Ware says ‘no worries’
about run-and-shoot

DAVID Klingler and Andre Ware were watching the Rams in the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, sitting there on the couch and seeing all the old familiar pass patterns, all their standard adjustments and reads. And they had to look at each other and laugh.

This was pretty much their old offense.

Only the name had changed.

(Though, Ware said, the two old teammates agreed that incorporating a tight end might have been a pretty good addition to the scheme.)

If Mouse Davis is the Godfather of the run-and-shoot, if June Jones is its Last Samurai, Ware is still its Top Gun.

Ware won the Heisman Trophy for Houston in 1989, directing an offensive explosion the likes of which college football had never seen.

So with Hawaii having been "held" to 28.5 points per game in an 0-2 start, with the odd rumble here and there that maybe the UH offense has finally been figured out, maybe it's time to catch up with Ware and see what the run-and-shoot's best quarterback would have to say.

Basically? Don't worry.

"I don't think by any stretch of the imagination it's been caught up to, that it can be shut down," he said from Minneapolis, where he was preparing to call today's Minnesota-Northwestern game for ESPN.

He hadn't seen enough Hawaii games to say much, other than obviously he's a fan of the offense and what little he's seen of Tim Chang leaves Ware "very impressed."

But we've seen Hawaii have a few subpar offensive games last season and this year UH has already been outscored twice.

It may just be an old football player's memory, but Ware can't recall ever having been held in check (except for a road game at Texas A&M: "Even in that game we dropped a few passes that were touchdown passes," he said).

During Ware's Heisman season the Cougars scored 53.5 points a game, went 9-2 and beat Texas 47-9.

A big reason for that success? He feels strongly about this part: Houston's single back was called the "Superback." And Chuck Witherspoon may as well have changed in a phone booth and put on a cape.

"He was phenomenal," Ware said.

They passed to create the run, Ware said. That was the philosophy, a conscious choice. "And once you would get a certain look," he said, "the blocking angles were better. Clearly, the advantage was to the running game rather than the pass."

And that opened up everything.

Cover two? Don't let anyone deep? Hang back and hit? They couldn't do that to Houston.

"The way that I approached it," Ware said, "if you're in two deep, then the weakness of your defense is, you can't stop running the football.

"My job (as the quarterback) is to get you back to seven guys or eight guys around the line of scrimmage."

Yank the defense like a yo-yo.

To put it mildly, it worked.

And like every ex-run-and-shoot QB, Ware is a believer for life.

He and Klingler still laugh about it, almost every week, when they set the record for most combined career passing yards at a single dinner table.