High School Football: Spread offense the rage at Utah schools

When East quarterback Tanner Curtis showed up this summer to begin practicing and preparing for the new football season, he and the rest of his teammates were greeted with a major surprise.

The Wing-T offense — a longtime staple of the Leopard football program — had been tossed aside with leather helmets as a relic of another era. In its place, new coach Sean Knox had installed a college style spread offense.

Curtis instantly realized he would be devoting countless hours learning a whole new playbook.

"The Wing-T is such a run-based offense," Curtis said. "To switch to such a passing offense in the spread and the no-huddle, it's a very big difference. It's an exciting difference though."

East isn't alone in making an extreme makeover on the offensive side of the ball. Much like a row of dominoes, one school after another has fallen before the all-consuming wave of the spread option and adopted a version of it to suit its own needs.

From Box Elder to West Jordan, multiple teams statewide debuted new spread offenses in their season openers on Friday night. First impressions were not all that good in some cases. East and Box Elder both failed to score any points in blowout losses. Murray and Cyprus both needed late fourth-quarter touchdowns just to reach double digits on the scoreboard.

For other teams, initial results were much more promising.

West Jordan quarterback Adam Boelter threw for 209 yards and rushed for four touchdowns to lead the Jaguars to a convincing 40-23 victory over Granger. Switching to a spread offense is a risk some teams are willing to take because they feel like it levels the playing field a little against bigger and deeper opponents.

Cyprus coach Brian Jacketta decided to go with a spread offense largely because of which teams the Pirates would face in their new 5A region. Jacketta felt he needed an offense that gave his skill players enough time to get the ball — something that could not happen as readily if he stuck with a more conventional run-based offense.

"We're not really big up front so that plays into it," Jacketta said. "We wouldn't be able to smash mouth with Hunter or smash mouth with the likes of Bingham and other bigger teams."

There is precedent for a team like Cyprus to become more competitive through the spread. Ogden went 5-6 and reached the first round of the 3A playoffs using a spread offense last fall.