Erickson was definitely a spread pioneer. He was one of the first if not the first coach to replace a fullback with a third receiver at the P5 level. He didn’t use the shotgun as much as modern teams but I remember really loving those offenses as a kid because they actually threw the ball a lot. Three yards and a cloud of dust running teams were boring as ****.
What people forget is that Erickson's spread was potentially a great running offense. His 1988 team which was known for its passing prowess had
two 1000 yard rushers: Rich Swinton and Steve Broussard. Combined, they had 440 rushing attempts between them. (The QB, Timm Rosenbach, had 129, which seems like a lot for a QB. I wonder how many were scrambles during attempted pass plays and how many were designed runs for the QB).
The statistics show that the 1988 WSU team--the last before Erickson came to UM--averaged 28.4 passing attempts to 50.4 rushing attempts. That's a lopsided run-heavy team. If I remember how to use my calculator (something I never do anymore) that's about a 36% average of passing plays. Of course, some of those rushing attempts were intended passing plays where the QB probably ended up taking a sack or scrambling so it ended up a rushing attempt instead of a pass. Still, it suggests that the Erickson 3-back was much more run-oriented than people think.
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/washington-state/1988.html
You probably don't remember, but a lengthy newspaper article (probably the Herald) discussing the new offense, stated that Erickson and staff watched a ton of Redskin film from the 1980s, and essentially built an offense around that running attack. That was a very aggressive run-heavy offense as I remember, built around John Riggins and later George Rogers. One difference is that the Redskins did not employ three WRs, as did Erickson. Instead, the Redskins routinely used two TEs, one an H-Back.
If you remember some of Miami's games against FSU, we ran the ball like crazy with Steve McGuire.
So, despite Erickson's offense having a reputation for being a wide-open pass oriented system, it was basically very balanced and sought to use the running game a lot. One thing I didn't like about it when he was at Miami was that I recall using tiny RBs as the starter sometimes. Like that 170 lb Leonard Conley. That single RB, incidentally, was called the fullback. When you play only one RB, and sometimes no RB, the QB can be more vulnerable.
The passing attack I think tended to be less vertical (although not entirely so) and used the three (or four) WRs sideline to sideline. I guess you would call that more horizontal. I remember talking to, Carl Meyer, the Associate AD at the time, and he described it as a hot read system. It put a lot of pressure on the QB to find a receiver and get it out quickly. My recollection is that the starting QB from '87 and '88, Steve Walsh, started spring practice right after Erickson arrived ('89), tried it out, and learned that he would probably not thrive in the system. Then he went into the supplemental draft. He probably didn't have the arm strength that Craig Erickson had. I think I heard or read things at the time suggesting he did not feel (and maybe the new coaches did not feel) that Steve and the offense were a good match. Obviously, he thrived in the previously offense which was overseen by OC Gary Stevens and which had been inherited from Schnellenberger. That offense had been passed down from Shula to Schnellenberger, and ultimately from the great Cleveland Browns offense of the 1950's, developed by legendary coach Paul Brown and run by also legendary QB Otto Graham.
As far as the talent on that 2001 team: I don't think when we recruited a lot of those guys thy were thought to be elite when we signed them. Many were evaluated very well by Butch and staff and as was often the case back then, we found guys with terrific potential who were coached very well and worked very hard to make themselves the best. I don't want to go through the 2001 roster now, but I followed recruiting closely in the mid-1990's when Butch was recruiting those guys. Some were well-known blue chips, some were more south Florida blue chips without a great national reputation. Butch, like Jimmy, knew how to evaluate. As I've said many times, our great teams did not win national recruiting titles. We just found who were really the best recruits because we worked hard and made good evaluations.
Incidentally, as I've said here before: I remember a quote from highly-regarded UCLA coach, Terry Donahue, that Erickson's 1988 WSU offense was the best conceived offense in the Pac-10. I think 1988 WSU upset no. 1 ranked UCLA that year.
