Barry Switzer’s big innovation in college football, besides foregoing discipline in order to keep star players on the field, was using more of a burner at fullback to give the dive runs in his wishbone offense a little more explosiveness.
Lincoln Riley stumbled upon something sorta similar when he used Dmitri Flowers on play-action tosses over the middle to burn Ohio State. I explored the increased usage of quick hitting tosses over the middle to H-backs off the run game over at Football Study Hall.
The wishbone comp is pretty relevant but you also wonder how far you might take things but sticking explosive athletes at that position to execute quick hitters like this. Throwing to a TE or a dude like Dmitri Flowers or Winston Dimel is obvious enough, they all have good hands and 4.8-type speed that makes them dangerous with open grass ahead of them. But what if you had a bunch of good blocking RBs that could run 4.7, 4.6, or 4.5 and regularly sent some of them over the middle on plays like this?
Hopefully Texas does something like this against USC with Chris Warren or Kyle Porter and we can survey the damage that can be caused.