Everyone has heard about NFL defensive coordinators being sent to the college ranks to learn schemes and techniques to help stop the read option. Here is a great article on the war, the cat-and-mouse scheming and counter-scheming that will occur this year. Some say the read-option is "the flavor of the week" and get QBs killed. Others point out that it is going to take seismic changes in how defenses deploy.
I don't think Roman/Harbs deployed this as a gimmick for some cheap yards,or as a flavor of the week. I think they have a much wider perception then that. In this article Kyle Shannahan states that he stopped seeing so many blitzes because by mid-season, defenders were clueless and just standing around trying to make their own reads. I think Roman/Harbs is going to use what was effective last year, and build on it. Sort of a macrocosm of clever in-game play-calling (which I don't think Roman is particularly adept at). I think we'll be one step ahead, again, this year. While they worry about "Dive" and "Scrape" we'll be taking advantage of that dropped safety (into the box). It's not transient, but a step in an ongoing evolution. It's a message also: we can, and will, call anything and anytime.
Prepare for that.
[ Edited by GoldandGarnet on Aug 4, 2013 at 6:12 AM ]