Chronicling the ‘Wildcat’

Everyone is going nut(t)s over the Miami Dolphins' implementation of the Wildcat formation, a variation on the old single wing of the olden days.

Miami ran just six plays in the formation, but the four touchdowns that resulted against Bill Belichick's New England defense has everyone going googly-eyed. As we mentioned previously, you can thank the Arkansas Razorbacks, who made the old formation famous again in 2006 and 2007 with Darren McFadden and Felix Jones having uber-success in the spread iteration.

Earlier this week, South Florida Sun-Sentinel columnist Dave Hyde credited Miami quarterbacks coach David Lee with inventing the formation at Arkansas in 2007, when he was the Hogs' offensive coordinator. We mentioned that Gus Malzahn introduced the package in 2006 when he was the UA's offensive coordinator. Well, it turns out Malzahn may have introduced a variation of the formation, but that doesn't mean he created it (duh!).

In fact, when Hyde caught up with Malzahn over the phone earlier this week, he was quite shy.

"Wait, please don’t make it sound, you know, like I ’invented’ anything," Malzahn, 43, said. "Football’s a game where you use ideas that you see. I’ve used everyone’s ideas. This isn’t about me at all. Please don’t make it sound that way."

You've also got to give credit to former UA coach Houston Nutt, and former running backs coach Danny Nutt. The Hogs ran a variation of the formation with quarterback Clint Stoerner in 1998 and "reprised it" in 2004 with Matt Jones, according to ESPN.com's Tim Graham. Lee, by the way, was the Hogs' quarterbacks coach from 2001-2002.

In fact, if you look back, the Hogs debuted the formation against Southern California in 2006. Fullback Peyton Hillis was the first to be lined up at quarterback in the formation and carried the ball twice for 16 yards. McFadden, who was recovering from an injured toe and was limited in the 50-14 loss, was not on the field during that debut.

McFadden, however, would end up being the one to make it famous later that season with a jaw-dropping 181-yard rushing performance against Tennessee as he invigorated his Heisman campaign and the Hogs' 10-game winning streak.

So, let's recap.

The formation is a varation of the single wing, which teams utilized quite a bit in the 1940s.

Gus Malzahn used it quite a bit while head coach at Springdale High School in 2005, when the Bulldogs won the state championship. Beforehand, in 2004, the Razorbacks ran a single wing look with quarterback Matt Jones.

Malzahn was then hired as the UA's offensive coordinator in 2006, and with the help of the Nutt Bros., implemented a spread iteration of the formation with an unbalanced offensive line. The formation made its debut against USC on Sept. 2, 2006 with Hillis lined up at quarterback.

"It didn't take a genius to figure out," Malzahn told ESPN.com. "We were looking for ways to get the ball in our best players' hands with a little bit of deception at the same time."

Flash forward to 2007. Malzahn leaves for Tulsa and Lee returns to Fayetteville. The Hogs keep using the Wildcat formation under the new label, "Wild Hog." McFadden continues to have success with the formation and finishes second in the Heisman race for the second year in a row.

McFadden leaves for the NFL. Nutt leaves for Ole Miss. Lee leaves for Miami.

And finally, Lee helps implement his variation of the Wildcat at Miami.

Nutt told ESPN.com that Miami head coach Tony Sparano should be liberal with the use of the formation in the NFL.

"It will be a little more difficult the next time they run it," Nutt said. "That's the thing about it. As people prepare for it, that's tough. You're going to end up having to punt more than you'd like.

"I don't know if you can major in it and say 'This is going to be 60 percent of our offense.' That's hard. They're eventually are going to come down and overpopulate the line of scrimmage and make Ronnie Brown throw it, throw it, throw it."

Oh, but there's more up this Wildcat's sleeve, according to ESPN.com:

"We've just scratched the surface of really what we were trying to do," Sparano said. "We didn't go in there with 30 plays' worth of what we're trying to do out of this package.

"This is not something that just came up and we scribbled on the board a couple days ago. It's something that, quite honestly, we had even some other people in mind for down the road."

From high school to the NFL, to the 1940s to 2008, the Wildcat has always been dangerous.

– Brandon Marcello
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Filed under: Arkansas Football, SEC Football, Uncategorized by Brandon Marcello. Posted on: September 24, 2008 at 12:20 pm