College football preview: Gophers' extreme schemer

A long time ago, before his playbook became the size of the New York City White Pages and visions of four-wide receiver sets kept him awake at night, new Gophers offensive coordinator Mike Dunbar once held the title of defensive coordinator.

Strange but true.

The man who eats, sleeps and drinks offense once collected paychecks devising defensive schemes at Central Washington.

"That was a hundred years ago," he said.

Actually it was from 1980 to 1982, but you get the point. Dunbar, 58, has earned a reputation as an offensive brainiac who has built a career around a system predicated on multiple formations and a spread-the-defense approach. And balance. Can't forget the balance part.

If there is anything Dunbar insists people understand about his version of the spread offense, it's that he loves to run the football. Maybe as much as he loves to throw the ball.

Gophers fans can take one thing to the bank, though. Dunbar's offense bears little resemblance to the run-it-down-their-throat approach of former coach Glen Mason. In Dunbar's offense, nothing is too extreme.

"The whole idea is to create endless possibilities with our personnel," he said.

Class is in session

Any conversation with Dunbar feels like a college lecture. He is a walking, fast-talking offensive professor with white hair and quick wit. He knows offense and loves to talk offense.

Walk into his meeting room and Dunbar is surrounded by piles of paper containing plays. He took two laptops on vacation this summer so that he could spend five hours each morning analyzing film of various offenses.

"Then I went and did whatever my wife wanted me to do," he said, laughing.

Coach Tim Brewster knew he wanted to run the spread offense when he became a first-time head coach, and Dunbar's name kept coming up in conversations with other coaches, including Texas' Mack Brown, Florida's Urban Meyer and West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez.

"The biggest thing about Mike Dunbar to me is that he's just a sage old veteran," Brewster said. "His calmness at calling plays and preparing an offense is really going to allow me a sense of calmness in what I'm trying to do."

The first step in understanding Dunbar's offense is to figure out the proper name for it. The team's media guide refers to it as the "spread coast offense" — a hybrid of the West Coast and spread offense. One of Dunbar's assistants came up with that term. Dunbar isn't concerned with titles.

"I told somebody that I'm not sure what the West Coast offense is anymore and I'm not sure what the spread is," Dunbar said. "I guess it's a derivative of West Coast concepts from spread formations with us trying to do a better job of running the football."

Actually, Dunbar's offense has been called many things. Complicated. Quarterback-friendly. Wide open. Exciting. Expletives by defensive coordinators.

His roots in the spread date to his time at Central Washington. He became head coach in 1983 and immediately implemented that offensive system, which he learned from one of the original spread gurus, Dennis Erickson, who was at Idaho then.

"I saw the advantages of being able to spread the field vs. always being in the traditional two-back," Dunbar said. "I said, 'Geez, this is good stuff.'"

Dunbar put his own stamp on the offense over the years during stints at six schools, including Northwestern and California, most recently. The offense is complicated in its multiplicity yet basic in its premise.

"What we're trying to do is spread the field by formation horizontally and create all those lanes to run the football and/or throw it," Dunbar said. "And to be able to stretch the field vertically to create holes to run it and throw it."

Dunbar relies on many different formations. By doing so, he stretches the defense and creates confusion, mismatches and more room to operate because fewer defenders are in the box.

He also tries to be unpredictable. Shotgun formation, quarterback option, two tight ends, four wide receivers, two backs, cut left at the fire hydrant — you name it. The trick, Dunbar said, is in the way he mixes personnel and formations.

"You have your base five or six run concepts, and you have your base eight or 10 pass concepts," he said. "Now you just mix them up 100 ways. Formations creating a whole bunch of different looks for the defense but hopefully staying conceptually consistent for the offense."

And balanced. Don't forget the balance part. Dunbar said the common misconception with the spread is that it's strictly a passing offense.

True, some teams utilize the spread as a passing attack (see: Texas Tech). West Virginia's Rodriguez, however, is viewed as a revolutionary because he uses the spread to run the ball. The Mountaineers averaged 303 rushing yards last season, second most in NCAA Division I-A.

Dunbar wants his offense to fall somewhere in the middle. His offense produced 1,000-yard rushers at Northwestern and Cal. Former Northwestern quarterback Brett Basanez also set 30 school records and finished second in Big Ten history in career passing yards, total offense and completions under Dunbar's watch.

"Everybody always says, 'Well, Minnesota has historically had a 1,000-yard rusher,' " Dunbar said. "So has the spread offense, at least the style of spread that I'm associated with.

"Minnesota had just played Texas Tech [in the Insight Bowl last season]. Everybody says that's the spread. I say, 'No, it's not. That's their version of the spread.' Everybody kind of has their own version of the spread."

The Wacker days

This is not the first time the Gophers have employed a nontraditional offensive system. Remember Air Wacker? Jim Wacker brought his self-described "wide-open, have-fun offense" to Minnesota in 1992 and set school records for passing yards and passing touchdowns two years later.

Bob DeBesse, a Texas A&M assistant who served as Wacker's offensive coordinator at Minnesota, said the coaching staff felt a wide-open passing attack provided the best opportunity for success in the Big Ten, especially for a program with inferior talent.

"We thought bringing that offense to the Big Ten we would have a chance to be competitive because nobody else was really doing it," DeBesse said.

Not anymore. Success by other programs has created a copycat effect and made spread offense increasingly popular in the college game. The demand for speed and athleticism prompted others to change and has had an effect on recruiting. More high school teams are running spread offenses, and recruits, in turn, are seeking programs that use that system.

DeBesse figures economics also play a role. The spread offense — particularly one that airs it out — is more appealing to the masses than 3 yards and a cloud of dust.

"Part of it is driven by butts in seats," DeBesse said. "Unfortunately, that's part of the deal. Entertainment."

Dunbar said he's only concerned about winning, and he believes the spread gives teams the best chance for success. Northwestern couldn't match athletes with most other Big Ten schools, but the Wildcats ranked fourth in the nation in total offense in 2005 and became only the second Big Ten team to average 500 yards per game.

"One of the reasons I'm a great believer in the offense is because it gives your people a chance to be successful without having to manhandle people," Dunbar said.

Everyone agrees it will take time before the Gophers see the full benefit of the spread offense. The Gophers need to upgrade their team speed and recruit players who fit the system, particularly at wide receiver. The current players also need to grow into the system and become more comfortable with it. That doesn't happen overnight.

As a former defensive coordinator — albeit many years ago — Dunbar knows every offense has weaknesses. But he won't reveal how he would defend the spread.

"I can't give away my secrets," Dunbar said. "I would hope that the best thing [opponents] would say about us is that we're balanced. On a normal down-and-distance situation, I will throw it as much as I run it. The only way for me to confuse the percentages is to remained balanced. So I keep thinking to myself, 'Balance, balance, balance ...' "