Tennessee will play at Arkansas Saturday in Week 7 of the Southeastern Conference 2020 season.
The Vols will face Razorbacks’ Kendal Briles and his fast tempo veer and shoot offense. Briles, in his first season as Arkansas’ offensive coordinator, has coached at Baylor (2008-16), Florida Atlantic (2017), Houston (2018) and Florida State (2019) in his career.
While serving as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for Lane Kiffin at Florida Atlantic, the Owls won the 2017 Conference USA championship.
Rip Rowan currently serves as a defensive quality control analyst at Washington and was a defensive graduate assistant working with linebackers at Florida Atlantic in 2017.
“It was quite the experience working with defensive coordinator Chris Kiffin with the linebackers,” Rowan said on the show “Tennessee Two-A-Days” of his time at Florida Atlantic in 2017. “When we get there, Kendal takes over the offense and we are trying to install a new defense against the veer and shoot. You have guys lining up out on the numbers, so while we were trying to install a defense to play normal offenses, we are trying to bastardize all of our rules with the wide splits. It was kind of a pain to be honest with you.”
In Briles’ veer and shoot offense, Rowan mentioned that secondary play is key in defending vertical passes with wide receivers split rom field numbers to field numbers.
“You do not see a lot of route combinations, so you are having to pattern match a lot of stuff in practice to get your guys used to split tails, route combinations that you are going to see week in and week out from normal offenses — and then the tempo,” Rowan said. “You are lining up and you have to change your play calls and try to adapt to their system to one word play calls, you can go just as fast as them — one word play calls, one signal and you have to roll because they went fast. That first spring we were pulling our hair out on defense.”
When it comes to linebacker play defending Briles’ offense, the MIKE, WILL and SAM have to be versatile, disciplined and have good instincts.
“You have to decide what you want to do,” Rowan said in regards to linebacker play against Briles’ offense. “Do you want to keep six guys in the box, do you want to keep your overhangs out there for all of the RPOs, there is definitely some gymnastics you have to teach your linebackers. Are you going to fit the gap fast, are you going to bounce for the RPO — what are you going to do?
“It definitely presented some challenges, we had some speed at Florida Atlantic, so we were lucky to be able to matchup. Lane and Kendal working together, it was really something to see. I would sit up in the box on Saturdays and feel bad for some of these defenses that they were going against.”
The entire show with Rowan can be listened to here or below.