Steve Spurrier Brought The Fun To The SEC

Spurrier's Fun N Gun looks exactly like a modern offense

When Steve Spurrier arrived at Florida in 1990, he knew that he had to do something different to succeed. The Gators had talent, but were dealing with fallout from a scandal. They were in the best state for high school football in America, but Florida State and Miami also happened to be there, and Spurrier, while slick, was not likely to out recruit either of his in-state foes until he could put some wins on the board.

So, out of necessity, just as he had for three seasons at Duke prior to his arrival in Gainesville, he did something different: he threw the hell out of the ball, in a league where throwing more than 15 times a game was considered a sin.

"If you want to be successful," Spurrier told Sports Illustrated in 1995, "you have to do it the way everybody does it and do it a lot better - or you have to do it differently. I can't outwork anybody and I can't coach the off-tackle play better than anybody else. So I figured I'd try to coach some different ball plays, and instead of poor-mouthing my team, I'd try to build it up to the point where the players think, Coach believes we're pretty good; by golly, let's go prove it."

Spurrier’s different ball plays, as he put it, combined to make up what was referred to as the “airball” offense at Duke, and what eventually morphed into the “Fun N’ Gun” at Florida.

"This offense was born at Duke University," said Spurrier told the Washington Post in 1996. "And really, the better name of this offense is Airball,' not Fun 'N' Gun' -- somebody stuck that on at Florida. But it was called Airball' at Duke.

"At Duke, you know, in basketball, when a guy misses the whole hoop, everybody hollers, Aiiir-balll, Aiiir-balll.' That's what they used to do at Duke; somebody would throw a long pass, somebody would catch it and the students would holler, Aiiir-balll, Aiiir-balll.' "

The Fun N’ Gun name, while not preferred by Spurrier, stuck because of how well it fit what the Gators were putting on the field. It was built on a similar foundation to that of Tiger Ellison’s “Run and Shoot,” primarily in that it allowed for wide receivers to make route adjustments on the fly to better attack defenders. Spurrier put his own twist on it, passing far more than Ellison ever did, switching the rushing attack to one based around draw plays, and adding smarter and harder to defend passing concepts.

What came out of Spurrier’s lab was an offense nearly unmatched in excitement in the nearly three decades since he built it, and an offense truly deserving of its moniker, because if you were looking for fun, there was no better place to look that Florida’s offense.

There was no better year for that offense that 1996. Spurrier was consistently successful throughout his tenure at UF, but in 96, the Gators put what could be one of the most electrifying offenses of all time on the field.

It was the perfect combination of talent and system. Spurrier had basically built the ideal version of his offense at this point, and had a devastatingly sharp and accurate passer in Danny Wuerffel. Spurrier’s system required a quarterback that could identify and pick apart a defense quickly and correctly, and that also had the arm to tuck the ball into tight windows that would only be open for a quarter of a second. Wuerffel went above and beyond the requirements.

At wideout, Reidel Anthony, Ike Hilliard and Jacquez Green terrorized defenses with elite athleticism. This offense was so good that it had Fred Taylor as one of two primary halfbacks, and only handed off to him about eight times a game. The Gators didn’t need to run, because nobody could stop their passes.

A lot of what Florida was running was built, as almost all modern passing offenses are now, around spreading the defense thin, confusing safeties, and then hitting wide open receivers in the space that the defense couldn’t cover. It sounds simple now because just about everyone (good) does it, but in the 90s, a lot of passing offenses were still designed around throwing the ball up to the tallest guy on the field. Spurrier was one of the first to adopt a smarter passing attack in college football, and probably the first to do it in the SEC.

In practice, spreading a defense out looks a lot like this. Florida is operating out of one of its more unique formations, with Wuerffel in the shotgun and a halfback in the backfield with him, in a sort of H-back spot near the line, to serve as both a blocker against potential blitzes, and then as a delayed target out of the backfield on most plays.

With four-wide, Florida is looking to attack Florida State’s cover 3 defense by sending wideouts about 10 yards deep on both sidelines, pulling in the outside corners. A deep threat in the slot pulls off that middle safety and the halfback underneath holds the linebackers in. Them the innermost slot receiver is just going to hit a shallow post, tucking in behind the linebackers, into the gap created by the outside corner biting in on the curl route, and the deep safety trying to cover that seam from the slot.

Wuerffel’s pass is right on the money, and Hilliard has a huge gain with no defenders anywhere near him to contest the catch. These sort of Hi/Lo work wonders against zone.

Because Wuerffel was so accurate, and his receivers were so dominant, they worked pretty damn well against man coverage too. Usually the best way to consistently beat man coverage is to isolate defenders, and take away any sort of safety cushion that they have elsewhere on the defense. We talked on the last film study about Greg Schiano using short linebacker zones to allow cornerbacks to defend with outside releases in mind, knowing that they had help across the middle.

Florida State used a similar approach, but Florida showcases here the right way to attack that. The strong side slot receiver is hitting a quick stop route, drawing attention from both a corner in man coverage and the outside linebacker in a soft underneath zone.

With those two underneath, the outside receiver hits a shallow post (a favorite of Spurrier’s), into the space vacated by that outside linebacker, giving Wuerffel an open lane to throw into. The cornerback, playing for an outside release, is caught on Hilliard’s back hip, and it’s another easy gain for the Gators.

It’s the same idea here, just with four receivers instead of three. Two short routes, one on either side, the bring the defense in and isolate cornerbacks, and then an inside attacking route over the top of one of those underneath routes, right into a wide open space.

This works even better against a blitz, so long as Wuerffel gets the ball out in time, because there’s no reason to even mess around with attacking underneath. Florida State is leaving its defensive backs on an island in hopes that Wuerffel doesn’t have the time to do anything but a quick drop off.

When he’s able to create that time, the pass to another shallow post, inside shoulder again, with a defensive back beaten badly is as simple as it gets. This was what Florida’s offense would do to you. It would pick zones and man apart so efficiently that defensive coordinators would blitz out of frustration, hoping to fluster Wuerffel, which then only makes his job easier. In quite a few ways, including style of quarterback, it’s a lot like what LSU was doing in 2019. I’d guess that Joe Brady, who grew up in Florida, was a big fan of this offense.

Even when the plays were covered pretty well, with a linebacker basically bailing to try to make a play on the receiver after he catches the ball on that shallow post, this group was so talented that it barely mattered. A well-coached team with this much raw athletic ability is basically unstoppable when it has a quarterback playing with as much swagger as Wuerffel was. You can play defense as well as you want, but when a wideout can stop on a dime like that, there’s not a scheme on earth that can stop it.

When you’re as dominant at one concept as Florida was, it also makes the rest of the offense that much harder to defend. The cornerbacks adapted as the game went on to try to better defend passes to the inside shoulder, by shielding inside and forcing receivers to release to the outside, while dropping safeties into that deep middle to add some extra help on posts.

Florida responded by dropping a perfect ball right over that inside coverage on a go route. It’s completely impossible to stop an offense that can do this, and honestly, you really shouldn’t even try. Just forfeit and go do something else. Go for a walk. Read a book. Do anything that isn’t this.

I say that, because when all else fails, and when you think you’ve finally figured out a way to stop the pass by dropping almost all defenders and selling out to stop the downfield attack, Florida busts out this, and breaks your spine.

I again hearken back to that 2019 LSU team, which did basically the same thing with Clyde Edwards-Helaire, albeit in a far more modern and effective zone running scheme. Giving up a big run to a bowling ball shaped halfback after being gashed in the air for an entire half is like laying shirtless in the snow for 40 minutes and then getting hit in the chest with a big wooden plank. It takes away a defense’s will to play the game.

That was the formula that Spurrier put on paper. For decades, the way to demoralize an opponent in the SEC was to prove that you were bigger and tougher by running a 235-pound halfback directly into his center’s ass every play. Spurrier humiliated defenses because he whooped them with passing, and then tossed that 235-pounder out there to finish the job. If you’re at a school that can recruit the skill and line talent for it, there’s no better way to score points than by setting up the run with an unstoppable downfield attack. Spurrier was the first coach to realize that he could do that in the big, mean SEC. Somehow, 23 years later, Ed Orgeron, the ultimate big, mean SEC coach, unlocked the same secret.

Up next: Lynnsanity

Graphics by Kristen Lillemoen