Seattle Seahawks offensive line coach Tom Cable didn't mince words about college football offenses in a radio interview on Tuesday.
Speaking to ESPN 710 in Seattle, Cable shared his displeasure with offensive fundamentals.
"I'm not wanting to offend anybody, but college football, offensively, has gotten to be really, really bad fundamentally," Cable said via ESPN.
The topic came up when Cable was discussing the versatility of players with hosts Brock Huard and Mike Salk. Cable has a preference for guys who can play multiple positions on the offensive line and has even moved players from defense to offense as he said he'd have to "retrain" rookie offensive lineman anyway. So he looks for players who could be more athletic.
"Unfortunately, I think we're doing a huge disservice to offensive football players, other than a receiver, that come out of these spread systems," Cable continued.
"The runners aren't as good. They aren't taught how to run. The blockers aren't as good. The quarterbacks aren't as good. They don't know how to read coverage and throw progressions. They have no idea."
You can listen to the entire audio here.
While NFL teams have started borrowing concepts from college offense over the past few years, you could argue in a similar fashion to Cable that they're doing so to fit the skillsets of the player pool available to them.
However, you can also say that the spreading-the-field concepts college teams have utilized have made their way to the NFL because they're effective and exploit mismatches, an important part of football on any level (plus, "spread" is a very broad category).
And besides, players are coached to the systems of their teams. While every college team likes to brag about the number of players it sends to the NFL, it also wants success on the football field even more. While college football is the NFL's de facto minor league, its explicit purpose isn't to be the NFL's training ground.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
