Urban Meyer is generally thought of as the guy who brought spread offense to Florida. I’m here to tell you today that he wasn’t. Spread offense was already on the rise in Gainesville before he arrived.
And, despite what you might be thinking after that opening, it wasn’t Steve Spurrier who started it.
Fun ‘n Gun ≠ Spread
Spread offense is an extremely generic term; anything from the flexbone to Air Raid can qualify. The only binding criteria is that a scheme must be predicated on, well, spreading the defense out and making it account for most or all of the horizontal space on the field.