The Veer Explained
10/24/2020 8:19:00 AM | Football
People like a good fraud story so my forensic experience has led to some public speaking engagements.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to deliver a lecture at Wake Forest. I got my diploma on May 28, 1973. I figure that as late as May 27 there were three groups on campus that were trying to determine if I should graduate: the faculty, the administration and the student judicial board. Now here I was, teaching at the same school. The irony of it all was too rich.
At any rate, last spring I was asked to speak at an insurance crime conference. My topic was "How do I investigate fraud?"
The message that I wanted to convey was that people can accomplish a lot if they have a good system. What better way to introduce the topic than to talk about Wake's 1970 Championship season and the Veer Offense? Here's a condensed version of how it went:
I played football for Wake Forest back in the early 70's. As you see me now, I'm the same size I was then; 6'3", 220 significantly re-arranged lbs. Perfect size for a wide receiver or defensive back, trouble was, I was an offensive lineman, a center. Even back in those days, 220 lbs. was exceedingly small for a lineman.
To make matters worse, I was one of the bigger guys we had.
In 1970, the pre-imminent publication for preseason college football was Playboy magazine, (of course, I only read it for the articles). Playboy's prognosis for the Deacons went something like this, "Wake Forest has no quarterback, no defense and no hope." One sports writer said that we were possibly the worst college football team in the country.
We started the season with an offense that we called a "pro-spread attack." The idea was to spread the defense across the field and make the other team chase us.
Trouble was, we might have been small, but we were slow, too. When we challenged people to catch us, they did.
Well, if we were the worst college football team in the country, it was only proper that we would open the season against the best college football team in the country, the eventual National Champions that year, Nebraska, in Lincoln.
I remember walking out on the field, seeing 66,000 Cornhusker fans dressed all in red and wondering if this is what people felt like when they were being led into the Coliseum to face the lions.
We lost that game by a big margin and we lost the next two in similar fashion. We had done nothing to dispel the notion that we were the worst college football team in the country.
Monday afternoon, after our third loss, the coach called us all together and said, "Boys, throw away your playbooks. We need a new offense, preferably one that does not require size, speed or athleticism."
The first thing that we did was pack the offense into a tight formation. This negated the other team's speed advantage since they didn't have to chase us anymore; we were right there.
The second thing we did was not block two people at the point of attack. Since we did not engage these individuals, it negated their size and strength advantage.
Then we threw three people (quarterback, fullback and halfback) at the two unblocked defenders and it became a three-card Monte or a shell game.
The defenders had to guess which running back had the ball and we had a quarterback who was an absolute magician at making them guess wrong. Because we didn't block some people, we had guys left over to double-team and even two small guys can slow down a big guy for a little while. We were able to create small seams and our running backs got three, four or five yards a carry, almost every time. We rarely got over 10 yards because then that "speed thing" came back into play.
We called it the Veer Offense.
Something about football that I never figured out; I just know it's true. The longer the offense stays on the field, the stronger it gets. Just the opposite for the defense.
All of a sudden, our offense was on the field a lot. We created long drives and racked up lots of yards. Everybody we played knew that they were bigger, faster and stronger than us, but they couldn't stop us.
The more frustrated they became, the better the offense worked.
By the end of the game, our defense was fresh and theirs was gassed. More importantly we won. In fact, we won enough that a bunch of guys that were too small and too slow to play big time college football road the Veer Offense to the 1970 ACC Championship.
The moral of the story is that, even if you have limited resources, you can do great things if you have a good system.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Germ
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to deliver a lecture at Wake Forest. I got my diploma on May 28, 1973. I figure that as late as May 27 there were three groups on campus that were trying to determine if I should graduate: the faculty, the administration and the student judicial board. Now here I was, teaching at the same school. The irony of it all was too rich.
At any rate, last spring I was asked to speak at an insurance crime conference. My topic was "How do I investigate fraud?"
The message that I wanted to convey was that people can accomplish a lot if they have a good system. What better way to introduce the topic than to talk about Wake's 1970 Championship season and the Veer Offense? Here's a condensed version of how it went:
I played football for Wake Forest back in the early 70's. As you see me now, I'm the same size I was then; 6'3", 220 significantly re-arranged lbs. Perfect size for a wide receiver or defensive back, trouble was, I was an offensive lineman, a center. Even back in those days, 220 lbs. was exceedingly small for a lineman.
To make matters worse, I was one of the bigger guys we had.
In 1970, the pre-imminent publication for preseason college football was Playboy magazine, (of course, I only read it for the articles). Playboy's prognosis for the Deacons went something like this, "Wake Forest has no quarterback, no defense and no hope." One sports writer said that we were possibly the worst college football team in the country.
We started the season with an offense that we called a "pro-spread attack." The idea was to spread the defense across the field and make the other team chase us.
Trouble was, we might have been small, but we were slow, too. When we challenged people to catch us, they did.
Well, if we were the worst college football team in the country, it was only proper that we would open the season against the best college football team in the country, the eventual National Champions that year, Nebraska, in Lincoln.
I remember walking out on the field, seeing 66,000 Cornhusker fans dressed all in red and wondering if this is what people felt like when they were being led into the Coliseum to face the lions.
We lost that game by a big margin and we lost the next two in similar fashion. We had done nothing to dispel the notion that we were the worst college football team in the country.
Monday afternoon, after our third loss, the coach called us all together and said, "Boys, throw away your playbooks. We need a new offense, preferably one that does not require size, speed or athleticism."
The first thing that we did was pack the offense into a tight formation. This negated the other team's speed advantage since they didn't have to chase us anymore; we were right there.
The second thing we did was not block two people at the point of attack. Since we did not engage these individuals, it negated their size and strength advantage.
Then we threw three people (quarterback, fullback and halfback) at the two unblocked defenders and it became a three-card Monte or a shell game.
The defenders had to guess which running back had the ball and we had a quarterback who was an absolute magician at making them guess wrong. Because we didn't block some people, we had guys left over to double-team and even two small guys can slow down a big guy for a little while. We were able to create small seams and our running backs got three, four or five yards a carry, almost every time. We rarely got over 10 yards because then that "speed thing" came back into play.
We called it the Veer Offense.
Something about football that I never figured out; I just know it's true. The longer the offense stays on the field, the stronger it gets. Just the opposite for the defense.
All of a sudden, our offense was on the field a lot. We created long drives and racked up lots of yards. Everybody we played knew that they were bigger, faster and stronger than us, but they couldn't stop us.
The more frustrated they became, the better the offense worked.
By the end of the game, our defense was fresh and theirs was gassed. More importantly we won. In fact, we won enough that a bunch of guys that were too small and too slow to play big time college football road the Veer Offense to the 1970 ACC Championship.
The moral of the story is that, even if you have limited resources, you can do great things if you have a good system.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Germ
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