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You know about many of the greatest inventions in the history of the human race. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Albert Einstein thought up one of the most important inventions in human history, The Theory of Relativity, that no one understands. Not to be outdone, Eli Whitney created the cotton gin which triggered massive productivity gains and restructuring.
A random but enterprising 3M employee thought up a new purpose for the Post It Note and we all remembered things better until paper became extinct, a casualty of digital transformation. And of course, Al Gore had one of the greatest inventions, the internet.
In each case, these people made breakthroughs in science, technology, and practical conceptual thinking that impacted the lives of at least millions, and in Gore’s case, billions of people.
They all thought differently. They tapped into the ultra-rare, linchpin ingredient, and harnessed the grit to persist until their ideas congealed into something wondrous the world had never seen before that impacted people globally in profound ways.
In a remarkably similar fashion, algebra-professor-looking Warren Ruggerio and Dave Clawson, the offensive coordinator and head coach of Wake Forest football respectively, conceptualized and crystallized a unique offensive scheme for their football team that rivals all the great inventions in human history sports or otherwise.
The offensive scheme is called the delayed run-pass option mesh. Notwithstanding the breath-sucking noun string, the scheme is impressive for its effectiveness at converting Wake Forest’s offense into the most difficult to figure out and defend in all of college football with or without the transfer portal and name image and likeness bonanzas slash imbroglios.
Defensive coordinators across America don’t know what’s really going on with this offense. Nor does anyone else except the two coaches and a few other assistant coaches plus the players. It’s their black box, like the iPhone. You can’t get in there to the engine room to see what makes it purr.
To do it justice for its brilliance, to break down all the details and nuances of this scheme would take a 700-page tome of a book that few if any would read.
Allow me to summarize. The Wake quarterback catches the shotgun snap without having decided whether he’s going to run or pass the ball. With his running back walking in lockstep beside him, he takes two to three steps toward the line of scrimmage.
While doing this, the quarterback’s eyes dart across the defense, checking to see whether the safety is moving in or staying back, then doing the same with the linebacker, next to the cornerback. All in about two or fewer seconds.
If any of the defenders move in, the QB knows to pass. If they stay back, he hands the ball off.
This may sound basic and like something many other college football teams do. But it’s not. Wake has mastered like no other team the timing of the QB’s decision to either hand the ball off or pass, all the while executing with devastating effectiveness the process of reading what defenders are doing.
The QB needs to count defenders and compute to make sure he has enough blockers to fend off the rush. It’s a numbers game and a lot like chess. You do this, I do that.
Think of a 17-yard completion as the Wake offense says to the defense “Check.” When they hit the 70-yard TD pass, that’s “Check Mate.”
The explanation above provides a broad sketch. The beauty and exciting truth for Wake Forest football fans is there is so much more to this offense the coaches will not reveal that makes it one of the most fascinating and formidable offensive schemes in football history at any level. Read that sentence again. Marinate on the idea, the weight of it all.
What I understand about the offense is only one concept among several leveraged by this smart and trailblazing offensive powerhouse. My suspicion is these two coaches, with the help of Wake math professors, have applied next-level computation, analytics, and probability and statistics to this scheme to take it out into, metaphorically, the blue ocean where’s no possible competition because they’re not even competing on a field everyone else is tangled up on. All other offenses fight and cannibalize each other in the blood-red ocean waters. Scuba dive deeper into the blue ocean by reading this: Blue Ocean Strategy: Create New Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant.
I suspect this: Based on the numbers, the Wake coaches have crunched the numbers with such fastidiousness that they know with, say, 90 percent certainty that if the linebacker steps back two steps at the snap Wake will gain at least four years rushing 87.3 percent of the time.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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