less experienced than you might think—after all, Georgia Tech hammered Tech while barely running any veer last season. This means that, despite a week of prep, last year’s Hokie defenders missed out on actually defending the triple option in a game situation. From what I can glean, the only players on defense with substantial college game experience playing a Flex/Triple offense are Reggie Floyd and DaShawn Crawford.

Offense

The Flex/Triple isn’t all they do, as we’ll see. They’re also more like Army’s Flexbone in that they’ll zone more than straight cutting all the time. (Thinking again of Georgia Tech, which had so much success with straight zone blocking.) And their core run play might be toss sweep:

But the triple is the thing to worry most about because of how it can eviscerate unprepared teams, and because it’s a great equalizer for defeating more talented defenders.

Running the option is like passing the ball, and running triple option plays is like passing out of spread formations. Just like a spread QB’s progression has more potential targets to hit, the triple-option QB’s progression has more “open runners” to find and hit. And since the QB is a runner, it’s almost like he can complete passes to himself, which reduces a defense’s ability to create a numbers advantage. It’s a fundamentally sound offense, provided you have the right players, and it has the bonus of being a bit of a rarity which means that 1) teams don’t have much practice with the basics, and 2) by extension they have very few responses to how they can combat the complicated option attack.

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