What's the next new thing?

[swardboy]

I've been watching football since the early 1960's, when Roger Staubach was leading Navy and Jim Gresham was pounding it out for the Sooners. Wow, have the offensive schemes changed over the years. I'm kind of surprised how the old shotgun formation I've seen on film from the '30's and 40's has somewhat been resurrected with present day spread formations, but I know they're different beasts. My own playing days went from the full-house "T" formation, to "I" formations, pro-set, veer T, and wish-bone. The wishbone seemed to be the most novel "new thing", but it really was just a tweak on the T formation. Any ideas on what new thing may be on the horizon?

[8timechamps]

I've been watching football since the early 1960's, when Roger Staubach was leading Navy and Jim Gresham was pounding it out for the Sooners. Wow, have the offensive schemes changed over the years. I'm kind of surprised how the old shotgun formation I've seen on film from the '30's and 40's has somewhat been resurrected with present day spread formations, but I know they're different beasts. My own playing days went from the full-house "T" formation, to "I" formations, pro-set, veer T, and wish-bone. The wishbone seemed to be the most novel "new thing", but it really was just a tweak on the T formation. Any ideas on what new thing may be on the horizon?

I think about this too. The "new" thing almost always comes on offense, but it's time for something to change on defense. If Mike can make the 3-4 work against high power offenses, it wouldn't surprise me to see more teams adopt it. But, that's not "new".

I can't think of anything that can be done with the offense that hasn't already been tried, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a greater focus on the running game in coming years. The best way to beat a high octane offense (which is the trend), is to keep the ball out of their hands. Running the ball does that. While not really "new", I've seen more teams use the tackle over more this year than in recent years, so maybe the trend will be moving in that direction. I wouldn't mind seeing OU do that once in a while.