'Spreading' the wealth: NU's playbook runneth over with options

Posted December 27, 2009 10:00 pm

By Lindsey Willhite

Upon hearing the impossible query, Mike Kafka takes a moment to try to craft an educated answer.

If you've wrestled with calculus, when multiple variables make the truth elusive, you understand Kafka's dilemma.

Here's the question: If Northwestern's senior quarterback could run every single thing in the Wildcats' arsenal, how many plays would he have at his disposal?

"Wow," Kafka said. "It's unlimited, really, to be honest with you. We can run so many plays. So many formations. Motions. Shifts.

"To give you a number - it'd definitely be over a thousand."

Of course, nobody in college football runs 1,000 plays in a game and it's hard to hit that mark in a season (the Wildcats, possessors of one of the nation's most fast-paced attacks, are on pace to finish just shy of the 1,000 mark).

But the existence of all these possibilities within Northwestern's spread offense begs more questions.

How do the Wildcats sort through all of their options in order to cram the best ones into a 60-minute game?

Have the Wildcats exchanged their normal regular-season process for a more grandiose operation as they prepare for their first New Year Day's bowl in 13 years?

Once they're in the heat of battle against Auburn in the Outback Bowl on Friday, how does their limitless playbook work to their advantage?

To aid in this quest, Northwestern offensive coordinator Mick McCall, second-team all-Big Ten quarterback Kafka, second-team all-Big Ten receiver Zeke Markshausen and veteran left tackle Al Netter gave freely of their time before the Wildcats headed to Tampa, Fla., for their final preparations.

They rode the line between offering an inside look and divulging any secrets that might harm the quest for NU's first bowl win in 61 years.

First, the basics

When McCall arrived at Northwestern from Bowling Green in January 2008, the Wildcats already had eight years invested in the spread offense.

But McCall brought with him a few tweaks - particularly his insistence that everyone understand each play's concept rather than learning an individual assignment.

In other words, every skill player has to know every skill player's job on every play. If a particular formation calls for someone to line up in the left slot (perhaps five yards outside the left tackle), everyone from the tight end to the running back to the flanker to the slot receiver can line up there and run the play.

This benefits the Wildcats in more than one way. It can annoy a defense searching for tendencies -

"It makes you more multiple in the fact you can get different players or different positions doing the same thing," McCall said. "It may be something totally different to the defense, but it's the same look for the quarterback."

- and it can put the offensive players' minds at ease.

"I really spent the first three years learning everything," said Markshausen, a fifth-year senior who posted 79 of his 80 career catches this season. "And that really opens everything up because now you understand concepts. You're able to be more relaxed then. You're able to focus on the defense more. That's what really helped me out."

Putting concepts to use

Northwestern learned it would play Auburn on Dec. 6. It didn't take long for the program's three video coordinators to break down the Tigers' 12 regular-season games into hundreds of bite-sized samples sorted by situation and turned into video "cutups."

While the players took their fall quarter exams, coaches such as McCall pored over every Auburn snap. In addition to sizing up every defender's relative strengths and weaknesses, he scouted how Auburn handled its opponents that ran spread formations.

Fortunately for Northwestern, the SEC bursts with spread-running teams.

"Now, what games do we want to put in the cutups that will get some sets that we're probably going to run or that we normally run?" McCall said.

NU pulled clips from Kentucky, Arkansas, LSU and Georgia. And since top-ranked Alabama was Auburn's last regular-season opponent, some Crimson Tide stuff made it into the cutups as well.

"All those had some things that we could use," McCall said. "Then you start breaking things down as far as situations. Not just formations, but first-and-10s, third downs, different parts of third downs (short, medium and long yardage).

"And then the red zone, tight zone, goal line, backed up (close to your own goal line), two-minute drill. You break all that stuff down, then you start forming a game plan of what you want to do."

During a regular game week, the offensive staff does all of its work in time to present the game plan at the Monday morning meeting.

"We'll go through each one of our formations," Netter said. "The coaches will already have a plan for what play we want to run out of each of those formations."

Then the Wildcats have three days to work on those plays. In a regular week, the offense practices 30-35 plays per day against the scout team with all 11 guys together. They get another 25 looks per day in 7-on-7 action.

For the Outback Bowl, though, McCall and the Wildcats took a more leisurely and detailed pace. The coaches began unveiling the plan Dec. 15 (the Tuesday after final exams ended).

"We started with, 'OK, here's their personnel. And this is what we're going to try to do,' " McCall said. "We started to do a couple things."

After a couple of days, the Wildcats added a little bit more. They maintained that pace until they trotted out the whole plan. Even then the whole plan wasn't the final plan.

While the players went home from Dec. 22-25, the coaches used a chunk of that time to pore over the Auburn tapes one more time.

"We're still going to tweak some things even through (this) week," McCall said.

Wondering how detailed these game plans are?

"We'll have eight plays for each third-down situation: third-and-short (up to 5 yards), third-and-medium (6-7 yards), third-and-long (8 yards-plus)," Kafka said.

"Then, based on what they do, we pick from those eight plays. A lot of it is game plan, but then a lot of it is spur of the moment and what they're playing in the game."

The "sequence"

Each game, McCall comes up with a list of 10-12 calls that serve as the offense's initial sequence of plays (unless they're in a special situation such as third down, red zone, backed up, etc.).

During the regular season, the players get the sequence on Thursday morning. They'll run it during Thursday's practice. There's a video test Friday. They'll even walk through the sequence on Saturday morning.

In total, the Wildcats plow through the sequence five times before the game. And even though Wisconsin, NU's final regular-season opponent, and Auburn run similar defensive schemes, the Wildcats' sequences will be completely different.

The sequence plays serve as confidence builders as well as reconnaissance missions.

"The're the best things that we can do to attack them right off the bat," McCall said. "And we're going to find out how they're going to line up to certain things."

Gaming the game

As the game wears on, Northwestern's no-huddle attack tries to wear out defenses in multiple ways.

There's the "tempo" game, where the Wildcats try to snap the ball as quickly as possible after the previous play ends. Sometimes this happens in 11 seconds of less - and requires McCall to be somewhat clairvoyant. He's deciding the next play as the ball carrier goes to the ground.

Running-backs coach Matt MacPherson and senior quarterback Joe Mauro, stationed on the sideline, hear McCall's call in their headsets and waggle it in to Kafka.

"You know, you've got to be a step ahead," McCall said. "You can't sit there and say, 'Oh, now what's it going to be?' and then you react. I'm thinking, 'This is what's going to happen. (The ball) is going to be on this hash mark, probably."

McCall then pantomimes reading off his three sheets of legal-size paper that list all of his calls for each situation.

"As (the ball carrier) is going to the ground, I'm going, 'Dah-dah-dah,' and making the call. Or I may wait (a second) and say, 'Are they changing defenses? No? OK, here we go.' "

Then there's the Wildcats' "hold set," when everyone lines up as if they're going to snap it quickly - but the skill players wait a few beats and then turn their heads toward MacPherson and Mauro for more information.

During these precious few seconds, McCall scans the defenders from his press-box perch and tries to see through their disguises.

" 'Oh, they're blitzing over here? We've got to change this protection. We've got that route? Good.' It's just a feel for what they're doing.

"You get matchups you're looking for. You're looking for leverage. How wide a certain lineman is, or where a linebacker's aligned."

Armed with this information, McCall essentially gets a free play call. He can change the "hot" receiver, change the line's protection - or he can tell his 'Cats they're just fine and to run the original play.

"Yeah, we could be switching plays," Kafka said. "We could be switching formations. We can do everything. That's the beauty of the no-huddle."

And the rest of the game?

After the painstaking video research that provides the grist for the game plan - after the hundreds of 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 practice snaps - after The Sequence runs its course in the first quarter - Northwestern's offense shifts into what McCall likes to term the cat-and-mouse game.

Between his view from the press box and the reports he gets from the players and assistants on the field, he tries to manage the chaos as best he can.

In the end, all of the gray matter plowed into the plan gives over to the game's great gray area.

"I think that within our offense, that's very true," McCall said. "There are no absolutes. We're going to go out and execute. We may run the same play against the same coverage and one guy might play it just a little bit different - and that may make the ball go clean over here instead of over here (points in opposite directions).

"It's not all black and white, even though everyone would like to think it is. It's that gray area of the decision-making process and the execution process of how a guy plays.

"And then it's on the players. You're trying to get them as much black-and-white information but understand that they've got to make some decisions and choices of what they think that guy is truly defending."

Northwestern's spread The Wildcats test their fast-finishing spread offense (33 points against Wisconsin in the Nov. 21 regular-season finale) against Auburn in the Outback Bowl on New Year's Day. By the numbers: Northwestern stands 76th nationally and seventh in the Big Ten this season with 25.2 points per game. The Wildcats rank 57th nationally (out of 120 teams) and sixth in the league with 386.0 total yards per game. They're second in the league in passing (266.1 ypg), but eighth in rushing (119.9 ypg). Family tree: The Wildcats began running the spread in 2000. Then-head coach Randy Walker visited Clemson and borrowed liberally from offensive coordinator Rich Rodriguez's scheme. When offensive coordinator Mick McCall joined the Northwestern staff after the 2007 season, he kept much of the basics while adding his own tweaks. "For the most part, I think this offense is what we were attempting when I was at Wyoming (in 2001-02)," McCall said. "It's part of that, but it's more appropriately from Bowling Green. What coach (Gregg) Brandon and Greg Studrawa (former BG offensive coordinator now in his third year as LSU's line coach) and what coach (Urban) Meyer was doing before coach Brandon took over. "But it's still a shootoff from that. Everyone that's running the spread is doing it a little bit different than somebody else because of the players they have or the emphasis they want to put on it." Nutshell philosophy: "Defenses are not going to be able to defend the whole entire field," McCall said. "They cannot do that. It's our job to find out what they're giving you and go take it. "If they're giving you something, take it and just keep doing that until they make an adjustment and then they'll be something else that they're giving. You're always trying to keep one step ahead and anticipate how they're going to defend you. "That's the cat-and-mouse game. That's all it is."

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