The wrinkle that we need to place in the offense is a forward pass, for more than 5 yards.

Also, if we are talking about running the wildcat, there really is noone better than Mark Ingram on this team to do that. You definitely would not want to take touches out of Ingram’s hand to give the ball to Star Jackson. It should be pointed out that while Star Jackson is a better runner than Greg McElroy, he is definitely not an elite caliber athlete. Star Jackson is still mostly a pocket passer, with some ability to run. He has also never shown any inclination to be even comparable to McElroy passing the ball. It is probably worth mentioning that Star Jackson was not even the clear cut second string quarterback going into the season on Alabama’s depth chart. I have personally never seen anything, read, or heard of anything that would make it reasonable to give meaningful offensive snaps to Star Jackson.

…the Wildcat is the answer to the defense putting 8 in the box, it doesnt prevent it. Its a numbers games…the Wildcat basically gives you an extra blocker.

I’m not advocating replacing GMac…However, when Saban wants to run the Wildcat, instead of having GMac line up way outside and do nothing other than take up space, put Star in the backfield with Ingram (snap it to whomever you chose), but at LEAST give us the option of pass/run….Between LSU, Florida and/or Texas, if we can’t pass out of the Wildcat, they will shut it down.

Ingram himself stated that after finally throwing a pass in practice the coaches were wholly unimpressed….And it’s not the shotgun, notice I said “snap to whomever.” Listen, if we don’t have a passing threat, eventually the good defenses will stop it….Since when do we wait for the bad to happen before we improve it. And I don’t want ANYONE “attempting” their first game pass in the SEC Champ or NC game.

Putting Jackson in would give a new wrinkle in the wildcat. We have already used the flea flicker out of that formation once this year. It would be interesting to see what you could do if you had Star come accross as the “sweep back” and run or throw out of that. Also I would like to see Julio act as the the sweep back. He can shed defenders(if he does get the ball) and the D has to commit several players to him which creates a numbers advantage for us(if he does not get the ball).
I would also agree that we need to work out the deep ball threat situation. The problem is we are vulnerable to the blitze and don’t have time to develop such plays. McElroys arm is also very weak. He continuously underthrows the ball and that will get picked against good DB’s like Florida, LSU etc.
I think in order to create a deep threat we have to be willing to throw on running downs. Since we have been so successful running the ball we have been conservative and for better or worse stuck with what is working. Throwing deep balls on 1st and 10 or second and 5+ may cost us some stalled drives but at least it may open up the line and hopefully generate some big plays…. My .02

is a Wildcat? some formation kentucky runs? why would we wanna steal their crap? UK sucks…

When Mark gets the call everyone in the stadium knows he’s running it. (see South Carolina) Opposition studies the formation and prepares to defend it by stacking the box. This leads to minimum success. What if the wildcat were ran by Julio instead. Although he’s not a between the tackles type of threat he is a handful to tackle. Or maybe just try more end around stuff to try and keep defenses honest. Making them think twice before putting 8-9 men in the box. If Mark would hand the ball off to Maze or Julio on the end around there might be some yardage gained there. At the A-day game I saw Maze have great cuccess against our D with the end around. So far this season I’ve only seen that play ran three times in 8-games.