Kyle Whittingham has always coached great defenses and his coaching tree extends to multiple programs across the country now.
The offense has been slower to come along, but now they’ve hired an up and coming guy who made his name coaching high schoolers like Jake Browning and then leading Eastern Washington to a ridiculous season in 2016. He’s an Air Raid guy, so it’ll be fun to see how that jives with Whittingham’s offensive approach. I wrote about this new offense and combination over at SB Nation.
I tend to think that these “defensive head coach + explosive offense” combinations are best. Or the offensive-minded coach who’s intense and emphasizes a physical approach to offense, like Bryan Harsin, Urban Meyer, or Jim Harbaugh. Those are the types that seem most capable of getting the balance right and fielding both a great offense and a great defense. Whittingham is still searching out that balance and if he gets this right it should have a huge multiplier effect on their program.
The Pac-12 rumor mill (so hefty grain of salt) is that Whittingham was looking for a jolt in the arm offensively and thought he could take the EWU approach and tailor it to be more of a ball-control offense. Now of course it remains to be seen whether Utah’s offense actually goes in that direction (e.g., WSU), or whether Whittingham allows his new coordinator to really open things up (e.g., Cal). Might depend on how quickly the offense comes along.
It’s hard to know for sure what direction Utah will end up taking offensively, but it is almost self-evident that he realized he wasn’t going to contend for the Pac-12 title against teams like UW, USC, and Stanford without a more innovative offense. I’m really interested to see if that change in approach ends up matriculating down the line to guys like Aranda when they eventually get their head coaching gigs.
It makes sense to run this offense as a sort of ball control approach since it’s mostly intermediate routes. Washington St can hold the ball at times and inviting so much pass rush and team pursuit does wear a defense down.
The question is whether Whittingham realizes these things are possible without putting slow, non-dangerous TEs on the field or trying to maintain an identity as a downhill team. Those are the things that are hard to combine with this offense, if he could pull that off he’ll go down as a legend.
Riley vs Herman, glimpsing at the scorecard – Concerning Sports
[…] that style to be the most difficult to handle as an offensive coach. His pal Dave Aranda led him to another guy in that school of defense in Todd Orlando and the two have been a dynamic pairing ever since. On top of that, after Iowa State’s […]