UPDATED: Aug. 30 at 3:15 p.m.

Read Part 1 of the Babers Offense Series here.

Nine plays, 24 yards and 3 minutes 22 seconds handling the ball yielded nothing. Dino Babers’ Bowling Green squad was faltering against Northern Illinois in the early going of last season’s Mid-American Conference Championship Game.

Babers, Sean Lewis and Mike Lynch turned the game around on one play call. And then they called it again, again and again. At least 50 times they called the same style of play. They called it so much that Mack Brown and Dave Flemming, who broadcast the game for ESPN, noted how it was burning NIU. They mistook it solely for what they saw most of the time — an inside run out of shotgun.

But it was so much more.

The Falcons broke the game open during their third drive by running a run-pass option (RPO) play, also called a packaged play. It gives the offense the option to run or pass on the same play. BGSU ran an RPO play 8-of-10 times on the drive.

The possession took 2 minutes 40 seconds, the Falcons sped 70 yards in 10 plays and the drive ended with a 4-yard run for a touchdown.

“Babers was the first time we really ran run-pass combinations like a lot,” said Ronnie Moore, a Bowling Green wide receiver. “That was our base play: run-pass combination.”

“It was probably the first play they taught us when they got here,” Moore added later.

Expect to see it in heavy doses in the Carrier Dome. An offense using RPO can make it so the defense chooses wrong on nearly every play. Babers picked up the Baylor-style offense when he coached with Art Briles at Baylor. The RPO concept was added to the offense while Briles was at Stephenville (Texas) High School.

Briles was recently fired at Baylor after allegedly covering up several players sexually assaulting students. The Pepper Hamilton report’s findings of fact presented to Baylor’s board of regents, “football coaches and staff had inappropriate involvement in disciplinary and criminal matters or engaged in improper conduct that reinforced an overall perception that football was above the rules.”

“RPOs, to me, that’s not the key thing about the offense,” Babers said. “Everybody runs RPOs … That’s not special to me. I think when you tie everything together, it’s what makes us different.”

The play’s popularity exploded in the NFL, with 12 teams running a similar concept in 2015, according to Field Yates of ESPN. Chip Kelly and other coaches run variations on the concept as well.

Four years ago, then-Syracuse head coach Doug Marrone scrapped his offensive scheme because it hadn’t yielded results that would help bring the Orange back to relevance. Instead, he instituted a faster-paced, simpler one.

One of the concepts he added was the run-pass option. While Babers and Marrone don’t run the same offense, they have used the same concept.

By the time Bowling Green won the MAC championship last season, it had romped for 501 yards and averaged 5.6 yards per play. Three-hundred sixty of those yards came from RPOs, based on film review. The Falcons averaged 6.7 yards per play on the run-pass option. It was the last game Dino Babers coached at BGSU.

Courtesy of Bowling Green State University

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The offense Babers has used since he became a head coach started with Briles and Stephenville in 1990. The run-pass option, a key component to Briles’ offense was added the year the offense was created. Briles played for Houston’s Bill Yeoman, who ran the veer offense, a triple-option concept. RPOs evolved from the veer when coaches applied the concept of the option — that an offense can counter a defense with choices within a play — to condense multiple plays into one.

“The catch phrase everybody says is ‘RPO,’” said Jeff Merket, who coached with Art Briles at Stephenville. “Everybody says they’re running RPO. We were running those even with the wishbone. That was nothing new to us. We figured out ways to get it to different people with quick hand signals.”

Stephenville progressed from running it occasionally to test defenses to making it a base package by the time Art Briles left the high school in 1999. Merket said every time the Yellow Jackets ran it, defenses would adjust and the staff would add a wrinkle to it.

The scheme even trickled into the school’s youth programs. By 1999, Stephenville had 11- and 12-year-olds running the offense — specifically the RPO portion — in middle school because of the simplicity of the scheme’s concept.

A typical RPO play includes linemen run blocking, often for a zone-read play, which means the quarterback reads the defensive end to see if he seals the edge. If the defensive end crashes in, the quarterback can keep the ball. If the end seals the edge, the quarterback can hand the football to the running back.

But RPO also gives the quarterback the option to pass. In BGSU’s matchup with NIU, an inside receiver often ran a bubble screen while the outside receivers ran more conventional routes up the field. In that sense, RPO can package several plays into one: a read option, a screen and a typical pass play.

In run-pass option plays, the offense typically can run read option or throw a pass. Against NIU in the MAC championship game, Bowling Green split three wide receivers to the left and one to the right of the formation. One receiver ran a screen and two receivers blocked for him. Kiran Ramsey | Digital Design Editor

When a team runs RPO passes, it can resemble play action. Telling the difference can be as simple as watching the offensive line. If it blocks for a run, the play was likely packaged. If it pass blocks, which is marked by moving backward, it’s likely play action.

The offense’s pace accentuates the effect of RPO. Moving at a no-huddle pace doesn’t allow the defense to substitute personnel, creating similar or base defenses that are easier to take advantage of.

Almost like a staring contest, RPO takes advantage when the defense finally blinks. By having so many different routes and combinations, the play draws in linebackers and other players to make their read and expose that read as wrong.

When a linebacker makes his read, he typically makes it based on a lineman. But if the lineman blocks for a run and the linebacker makes the “proper” read, the offense can run a receiver through the area the linebacker is supposed to vacate.

For quarterbacks, RPO is a basic read. The concept is often regarded as simple because instead of going through a progression from receiver to receiver, the quarterback only has to read a few players to know where to go with his throw.

Beyond the chess game of moving pieces, there’s simply a coverage problem, too.

“You can’t just cover the quarterback and the running back,” Merket said. “Now you’ve got to cover all areas of the field because you’re going to run somebody shallow, somebody deep and always have that option if the quarterback sees an area that he likes open.”

While Briles had been successful running RPO since the 1990s, the rise of Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III helped attract some attention to the scheme. When Griffin moved on to play for the Washington Redskins, some concepts followed, particularly RPO.

Mark Dulgerian, a scout for Optimum Scouting and an NFL Network researcher, said teams weren’t ready for the Redskins to run those types of plays that were tailored to RGIII’s strengths.

“It wasn’t a big part of offenses and really RGIII and Baylor put it back on the map,” Dulgerian said. “… I think the NFL coaches started seeing that and started accepting guys from those types of schemes, and said, ‘Hey, let’s try and do it in our offense now.’”

Spread-style offenses have been popular in college football. Because of their popularity, many NFL players have skills that fit in spread schemes, forcing NFL offensive coordinators to add packages that fit college schemes. Teams that run at least partial RPO schemes include the Pittsburgh Steelers, Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks, Dulgerian said.

Jacob Greenfeld | Asst. Photo Editor

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The Buffalo Bills used to run the RPO concept — under former SU head coach Doug Marrone. He had taken it from Syracuse, where it had been successful with a two-star quarterback and no-name receivers.

On Nov. 17, 2012, Syracuse trailed Missouri by seven with fewer than six minutes left in a game that could push the Orange into bowl eligibility. Marrone reverted to RPO. Alec Lemon ran a screen while two receivers ran slants toward the middle of the field. But Nassib handed the ball to Jerome Smith, who scampered up the middle to tie the game at 24.

Syracuse eventually won the game with 21 seconds left. The win gave Syracuse its second year of bowl eligibility in four seasons after crumbling under the incompetence of former head coach Greg Robinson.

But Marrone took his system, offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and Syracuse’s relevancy when he left at the end of the season.

That was the last time Syracuse found any true standing in college football.

Now, the concept returns. Under a coach who has studied it for at least eight years. Who coached under one of the first coaches to use the concept. Who has had proven success with it.

All the things Babers promised in his introductory press conference are accomplishments Marrone achieved. Now, Babers can use his own style of offense and put his own stamp on the program. 

In the last game he coached, Babers won his third conference championship, the pinnacle of his coaching resume. The run-pass option helped get him this far.

And it’ll help determine how far he goes.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the Mid-American Conference was misstated. Dino Babers’ Bowling Green team was losing to Northern Illinois in last season’s Mid-American Conference Championship Game, not that of the Middle Atlantic Conference. The Daily Orange regrets this error.