Joe Osovet: In their own words
ASA running backs coach and Director of Football Operations Jason Depew previously discussed Osovet and his time at Tennessee with Vols Wire, saying Pruitt thought he “was good enough and wanted to keep him around so someone else could not scoop him up.”
Nassau CC quarterbacks coach Marc Poppe also discussed Osovet being “an innovator” of the RPO with Vols Wire.
A pair of former quarterbacks that played for Osovet also previously discussed their experience in the RPO-oriented system with Vols Wire.
Ryan Barabe played for Osovet at Nassau and then at ASA from 2015-17. Barabe told Vols Wire that he “picked up on the system pretty quickly.”
“Most of the runs, we had to read a defensive lineman and every run play had a built in pass route on the back side, so if we saw blitz from a second-level defender we could pull and throw to the receiver,” Barabe said describing Osovet’s offense. “If we read the defensive lineman and he crashed and we decided to run with it, our read would then go to the second-level defender, usually an overhang linebacker and if he attacked us then we would have a bubble to throw to or a pitch man running behind us sometimes. If he stayed wide, then we could just keep it and run.”
Stone Labanowitz also played quarterback in Osovet’s offense during the 2017 season at ASA.
Labanowitz told Vols Wire that Osovet’s system “was so much to learn and so much to understand.”
He detailed how Osovet would develop his players in becoming better throughout each day and in each practice.
“He did an awesome job in our position meetings on making sure we understood exactly what we needed to do on certain plays and in certain situations,” Labanowitz said. “Not a play would go by on film where he would not ask me what I did right or what I did wrong. He just never stopped talking, he made sure we knew that the entire offense is ran through the quarterback.”
Repetition helping with familiarity is something Depew told Vols Wire that 15 spring practices is an ideal amount of time to understand the offense and to be ready for the season.
“My favorite part about his offense was, once I understood each week’s game plan that I got so comfortable and so confident because I just knew how things would play out because RPO stuff is learned through repetition and experience, which I got in practice,” Labanowitz said. “Yes it took long, but you make progress every single day, in every single practice, if you buy into what he’s telling you to do. He graded our practices so hard and it was in detail, so you knew exactly what you can’t do next practice.”