What I don't think most people realize about Grimes' wide zone scheme is that in 2020, he was as far out on the leading edge with its usage in CFB as Briles was with the veer and shoot in 2010.
When he arrived there was literally one other P5 proponent using the Alex Gibbs/Mike Shanahan Broncos wide zone, and it was... Iowa. That is to say, it was not being used very well, or very faithfully even.
This goes a long way toward describing why he caught so many defenses flat-footed with it in 2021. You can talk all you want about Rhule recruits etc etc, but Grimes' system deserves a lot of shine for that year. You put a group of athletic, undersized linemen in a scheme with a one-cut bulldog making pre-defined gap reads off a lot of QB read options out of the blue and you'll confuse a lot of people. Look at the tape - defenses were flat-footed dealing with us.
They had just never seen it like this. It's a timing-based system that relies on a lot of movement, a lot of horizonal push blocking and misdirection. We showed up in spaces before everyone else. That's the name of the game when you can't blow anyone off the ball or beat them in a flat foot race.
In other words, it's the anti-veer and shoot, a system that has very specific assignments - it honestly makes Briles' scheme look like junkyard ball. Since you're not relying on overt size, speed or strength, you need guys to arrive at the station exactly on time for it to work over and over again. There are fewer plays but they're extremely specific and run from a million different looks. This is largely why it hasn't proliferated in CFB. Coaches don't trust green young guys to have the technique and know-how to pull it off with the level of precision required. It's much safer to have open route trees and less defined blocking schemes.
Here's our problem as I see it. This is a note from Ian Boyd.
First, Big 12 defenses weren't used to defending wide zone from under center with multiple tight ends on the field. The angles of the play were different from what everyone else was doing and you could see teams having to adjust to the physicality of the scheme as well as the additional stress from Baylor routinely running on 3rd-and-long and then going for it again on 4th down after picking up, say six yards on 3rd-and-8. The Bears were very confident in the ability of their guys to make contact at the line and create lateral stress and their main back to run through contact against guys trying to make tackles while running sideways.
As tape on the wide zone has proliferated, I'm seeing some distressing signals that without certain assets, it is extremely vulnerable to breaking at this level. When you play timing base, and your opponent can show up in that space before you can, you essentially have nothing to work with.
The wide zone was, in essence, an experiment Aranda undertook divorced from the mainstream, and the sneak attack worked with flying colors in 2021. Gerry Bohanon is a slightly above average QB by normal standards, and he'd probably be a third string QB in a scheme like Briles' - but Grimes schemed him into a very effective one. You could say the same for Shapen that year before his injury.
But unlike a spread-style scheme, the unpredictability isn't within the plays themselves, it's in how you present them, how you line guys up. So once a defense can key on the post-snap movement, it's actually not a very difficult offense to corral if your players aren't hitting their marks. And I have some extreme doubts that we can recruit guys to hit their marks year over year. It's just not a very friendly system when the defense knows what you're doing. This is why it's not popular.
I can understand using it on the NFL level when you can build a core over many years, but in CFB, I just don't know that you can scheme it well consistently when you have portal and graduation turnover this consistently. You're essentially trying to catch lightning in a bottle every year. There's a reason this is a seldom used system.
Grimes' system is good enough to win games - it is occasionally good enough to win a lot of games when you have an elite defense. I sincerely believe it is not good enough to build an entire offensive program around for the long term. I just don't believe in its longevity. And the further along the rabbit hole we go, the more we pigeonhole ourselves with undersized linemen, RBs pulled from underneath couch cushions (which is an avowed feature of the wide zone, not a bug), weak WRs who see no joy or development in the system, and bus driver QBs who are severely schematically limited and choose to play in more variable systems instead. Many have touted NIL as the driver behind Novosad's decision, and I don't doubt that played in, but this system is a hard sell to sought-after QBs.
When he arrived there was literally one other P5 proponent using the Alex Gibbs/Mike Shanahan Broncos wide zone, and it was... Iowa. That is to say, it was not being used very well, or very faithfully even.
This goes a long way toward describing why he caught so many defenses flat-footed with it in 2021. You can talk all you want about Rhule recruits etc etc, but Grimes' system deserves a lot of shine for that year. You put a group of athletic, undersized linemen in a scheme with a one-cut bulldog making pre-defined gap reads off a lot of QB read options out of the blue and you'll confuse a lot of people. Look at the tape - defenses were flat-footed dealing with us.
They had just never seen it like this. It's a timing-based system that relies on a lot of movement, a lot of horizonal push blocking and misdirection. We showed up in spaces before everyone else. That's the name of the game when you can't blow anyone off the ball or beat them in a flat foot race.
In other words, it's the anti-veer and shoot, a system that has very specific assignments - it honestly makes Briles' scheme look like junkyard ball. Since you're not relying on overt size, speed or strength, you need guys to arrive at the station exactly on time for it to work over and over again. There are fewer plays but they're extremely specific and run from a million different looks. This is largely why it hasn't proliferated in CFB. Coaches don't trust green young guys to have the technique and know-how to pull it off with the level of precision required. It's much safer to have open route trees and less defined blocking schemes.
Here's our problem as I see it. This is a note from Ian Boyd.
First, Big 12 defenses weren't used to defending wide zone from under center with multiple tight ends on the field. The angles of the play were different from what everyone else was doing and you could see teams having to adjust to the physicality of the scheme as well as the additional stress from Baylor routinely running on 3rd-and-long and then going for it again on 4th down after picking up, say six yards on 3rd-and-8. The Bears were very confident in the ability of their guys to make contact at the line and create lateral stress and their main back to run through contact against guys trying to make tackles while running sideways.
As tape on the wide zone has proliferated, I'm seeing some distressing signals that without certain assets, it is extremely vulnerable to breaking at this level. When you play timing base, and your opponent can show up in that space before you can, you essentially have nothing to work with.
The wide zone was, in essence, an experiment Aranda undertook divorced from the mainstream, and the sneak attack worked with flying colors in 2021. Gerry Bohanon is a slightly above average QB by normal standards, and he'd probably be a third string QB in a scheme like Briles' - but Grimes schemed him into a very effective one. You could say the same for Shapen that year before his injury.
But unlike a spread-style scheme, the unpredictability isn't within the plays themselves, it's in how you present them, how you line guys up. So once a defense can key on the post-snap movement, it's actually not a very difficult offense to corral if your players aren't hitting their marks. And I have some extreme doubts that we can recruit guys to hit their marks year over year. It's just not a very friendly system when the defense knows what you're doing. This is why it's not popular.
I can understand using it on the NFL level when you can build a core over many years, but in CFB, I just don't know that you can scheme it well consistently when you have portal and graduation turnover this consistently. You're essentially trying to catch lightning in a bottle every year. There's a reason this is a seldom used system.
Grimes' system is good enough to win games - it is occasionally good enough to win a lot of games when you have an elite defense. I sincerely believe it is not good enough to build an entire offensive program around for the long term. I just don't believe in its longevity. And the further along the rabbit hole we go, the more we pigeonhole ourselves with undersized linemen, RBs pulled from underneath couch cushions (which is an avowed feature of the wide zone, not a bug), weak WRs who see no joy or development in the system, and bus driver QBs who are severely schematically limited and choose to play in more variable systems instead. Many have touted NIL as the driver behind Novosad's decision, and I don't doubt that played in, but this system is a hard sell to sought-after QBs.