Should the Cleveland Browns bring back the Wildcat?

Would the Wildcat help the Cleveland Browns get through the 17 game season?

Will the Cleveland Browns be among the teams that look at re-instituting the Wildcat offense in response to the new17 game season? Somehow, the team is going to have to take 60 more snaps on offense, and canceling an exhibition game is so not going to compensate for that.

A regular NFL season is already an epic endurance contest at 16 games, and adding one more game may not seem like a lot, but it strains human bodies already near the breaking point. Each team is going to at least consider ways to distribute the workload and find ways to utilize more of the roster.

The quarterback is the most valuable commodity on the team. Is the Wildcat or some other alternative offense a way to prolong the quarterback’s time at the helm? The idea of the Wildcat is to disrupt the other team’s defense by throwing a totally different offensive set at them, one based on running and the triple option rather than pocket passing.

It was very popular about a dozen years ago, when the Miami Dolphins, coached by Tony Sparano and assisted by QB coach David Lee, used it to absolutely pummel the New England Patriots, leading the Dolphins to one of their few victorious seasons over their hated rivals, going 11-5 and winning the division title.

Cleveland was one of the teams that ran a version of it. Josh Cribbs, who was a running quarterback for the Kent State Golden Flashes, was a natural for the job, as was Seneca Wallace, a quarterback who was good enough to play wide receiver. Marqueis Gray also served as a wildcat quarterback on occasion.

The Wildcat is not really much different than the spread formation, except that a run-oriented quarterback takes the snap instead of the normal passer, usually with two other backs in the backfield. The quarterback usually has to be capable of running the triple option, in which he can run, pass, or pitch. It isn’t a job for an immobile quarterback, and it has to be a player who can take hits.

In the case of the Baltimore Ravens, when they have Lamar Jackson receive the snap with 300-pound fullback Patrick Ricard and halfback J.K. Dobbins in the backfield with him, they basically have the right personnel to run Wildcat plays or pocket pass plays with zero changes, which is the classic definition of dual-threat.

Arizona, Seattle, and Green Bay can also do that, although Aaron Rodgers is getting rather old for that sort of thing, and perhaps that role should soon fall to Jordan Love.

The rest of the league, however, would probably use a different passer to run the Wildcat. Otherwise, it does not help distribute the workload of the first-string quarterback, and makes it worse, because he is going to take more hits in the Wildcat.

As of 2020, the New Orleans Saints were the main team using a variant offense with Taysom Hill as the quarterback, largely because they wanted to extend the effectiveness of Drew Brees.

Sometimes NFL teams have been known to use an alternate quarterback near the end zone. The Steelers used to bring in Kordell Stewart for Mike Tomczak in those situations, and the Ravens did the same thing when Lamar Jackson was a rookie, bringing him in with special packages in place of veteran Joe Flacco.

Yet there are some very valid reasons not to do this. In the case of the Browns, first of all, their guy Baker Mayfield is young and healthy (knock on wood) and it would be much less of a strain on him than on some of the old geezer quarterbacks around the league.

Of course, Dawg Pound Daily is much too high class to ever suggest that ancient Ben Roethlisberger is an old geezer, but if there was ever a team that could stand to take the load off its starter, it would be Pittsburgh. Others could include Washington (Ryan Fitzpatrick), Tampa Bay (Tom Brady) and possibly even Green Bay (Aaron Rodgers) might be among the prime candidates seeking to distribute the workload at quarterback while establishing a niche for a younger quarterback in an unorthodox offense.

Another issue is the disruption of the personnel. Offenses thrive on regularity, sustained drives, play after play after play, exactly the same, unstoppable. They really don’t want to see a different quarterback for a  series because it disrupts their rhythm.

Offensive players have different personalities than defensive players, who are more conducive to establishing a rotation and allow stars to sit out. Defensive players like to come in the game, blow things up, destroy the enemy, sit down and have a laugh, and celebrate. They don’t like to be on the field for a long period of time. They love surprises and explosions. But offensive players are usually not like that.

Not that it cannot be done, but putting in a series for the backup quarterback is a distasteful option for most offenses. However, it does force the opposing defense to game plan for that additional dimension.

The Wildcat, like the Spread, evolved from Single Wing formation. In the Single Wing, the center is able to snap the ball to three potential players: The blocking back, who is standing off to the side from his normal position; the fullback who is about where the spread formation quarterback would stand but a little closer to the line and shading over towards the blocking back; and the tailback, who plays even deeper and shades a step away from the fullback.

The tailback is the player most likely to handle the snap and pass the ball, but any of the three backs could receive the snap. There’s also a tight end and a flanker (wingback) on the side away from the blocking back and a split end on the same side as the blocking back.

Someone capable of taking a direct snap and running for short yardage, like Andy Janovich, would be the blocking back. The fullback would probably be Nick Chubb or Kareem Hunt but could also be a wide receiver like Odell Beckham, Jr. or Jarvis Landry, and the tailback would be a triple threat athlete who can pass, run or receive.

Both Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham, Jr. have cannons for arms. In 2019, Beckham threw a football the entire length of the UCLA practice field, which is 70 yards long. Face it, he’s not human. Landry, on the other hand, threw a 63-yard bomb to Breshad Perriman in a game. He, too, is undeniably a mutant.

Yet neither Landry nor Beckham would be this fan’s favored candidate for wildcat tailback (primary passer, that is). There’s yet another receiver on the Browns with even more advanced throwing skills. That would be KhaDarel Hodge, who began his career as a quarterback at Alcorn State, before switching to wide receiver at Prairie View A&M.

Taking the snap from center and handing off is not as easy as it looks, and as far as we know, neither Landry nor OBJ played quarterback even in high school. Hence Hodge might be an interesting candidate to be the Wildcat passer.

So what is wrong with the Single Wing or Wildcat?

Schematically these formations are probably viable, especially if your team has Lamar Jackson, Taysom Hill, Kyler Murray, Aaron Rodgers, or Russell Wilson as the passer. These plays can be run from the spread formation, so nobody has to know that you are thinking “Wildcat.”

However, at the end of the day, if our guy taking the snap is going to be Hodge, Landry, or Beckham, they can certainly run the ball better than Baker Mayfield, but they cannot possibly compete with Mayfield as a passer.

Second, since this is not the base offense, the team has to keep it simple and limit the number of plays in the playbook that they can actually execute. It will probably work well at first, as Miami found in 2008, but after a while, opposing defensive coordinators will compile film on it and figure out what plays the Browns can actually run and develop counters to them. The element of surprise will wear off.  Those are the principal reasons that the fad did not continue too much into this decade.

The Wildcat might actually make more sense if, God forbid, Mayfield is out for an extended period of time and Case Keenum is the only experienced quarterback. In that case, the Browns would have to be doubly cautious with Keenum and do everything possible to extend his useful lifetime.

In today’s NFL, the Wildcat could be disguised as a more conventional spread formation, requiring minimal fanfare. In 2008, the Wildcat had a very different look from what the Pros were running then, but this is no longer as true because of the Spread.

Cleveland could test it in the exhibition games using an undrafted college quarterback as the guinea pig, and it might not even be noticed. That is, he might run the triple option without necessarily announcing to the world that it’s anything different than today’s run-pass-option (RPO).

The attention-getting step is not the formation itself, it will be if Baker Mayfield is asked to sit out a few plays while they run this new sequence of plays with a different Josh Cribbs style quarterback. Hopefully, people will not go nuts if it happens.

We may see several NFL teams tinker with the Wildcat in the preseason. This fan’s guess is that it will not be used by the Browns in an actual game for the time being, though they may keep some version of it in the playbook as a variation of the Spread formation.

However it is a copycat league, and if other teams are finding ways to insert a second quarterback into the game without causing an insurrection, the Browns might consider it as well.

The Steelers, who badly overworked  Ben Roethlisberger last season, are probably the team in the AFC North that should consider implementing a variant offense this season.