Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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ON THE RUN Everett Golson is getting his legs underneath him just in time Sophomore quarterback produced a total of 268 rushing yards. Two of the top six rushing de- fenses in the country loomed in the not-so- distant future, and their current running attack wasn't going to cut it. The solution, or at least the solute to be added and absorbed to the Irish backfield, was the mo- bile sophomore quarter- back Everett Golson. Golson was not a run- N Its last three games ner when he was setting records at Myrtle Beach (S.C.) High School. His coaches cringed each time their star tucked the ball and headed downfield into harm's way. Recruiters did not. When Golson took off, they saw the athleticism BY DAN MURPHY otre Dame en- tered its bye week in late September with a problem. needed to run one of col- lege football's most ef- fective plays in the past five years — the zone read. Irish head coach Brian Kelly saw the fu- ture of his offense. The zone read is a mutation of the triple option, in which the offense leaves one de- fender intentionally un- blocked and makes him choose to stop one of two potential ball car- riers. Instead of both quarterback and run- ning back headed in the same direction like the old option, Golson can hand off in one direction or pull the ball back and take off in the other. The play looks like a normal handoff. The threat of Golson potentially re- routing the play's direc- tion forces the backside of an opposing defense to hesitate every time the Irish run the ball. "I think it adds an- other dimension for our offense," Golson said af- ter running for 51 yards in the first half against Miami. "It keeps the ends kind of contained. If they do crash down, the zone read is there." He picked up 13 yards the first time he ran the play against the Hur- ricanes, just four snaps after taking the field in the first quarter. Mi- ami made an adjust- ment right away, which helped to open gaping holes the rest of the night. The Irish ran for 376 yards — their high- est total in 12 years — against a porous Hur- ricanes defense. More importantly, with two of the most aggressive defenses in the country (Stanford and Brigham Young) set to visit South Bend in October, they posted caution signs for future opponents to think about.