Jay Gruden still loves the read option, but the new Washington coach reiterated that he has no plans on making it the meat and potatoes of the Redskins' offense.
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"We'll have sprinkles here and there," Gruden said in an interview with WSPZ-AM, per The Washington Post. "It's not going to be a major part. I want to make sure that we have other things that we can do besides the read option, because it takes a toll."
As Gruden explains, the toll isn't just on quarterback Robert Griffin III being hit often -- which is an issue unto itself -- it also hurts a team's game planning.
"You have to practice it a lot to be very good at it," he said. "It kind of takes away from the defense's ability a little bit. It takes away from other plays that you need to work on, your protection schemes, your running game, all that stuff. It just takes away from that.
"So we want to make sure that we work on the core running game that we have, the core dropback passes we have. And then once we get going, we get those implemented, maybe sprinkle in some read option."
Last season with the Cincinnati Bengals, Gruden ran some of the better under-the-radar read option plays with quarterback Andy Dalton. Part of the success of those plays stemmed from defenses not being prepared for Dalton scampering. Another was the infrequency with which Gruden utilized the quarterback run.
Dalton is no RGIII, but sometimes you only need a sprinkle of a good thing to make the whole experience sweet.
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