Perhaps I’m confused, but all of the Wildcat schemes I’ve seen drawn up require the QB to act as a blocker, since, if there is no blocking presence wide left, it essentially eliminates the threat of Harvin running a sweep (as he did). Isn’t it the act of cutting out precisely the position Favre went after (indeed, fairly next time) that gives Harvin a chance to round that corner and get into the open?

i’m still not convinced that we’re actually going to see the wildcat in the regular season. i think chili’s flashing it in preseason to make other teams have to game plan for it.

Again, though, the point of the Wildcat is to open up the field, creating multiple points of threat. Namely, the left and right sides of the field “both” have to be realistically in play. The point isn’t “which” side of the field he lines up on, it’s that wherever the quarterback is, that too has to be a possible point of attack. Because it’s only when Harvin can hand-off to the motion back, take it himself up the middle, swing wide left, or pass downfield that the Wildcat puts too much pressure on the defense to be able to cover all possibilities at once. My feeling is this: Favre either doesn’t play on Wildcat formations, in which case we lose the element of surprise every time TJ comes out; or he plays, and we can pop out of the huddle in a surprise formation, and he has to be figured as a blocker.

teams will quickly see that we always go away from favre effectively saying ‘ok favre is lined up left so we only have to worry about half the field.’

I don’t know if a long-snapper’s opinion of a block that was penalized and likely fined changes my opinion about the play one iota.

Because you need to have one of your “bona fide” quarterbacks on the field at all times. Putting him in the backfield without taking the snap puts him in a place where you REALLY want a blocker rather than a useless player.

Splitting them out wide only makes them part of the play if they go to that side.