In a manner of speaking, Dan Mozes was one of the 22 best college football players in the country in 2006. In only his second season at center, he was named a consensus All-American. Not bad for a underrecruited kid who was freshman All-America at left guard.

And yet Dan Mozes, who, to be fair, was a little undersized, went undrafted. OK, so college centers aren’t the envy of many, if not most, NFL teams. Then again, Louisville’s Eric Wood and a similar, though not at all superior resume, will be drafted Saturday, possibly in the first round.

The difference? Part rests with the offense. Louisville is a pro-style system, which behooves Wood as it once did quarterback Brian Brohm. Mozes’ offense and the requisite skills didn’t translate as well to the NFL.

It was January 2007. Gruden and his then-Tampa Bay staff were coaching the North squad in preparation of the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala. They were putting the players through a simple inside-run period — with scouts and personnel executives from every NFL team looking on — and his quarterback and center could not execute the most fundamental play in football.

“You guys are professionals now!” Gruden recalled railing. “How ’bout getting the [expletive] snap, OK?”

The center was Daniel Mozes, a four-year starter and first-team All-American from West Virginia who won the 2006 Dave Rimington Trophy as the top nation’s top offensive lineman.

Mozes looked at Gruden.

“Coach,” he said. “We were in the shotgun every snap.”

The point was spread offense players weren’t properly prepared for the NFL and Mozes was a prime example why. A center who struggles with under-center snaps isn’t all that different from a spread tight end who can’t block on the line of scrimmage or a quarterback who can’t make a three-step drop.

Just don’t tell Mike Leach.

Texas Tech Coach Mike Leach, in an interview with The Dallas Morning News, was a little less diplomatic when asked about the knocks against his system relative to the NFL.

“You bring up easily the most pitiful NFL cop-out of them all,” Leach said. “How could you possibly look yourself in the mirror and consider yourself an NFL coach and not be able to teach a guy to run back three steps, five steps and seven steps. I can teach a child that.”

The NFL doesn’t want children and certainly isn’t interested in devoting time to the things kids should have already been taught.

Or is it? What was once a problem is slowly becoming a positive.

The NFL is making room for the spread offense, its philosophies and, more importantly, its players.

In the spread, blockers frequently don’t get in a three-point stance and run-block; running backs don’t often have to run in tight spaces; and tight ends split wide and rarely block. At many colleges that run the spread offense, tight ends are little more than beefed-up wide receivers.

Before last year’s NFL draft, for example, some scouts voiced concerns about whether West Virginia running back Steve Slaton was capable of running between the tackles. He was tried at wide receiver when he performed at the NFL combine. Picked in the third round by Houston, Slaton, who starred at Conwell-Egan High, answered questions in his rookie season, running for 1,282 yards and catching 50 passes for 377.

Think Slaton gave life to a new regime of running backs? The NFL is by and large a copycat league. If Team A stops Team B, you bet Team C is going to study Team A before its game against Team B. If something works somewhere, someone else is going to borrow, if not blatantly mimic, the very same ideas.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Wildcat formation. The Dolphins obliterated the Patiots with it last season and other teams quickly installed a version. Now everyone has plans for some variation, which means plans for the needed personnel.

But really, isn’t the Wildcat just a NFL adaptation of the spread? It’s great news for spread offense quarterbacks and, of course, why Pat White is so hot right now.

West Virginia’s Pat White and Florida’s Tim Tebow have been two of college football’s premier quarterbacks the last two seasons, but they may be better runners than passers.

“I think you’re going to see fewer quarterbacks coming out of the colleges making it in the NFL because you’re going to have guys who are running backs who can kind of throw,” Brunner said. “They’re not going to be pro quarterbacks because it’s not the skill set you need to play the pro game. It’s kind of going back to the ’70s and early ’80s, when everybody was running the wishbone.

“When you’re a college coach and you want your quarterback to run the football, you’re going to have to have good running skills,” he added. “There’s a lot of decision-making to run that kind of offense. It’s not good or bad. It’s the way it is. A lot of college coaches have come to the conclusion they’re better off spreading out the offense and getting the ball into the hands of your best athletes and let them make plays.”