By Amy Shipley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 18, 2008
MIAMI -- While he was still an assistant last fall with the Dallas Cowboys, Tony Sparano would call his old coaching buddy at the University of Arkansas, David Lee, and needle him about the collegiate offense he helped direct.
You still running that, what do you call it, that Wild Hog? Snapping balls directly to your star running back? They forget how to teach handoffs out there in Fayetteville?
It was all good-natured ribbing until Sparano took over as Miami Dolphins head coach in January just days after Lee had been hired to coach the team's quarterbacks. The pair continued talking about Arkansas's approach to the virtually obsolete single-wing formation. The conversations immediately shifted from playful to actual diagrammed plays.
Sparano wondered: Could this modern take on an archaic scheme -- this "college deal," as Sparano described it recently -- work in the NFL?
"This is something really interesting we could do in a ballgame," Sparano recalled thinking, "if we had enough nerve to bring it out there and call it."
It took two crushing opening losses to boost Sparano's nerve. Two wins and a one-point defeat later, teams around the NFL are marveling at the formation's power and possibilities. The Dolphins, who face the Baltimore Ravens here Sunday, have in a mere month gone from league laughingstock to legitimate playoff contender largely on the wings -- er, the wing -- of the creative scheme the team's offensive coaches have renamed "The Wildcat."
The formation has produced six touchdowns in three weeks and led to upsets of both of last year's AFC championship game representatives, New England and San Diego. Seeking a third straight win in Houston this past Sunday, Miami lost, 29-28, on a touchdown in the waning seconds.
Although a healthier squad, stronger running game and new, more consistent quarterback make this Miami team far different than the one that finished 1-15 last season under Cam Cameron -- now the Ravens' offensive coordinator -- there is no arguing the impact of the Wildcat. The Dolphins have used it 25 times and have averaged 10.1 yards per play.
"It's meant a lot: a change of pace, a different wrinkle for the offense," said Miami running back Patrick Cobbs, who caught a 53-yard touchdown out of the Wildcat against Houston. "It's given us something else instead of the same old offense. It's fun."
The first two weeks of the season featured much of the same, and no fun whatsoever. On the quiet, almost mournful flight home after an embarrassing 31-10 trouncing by the Arizona Cardinals that sank Miami to 0-2 and its offense to 26th in the NFL, Sparano's mind raced. The Dolphins, he thought, hadn't found their identity. Players needed a jolt. In mid-flight, Sparano summoned Lee, who had been with the Cowboys before leaving for Arkansas, from the back of the plane.
During much of the five-hour trip, Sparano and Lee once again bandied about the offense that helped make a star out of Darren McFadden, the current Oakland Raiders rookie who finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting twice for the Razorbacks. The pluses were obvious. With direct snaps to a running back, the scheme was intended to create space and confuse the defense. And by using two tight ends and three running backs simultaneously, Miami could put its best playmakers on the field at once.
"It would give our offense something to put its arms around," Sparano said. "That's kind of how the thing evolved."
But the formation -- a version of which was popular in pre-1950s pro football and is still used by some high school powerhouses -- takes a team's primary ballhandler, the quarterback, virtually out of the action, pushed as he is to a wideout slot. It gives the featured running back responsibilities he probably hasn't had since junior high: fielding shotgun snaps, handing the ball off to a motion back who arrives just after the snap, even throwing it downfield.
"There is," Sparano said, "risk."
But something had to change, and soon, and so it changed at 35,000 feet. The package, which didn't see the light of day during a training camp in which Sparano sought to emphasize basic, hard-nosed, disciplined football, no longer seemed like a good gadget scheme for the deep recesses of Sparano's mental library. It seemed like a necessity.
Back when they were first hired, the two coaches had written Wildcat options -- they then still called it the Wild Hog -- on paper, studying them and even testing them on a bunch of players participating in voluntary spring drills, some of whom aren't even with the team now.
Back then, quarterback Chad Pennington wasn't in the picture. (He was signed in August.) Running back Ronnie Brown was rehabilitating a torn anterior cruciate ligament that caused him to miss most of last season. Fellow running back Ricky Williams, back from a shoulder injury, hadn't played the majority of an NFL season since 2005.
The Dolphins coaches said "let's take a look at this thing," Sparano said. But "we didn't even know the personnel we had."
Discombobulated from the drubbing against Arizona, Miami's players didn't immediately master or embrace the scheme when it was introduced three days later during a Wednesday practice. There were doubts the plays would work, or even be used in that Sunday's game against New England.
"I was kind of skeptical," tight end Anthony Fasano said. "We had a lot of moving parts. There was a lot of timing going on."
Brown, however, was excited.
"You never know, each time you put in a new play, how the defense is going to respond," Brown said. "At the same time, I was hoping it would be a change of pace for us."
The Wildcat is gaining popularity around the rest of the league as well, with other teams adding the formation to their playbook. The Cleveland Browns, who play Washington at FedEx Field on Sunday, even used it Monday night in a 35-14 victory over the previously unbeaten New York Giants.
The formation gives Brown or the back behind center plenty of options. If he keeps the ball rather than handing to the motion back (usually Williams), he can bolt through the right side of the unbalanced line, which features both tackles to the right of the center, as he did for a 62-yard touchdown against New England. One variation calls for Brown to fake a handoff and roll left, looking for the tight end downfield. Against New England, the play worked for a 19-yard score to Fasano.
"I am," Fasano said about the scheme, "a believer now."
Against Houston, Sparano unveiled another twist, getting all three running backs involved: Brown handed off to Williams, who sprinted wide and then pitched to Pennington, who backed up from the wide receiver slot and fired to a wide-open Cobbs for the opening score.
Players said they have more than a dozen options on the set.
"Anytime you put in an awkward formation or awkward offensive set you never know how it's going to work," Pennington said. "Sometimes it just blows up in your face, and you never run it again. The key has been the execution of the plays as well as the communication."
The execution has been almost beyond belief. The Dolphins' offense has risen to 10th overall. After averaging 12 points and 257 total yards in the first two games, Miami averaged 27.7 and 407 in the next three.
Out of the Wildcat formation, the only two passes have gone for 72 yards and two scores; Williams has averaged 6.9 yards rushing on eight carries; and Brown, who has handled the ball the most, is averaging 8.9 yards on 14 carries with four touchdowns. One play resulted in a sack.
"A lot of it, to be honest with you, is the running back making great plays," Cobbs said. "Not everyone can do it, because not everyone has Ronnie Brown."
Over the last few weeks, players have wondered whether the success of the scheme can continue as defenses catch on, but Sparano said the formation is simply part of the team's basic offense now. Even four-yard gains, he said, are welcome. Surely, no one will get burned quite like New England did, when Miami scored four touchdowns off the Wildcat.
Yet the Dolphins aren't done tinkering.
"We've expanded it since we've been here," Sparano said. "We've been going round and round with it, trying to stay one step ahead."
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