Remember RPOs? During the Eagles’ run to the Super Bowl and the season that followed you couldn't move for talk of the ‘run-pass option’. CBS viewers were treated to a steady dose of Romogasms. Here comes the RPO, Jim!
It was the latest and greatest innovation sweeping the game. If your coach didn’t have a book stacked full of nifty option designs, he was a dinosaur.
That explosion into the popular culture seemed to belie the fact that RPOs had been around for the better part of two decades. The pick-it-flick-it, pre-snap style was a source of Peyton Manning’s extraordinary success in Indianapolis. For Manning, each passing concept would be tagged with a run look. Manning would read the box. If it was two-high, he’d check to the run. If the safety cheated down, he’d throw the ball. Easy.
During Aaron Rodgers’ (first) heyday, the Packers took the then-called ‘packaged plays’ that had blossomed in the college game over the proceeding decade and added them to Mike McCarthy’s pedestrian of…