OK, everybody. Spread out. Norm Chow says that’s what the University of Hawaii football team’s offense will do this fall. The initial reaction is to rant and rave and say he never should have bunched up and tried to play smashmouth in the first place.

Could David Graves as a run-and-shoot quarterback have won more games for UH than the four victories the past two years produced by Sean Schroeder’s chuck-and-duck?

We’ll never know.

A reporter was told it was a stupid question when he asked Chow if Graves might be moved to another position in the spring of 2012, Chow’s first in Manoa.

"He’s our starting quarterback," the new-old coach said.

But that didn’t last long as Graves did not master the old-new pro-set scheme to Chow’s satisfaction, and one of the team’s most fan-friendly players and better athletes devolved to scout-team receiver and was eventually completely off the squad.

Perhaps Chow did Graves a favor, saving him a surgery or two.

Graves wouldn’t think so, though. He’d waited his turn to QB the Warriors and was eager to lead. And UH fans would have liked to see what Graves — who showed flashes of ability in late 2011 — could do as the starter from the beginning of a season.

Of course there were a lot of other factors involved in the train wreck of the past two years. A quarterback can’t take you anywhere without a lot of help, no matter how quirky your offense. And let’s face it … the run-and-shoot isn’t as exotic and foreign to defensive coordinators as it was when June Jones employed it here with success in the good old ’00s.

There’s a little thing called defense, for example. During the Jones era there were many seasons when it wasn’t very good at all by the numbers — except for turnovers. As long as Greg McMackin’s, Jerry Glanville’s or Kevin Lempa’s boys contributed some takeaways, Jones didn’t care how much real estate they yielded.

But UH has coughed up the ball 24 times more than its opponents in 2012 and 2013.

It doesn’t matter what kind of offense you play. Give the other guys a full possession more than you get each game and you will lose a lot more than you win.

Part of the thinking in playing ball-control is to shorten the game. That decreases turnover margin and theoretically keeps scores closer.

We all know now it didn’t work in 2012 and the beginning of 2013.

Contrary to some popular belief, Chow never completely gave up on the passing game. The Rainbow Warriors threw 519 passes last season, compared to 428 rushes.

Now, it sounds like there’s going to be a commitment to pass. And with big back Joey Iosefa as a constant threat, you could have a very nice pass-to-set-up-the-run situation.

Yes, he probably should have stayed with four-wide as the base offense. But it’s understandable that Chow wanted to try to recruit the big studs, including those available in the islands with which you can run a sledgehammer-style offense.

But those players tend to go away, to places where they can compete for national championships. Places like BYU and USC, to which Norm Chow used to recruit them.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. Read his blog at staradvertiser.com/quickreads.