In my second year as The Head Football Goach at Iona College, I knew we had to overhaul the Wisbone Offense so we could come from behind & be capable of picking up some third & long Situations. Also we had to be capable of exploiting a loaded box. These were major changes but I had many positive influences to help.

Here’s an excerpt from my book Tony DeMeo’s Triple Gun Offense: An Evolution of Option Football :

Breaking the Bone and Other Changes

After running The Wishbone for a year and having great success in turning the program around, I realized some weaknesses in The Wishbone I was running. The biggest ones were:

1. We couldn’t handle long yardage situations. 3rd & 7+ were disasters.
2. Though we could shorten the game, we could not lengthen it. Comeback situations were very difficult.
3. We had a non-effective two-minute offense
4. Very difficult to pass with 3 Backs in the backfield.
5. I wanted the best athlete at Quarterback not just the best reader, so we had to simplify reading the mesh.
6. Defenses were loading the box to stop the run. We had have more threatening pass attack.

I got to know Homer Smith the author of one of my sabbatical books and considered him to be an offensive genius. He had left UCLA and was now the Head Coach at Army. I got to know him attending press luncheons and he was friendly and helpful at all times. So I told him my thoughts about passing more from The Wishbone. He told me to eliminate the triple option and use double options and pass. But you can’t throw and run the triple. It would take too much practice time. Now at this time, holding was illegal. You couldn’t pass protect using your hands. So pass protection was much more difficult.

After getting Coach Smith’s advice, I knew we could run the Triple Option AND throw the ball IF:

1. We simplified the Triple Option and made it easier to execute.
2. We reduced the number of runs in the offense.
3. We installed a simple pass game.
4. We had to use more formations that employ 3 Wide Receivers but substituting a Wide Receiver for a HB, we could reduce the number of things the HBs had to learn.
5. Regardless of the formation, we had to be able to run The Triple Option
6. We had to learn more about extending the game and how to finish the game when we had a lead.So we had a plan to adapt the base Wishbone into a more flexible Multi-Bone that would best fit our move toward a more balanced offensive attack. This would keep defenses from zeroing in on a one-dimensional offense.

Here’s the rest of the story: