Urban Meyer has become one of the top offensive gurus in college football in the last generation. As he moved through the coaching ranks at Bowling Green, Utah, Florida and Ohio State, he added wrinkles not seen — or perfected — by many others. In what is now a staple of college football, Meyer is a pioneer of sorts.

A unique layer of the RPO was literally stumbled upon at Utah, Meyer admitted in a recent pregame show on Fox Sports.

“Yeah, it was a missed assignment by a wide receiver,” Meyer said, and added that the run-pass option mistake happened at Utah after Meyer ran the spread at Bowling Green. “Really, no one was doing it back then.”

Meyer tried to clarify his definition of the spread offense as he’s heard it described in different ways.

“Spread offense is all about equating numbers in the run game,” Meyer said. “… You want to spread the field, create a numbers advantage on offense.”

Meyer then laid out a formation with four wide receivers, and said a defense would normally cover that set with five defenders, which leaves four defensive linemen remaining and two linebackers. So if there are five blockers, six defenders, the running back will get hit in the backfield, he said.

“So how do you do that? You eliminate one defender to equate numbers,” Meyer said.

Then he shifts it to have five blockers blocking five defenders and the quarterback reading a defensive lineman.

“If you go to the back, I pull it, that’s a double option,” Meyer said. “That’s a run, run.”

The “evolution” of the spread offense is that the receiver mistakenly ran a bubble screen instead of blocking down field, which left the quarterback exposed, but he then flipped it to that now open receiver. Assistant coaches at Utah, Dan Mullen and Kyle Whittingham, were as surprised as Meyer was, and they quickly tweaked it into the playbook.

The triple option is the quarterback hands the ball off, keeps it himself or flips to a tight end in the flat.

“Here’s the key, everybody on the offense is blocking run,” Meyer said. “Run, pause, pass option. It’s a run play.”