Race Bannon and the Power I

Race Bannon brought up an interesting topic on Dawgman tonight about Washington switching to the Power I as it's basic formation. It makes a lot of sense since Locker can be used just as effectively from a power set as he can be from a spread formation. You can run the option, run spread type formations based on the "I" if you are creative.

Washington's most impressive victory last season was over California. With Jake Locker out for the week the Huskies simply ran it down the Golden bears throat, controlled the tempo, controlled the clock, and wore out the Bear defense. Simply put, Washington knocked California into the dirt, and trampled on them. To me it was a serious clue of what this team was really good at. I figured the coaches would clue in and play it that way for the rest of the season. The coaches on the other hand tended to ignore it, and lost consecutive games to WSU, and Hawaii by reverting back to the offense they had used all season when Locker was aboard.

I don't think our offensive braintrust did a great job exploiting, and establishing the run last season. I say that even though we had a quarterback who ran for nearly 1000 yards, and running back who ran for 1294 yards in 13 games. That is a lot of yards on the ground for an entire team, not just two players. The thing is, what if we had run it more, ran it early, and ran it often? Would we have been able to win 4-5 more games last season? I am beginning to think it was a good possibility. Why most malign the defense, and rightly so, the offense wasn't managed towards it strengths either.

When the weather turns gloomy in the Northwest come late October, and November the running game has always been our friend. No matter what the weather is like outside you can still run the ball well when the weather turns foul.

We have these great Fullbacks why not make use of them hammering the opposition.