Everyone is familiar with the concept of the Multiples Offense. David Shaw does a fantastic job of running it at Stanford as highlighted in this old SI piece.



Quoting his mentor Gruden, Shaw explained “He would say it every single day: ‘What you want to do on offense is present the illusion of sophistication but all in all remain very simple and basic.” That’s the premise: disguising a basic offense that runs a fairly limited set of concepts/plays but out of multiple personnel packages and alignments. The repertoire of plays/concepts is small enough for college players to master yet has the illusion of complexity that hinders the ability of college defenders to recognize the play as it unfolds. That’s what every OC aspires to achieve.

In contrast is the modular offense. It is a grabbag of a multitude of different offensive philosophies, each employing its own personnel groups and alignments with very little conceptual or playbook continuity linking each module. The ProStyle playbook and Spread Option playbook might as well be written by different OCs, and in the case of Utah’s offense under/with/including ARod, that’s exactly what you had.

The advantage was that the available talent could be maximized by calling plays that were tailored to whatever skill sets the best offensive specialists on the team possessed. That worked early in the season as the offense was highly unpredictable and lots of guys were used effectively.

Then defenses caught on to very strong personnel/formation play calling tendencies. Guys got injured and because the recruiting strategy had no focus on system fit, the next guy on the depth chart with a completely different set of skills couldn’t run the same playbook. Whole modules of the offense were abandoned. And because there was some much going on, the offensive players never really got better at anything as the year progressed and defenses improved. The November collapse ensued. In fact 2017, post ARod, was the first year where Utah’s offense actually got better in November. Not a coincidence.

Now when you hear father Hoge’s comments about the Hoge package and the comments about the input from all the offensive coaches in implementing BYU’s new offense, what do you see being implemented this year? Multiple or Modular?