College Football Teams Who Will Have Brand New Offenses in 2016
There is little doubt, at any level, that football is very much a game based around offense. Nearly every season some FBS or NCAA record is being threatened or broken, and more often than not it’s the best offensive teams in a league that are at or near the top of the standings when championship week rolls around.
Heck, take the most recent national title game as an example. While Alabama fans would love to say they won because they had one of the best defenses in the country (and they did), it was still a 45-40 Crimson Tide victory that relied on several big offensive plays in order to hoist the trophy at the end of the game.
The end result is that teams are becoming much more apt to bring in a new coordinator or new head coach in order to jumpstart offensive production. You simply have to put up points, rack up yards, and find your way on to SportsCenter with a few highlights in today’s game in order to be successful or, at the very least, entertaining.
With that in mind, here are the college football teams who are undergoing a big shift and will sport a fairly new-look offense in the fall.
East Carolina
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The Air Raid offense was a staple of the Ruffin McNeill era at East Carolina and, while a lot of those same concepts and personnel will remain in place under new head coach Scottie Montgomery, there is little doubt that there is going to be a bit of a philosophy shift in the way the Pirates go about attacking opponents.
To start with, Montgomery is surely going to try to beef up the team’s run game and place much more of an emphasis on being consistent on the ground. His hire of Tony Peterson as offensive coordinator means there will still be plenty of passing, and it wouldn’t be all that surprising the team is built around a fully healthy Kurt Benkert.
There’s still going to be plenty of downfield passing and most snaps out of the shotgun, but the offense is clearly going to evolve a little bit from its Air Raid days of throwing 50 times a game.
Tulane
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This might be one of the bigger transitions when it comes to installing a new offense, as new head coach Willie Fritz is likely to bring many of the triple-option elements that he ran at Georgia Southern to Tulane. He’s a coach who has proved to adjust his offense based on his personnel, but it seems that major changes are coming to what you see on the field in New Orleans in the form of an option-based attack.
It’s also clear those changes are warranted after the Green Wave finished 120th in the country in yards per game and managed to fall in the bottom third of nearly every other major offensive category in 2015. The good news is that Fritz will likely be able to build around players like running back Sherman Badie as he tries to turn the program around.
Central Florida
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Another team who is undergoing a massive offensive overhaul is UCF. There can be a good case made that the Knights had the worst offense in the country, and at times they even seemed to make the Florida Gators look like a powerhouse offense in comparison.
Now comes the interesting part as new head coach Scott Frost is going to bring the Oregon-style of fast-paced, spread attacks to the Sunshine State. We’ve seen versions of the spread like Baylor find success at other places but, aside from Chip Kelly and the Philadelphia Eagles, we haven’t seen much of the Ducks offense at other programs outside Eugene.
It may not be pretty the first season given where the program is starting from in the wake of 2015’s disaster, but it will prove to be intriguing. Frost is going to push the tempo as much as he can in order to gain an advantage, and if nothing else he should at least help jump-start a bit of an anemic passing game with some of the concepts that made Marcus Mariota and Vernon Adams so successful.
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Pittsburgh
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Pat Narduzzi is a defensive-minded head coach, so he’s going to want to limit turnovers and run the ball. But it’s clear that by tapping Matt Canada to replace Jim Chaney as offensive coordinator, he is looking to open things up a bit when it comes to the offense.
That is not to say, with both Qadree Ollison and the hopefully healthy James Conner in the fold at tailback, the Panthers will abandon a run-first philosophy but Canada has proved to be innovative when it comes to moving the quarterback around and incorporating a downfield passing game. The new OC did a great job with Jacoby Brissett at N.C. State, and Narduzzi is clearly hoping he can replicate some of that success with Nathan Peterman under center in 2016.
Expect more shotgun formations and four-wide looks than Pitt has run in the past, but this is still going to be a team that runs the ball and does so very well.
Virginia
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New coach Bronco Mendenhall and offensive coordinator Robert Anae are well versed in matching their scheme to their current personnel after being forced to during their past several seasons at BYU. Expect more of the same as they transition to the ACC, but their core philosophy of a physical run game that is matched with a downfield passing attack will no doubt remain and be a big part of what you see when the Cavaliers take the field this season.
The pair did a great job in developing freshman Tanner Mangum as a passer last season, so there’s hope that the Virginia air attack will be jump-started even without somebody like Canaan Severin around.
Anae uses a bit of the Air Raid philosophy but is unique in how he develops the ground game to complement it. Personnel will dictate just what the team looks like on offense every season but there is an underlying perspective that the coaching brain-trust wants to establish that is a little different from what UVa was used to in the past.
Virginia Tech
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There’s no getting around it that Virginia Tech has been fairly anemic on offense that past few seasons, and that’s a good reason why Justin Fuente was brought in to be paired with defensive mastermind Bud Foster. The Hokies' new head coach was part of a Rose Bowl-winning offense at TCU and later used it to turn around things at Memphis, using an up-tempo attack that incorporates multiple passing concepts with a strong running game and a few zone-read plays.
In addition to being a huge step up from a play-calling and game-planning standpoint over outgoing OC Scot Loeffler, Fuente’s biggest asset is developing under-the-radar quarterbacks into quality passers. That’s good news for either Branden Motley or Dwayne Lawson and both signal-callers will have plenty of players to rely on, with running back Travon McMillian and budding superstar Isaiah Ford at receiver.
It could take a game or two, but by the end of the season, it’s likely to be night and day on offense for the Hokies between last year and this one.
Iowa State
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It’s going to be fascinating to see what head coach Matt Campbell can do in Ames because he is taking over what is one of the toughest jobs in the Big 12 and trying to mold it to a system he successfully developed at Toledo. He knows what he wants to do on offense, which is good considering the ever-shifting philosophy that has been happening over the years with the Cyclones.
What Campbell would like to establish first and foremost is a good, strong run game in which he can dictate the pace and flow of the game.
At Toledo, he turned Kareem Hunt into a MAC superstar, and there’s reason to believe the new coach taking over is going to help boost the production of Mike Warren even more. It’s not just the ground game that will be on display at Iowa State, however, as the team is also likely to open things up with a potent short-passing game that will continue to take shots downfield when the opportunity presents itself.
While Baylor, Texas Tech, TCU and others are fully embracing versions of the uptempo spread to find success, Iowa State will be going a slightly different direction by using multiple formations to search out mismatches. While there are some talented players to build around, it’s going to be interesting to see just how quickly things can get ramped up at the Power Five level for Campbell.
Texas
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There may be no more debated offensive shift in the country than the one that is on-going in Austin. After yet another extensive offseason staff overhaul by Charlie Strong, the pieced-together version of the spread offense the Longhorns ran last season is being thrown out the window and the state’s flagship is embracing the offense that has made Baylor a back-to-back Big 12 champion.
This entire shift in philosophy is being put into place by Sterlin Gilbert and his offensive line coach Matt Mattox, formerly of Tulsa. The two have been around Baylor head coach Art Briles quite a bit over the years and will bring the Bears’ ideas of a strong run game out of spread formations while also developing a quick passing game that attacks mismatches to death.
With both D’Onta Foreman and Chris Warren III likely to provide the ability to run the ball down opponents' throats, the key question in this offensive transformation is who the team turns to at quarterback. Jerrod Heard is the incumbent starter, but he’s likely to be pushed by incoming freshman Shane Buechele, who is tailor-made to run the type of offense that Gilbert is installing. Don’t rule out dual-threat Kai Locksley either.
Maryland
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New head coach D.J. Durkin assembled quite the staff this offseason, and one of his key hires was new offensive coordinator Walt Bell. The 31-year-old is a relative fresh face in the coaching world, but he’s got quite the resume that earned him the big job trying to revive the Terrapins offense.
What can you expect in 2016? Well, if everything is clicking, plenty of points and yards. Like most, he runs an offense that mostly operates out of the shotgun that likes to spread folks out and find creative ways to get the ball into the hands of playmakers. Bell used a lot of different looks at Arkansas State and will likely bring that to the Big Ten. There won’t be much three yards and a cloud of dust out of the I-formation, but there will be plenty of running off the edge out of a four-wide look, too.
Perhaps just as important is the pace that Bell will bring to the table. While he can go super fast and make life tough for defensive coordinators to substitute, that’s not the be-all, end-all of the offense. There’s going to be plenty of changes in pace for the offense even if, in comparison to their B1G peers, the Terps will be moving quite quickly.
Penn State
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Penn State is one of those teams who will undergo an offensive transition to a new look in 2016 in two ways. The first is obviously personnel-driven following the departure of blue-chip quarterback Christian Hackenberg and the transfer of former starting running back Akeel Lynch. The departure of the strong-armed signal-caller in particular changes the team from one being built around one player to one that will be featuring a more diverse cast.
Adding to that is the systematic changes that James Franklin is implementing. He made the bold move of bringing in Fordham head coach Joe Moorhead as his new offensive coordinator in large part to implement a new version of the spread offense in State College. While the team will no doubt be spreading things out on the field, a strong run game has been the basis of Moorhead’s teams in the past and that likely means a perfect fit for terrific running back Saquon Barkley.
It’s going to a very different offense that takes the field for the Nittany Lions in 2016 but as any fan could tell you after watching some of the struggles the past few seasons, that’s probably a good thing.
Rutgers
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It might take a while for Rutgers to bring in the right personnel, but there’s little question that new coach Chris Ash is bringing in a new offensive philosophy to town. New coordinator Drew Mehringer is a big reason why and the former Houston coach will be bringing plenty of the concepts that Tom Herman used around the Big Ten to one of the conference’s newest teams.
While it is going to be borderline impossible to replicate what the Cougars did last season on their run to the Peach Bowl, it’s pretty clear that a quarterback run game is going to be much more a part of the offense than in years past at Rutgers. There should be some growing pains, but the team will be much more apt to spread things out than in years past and hopefully look to exploit matchups that make sense.
Hawaii
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What’s old is new again for the Rainbow Warriors. After showing some signs of progress but never quite getting over the hump, Norm Chow’s more pro-style attack of the past few years is being ditched, and the team is returning to their run-and-shoot roots with new head coach Nick Rolovich.
The former Nevada offensive coordinator will still try to run the ball and establish a strong ground game, but make no mistake, the Warriors are going to be chunking the ball around much more than they did under Chow. While Rolovich is known for growing up as a coach under June Jones, he also brings a unique offensive philosophy that incorporates plenty of the pistol offense as well.
The end result is a nice mix of different looks out of the shotgun that hopefully help the team become much more competitive in the Mountain West.
California
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The Golden Bears are another team who will enter 2016 with a new offense both due to a coaching change as well as a few major personnel changes that will alter the look of the product on the field.
Most notably, that comes from the departure of quarterback Jared Goff, a likely first-round pick who was the heart and soul of the team’s record-setting attack the past few seasons. Goff was a big reason why the team turned in a banner season and, if you watched Cal at all last year, likely the difference between three and four wins without and the eight with him. Not only is the productive signal-caller gone, though, virtually the entire receiving corps is, too. There are going to be a host of new faces regardless of any scheme tweaks.
Then there’s the surprising departure of Tony Franklin as offensive coordinator and head coach Sonny Dykes turning to former Texas A&M OC Jake Spavital. While that won’t result in a ton of different looks from a scheme standpoint—it’s still going to be an Air Raid attack—there will be some minor tweaks here and there as Spavital and Dykes game-plan together.
UCLA
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When UCLA fans heard Noel Mazzone was on his way to Texas A&M, they likely said thanks for the work the past few years but were no doubt a little happy that change was being made in Westwood for change’s sake. The Bruins had become a little stale and predictable on offense and often in the worst times.
Now the team will pivot a bit more to a pro-style attack under new coordinator Kennedy Polamalu. The veteran has had plenty of experience in running an offense and his promotion will no doubt bring a renewed emphasis on the arm of star quarterback Josh Rosen and the budding stable of young tailbacks that are on campus. There should be far fewer screen passes and short-passing plays than in years prior for UCLA going forward.
No matter what form the team’s new offense will take, however, they most certainly will be a team that builds around their quarterback and likely will evolve as the season goes on and playmakers around him develop.
Missouri
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The Missouri offense in 2015 was one of the worst of any Power Five teams, and the end result is there’s only one place to go this upcoming season: up. While Barry Odom taking over the program is understandably a key storyline, his hire of Josh Heupel as offensive coordinator has gone a bit under the radar.
While Heupel didn’t turn heads significantly during his one season at Utah State, he has proved to be a quality coordinator from his days winning Big 12 titles at Oklahoma, and his familiarity with the region is no doubt a big plus when it comes to recruiting. His first task is no doubt to continue to develop Drew Lock at quarterback, who showed some flashes after being thrown to the wolves as a true freshman but is still somebody who has to get better if the new offense is to take hold.
Schematically, Heupel is likely to try to build off any sort of run game he can establish and likely will try to mix things up with some options at fullback and H-back like he did at Oklahoma. There are some talented receivers who could be a decent threat down the field if given the opportunity, too. But again, the bottom line is no matter what big changes Heupel is likely to bring to Columbia, it’s likely to be a big improvement after what the team showed last year.
South Carolina
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The one thing that undermined Will Muschamp’s career at Florida was the lack of offense, and it seems he’s determined to do things differently as a result in his second chance at South Carolina. To that end, he’s bringing back Kurt Roper as offensive coordinator after the two spent one year together in Gainesville.
Now, Roper’s numbers during his one season with the Gators were nothing to write home about, but he’s a respected offensive mind who developed a quality reputation working under David Cutcliffe. He was part of the development of Eli Manning at Ole Miss and did a great job getting both Thad Lewis and Sean Renfree from Duke to the NFL.
Roper will be making plenty of tweaks under the hood to what the Gamecocks have been doing on offense as he gets going in Columbia.
He has typically preferred a mobile quarterback who is able to operate the zone-read out of the spread when he’s held the OC title, and he’ll have plenty of options at South Carolina between Lorenzo Nunez, Connor Mitch and freshman Brandon McIlwain this year. Perhaps more than anything, Roper will look to refine the passing attack and make the team much more balanced than they have been in past years.
Texas A&M
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Head coach Kevin Sumlin is not about to put the Aggies through massive offensive changes after backsliding a bit last season, but HE is certainly going to tweak things a bit by going from more of a downfield Air Raid attack to an offense much more focused on spreading the ball around from a one-back formation.
The biggest reason for the shift is new offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone. The veteran coach has been just about everywhere in the country as a play-caller over the past few decades and found success in a variety of ways, whether it’s leaning on a strong run game at Auburn or developing a nice intermediate- and short-passing game at UCLA. His recent Bruins offenses were almost always efficient when it came to execution, and he’s followed the recent trend of speeding things up when it comes to tempo as well.
A&M is still going to be spreading teams out in the SEC and hoping to get their athletes in space under Mazzone, but he’ll be doing so with plenty of screens and draws to be sure. More than anything, there will be a clear and coherent approach each game from the offense, and that is probably the thing that the Aggies are most excited about under their new coordinator in 2016.
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