Tag: Steve Spurrier

I remarked earlier this month at Badgers Wire that while so much of Wisconsin’s approach to football — built by Barry Alvarez and applied in day-to-day operations by Paul Chryst — has been validated by the 2020 Rose Bowl, that game also showed the need for UW to develop its vertical passing game. If there is one thing Wisconsin’s offense has failed to do for most of the past 27 years of highly successful football, it is that. Russell Wilson was the exception which proved the rule.

To be very clear, this doesn’t mean Wisconsin needs to overhaul or dramatically reshape its approach; most of what the Badgers do works really well. Most of Wisconsin’s formula is reliable and trustworthy. As I noted in the article linked to above, the Badgers need a more robust vertical passing game on the days when they make mistakes, and against the opponents which demand a more explosive offense. A strong vertical passing game increases an offense’s margin for error. It neutralizes a strong defense. It gives Wisconsin and any other team another way to win games.

Given this need for UW in 2020, what can the Badgers and Paul Chryst learn from outside voices and examples? One case study is Steve Spurrier, who very rarely coached against the Big Ten in his tenures at Duke, Florida and South Carolina. Coaching in the SEC, the only time he would meet the Big Ten was usually in the bowl season, specifically the Citrus/Capital One Bowl. He coached against Wisconsin in that game. He coached against Joe Paterno and Penn State in that game. He coached against Michigan State and Nebraska in that game.

Spurrier probably would not have fit well in the Big Ten. This is simply a more smashmouth conference than others. At Ohio State, maybe he would have been fine, if such a hypothetical ever became reality. He would have had the pick of the crop of skill-position athletes and could do what Ryan Day did with the 2019 Buckeyes. At any other Big Ten program (including Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin), it would probably have been hard for Spurrier to recruit to the needs of his Fun and Gun concepts, install those concepts, and watch them unfold in cold weather against sturdy defenses. Yes, it is true that Spurrier does not fit the culture of the Big Ten. You might think that he has no place in a discussion about what Wisconsin should — or could — consider in the 2020 season.

Yet, this is part of the influence of Spurrier on college football: He didn’t just change the SEC from a run-first conference to a pass-first conference in the 1990s when he returned to Florida, his alma mater; Spurrier’s impact on coaching, tactics, and gameday chess moves went beyond his basic offensive structure and approach. Spurrier also showed that coaches can use more than one quarterback without creating a quarterback controversy.

More precisely, Spurrier showed that if you have two quarterbacks, and one of them has a really good arm, you can play both the game-manager QB and the strong-armed QB, as long as you’re clear about delineating roles and responsibilities. It doesn’t have to tear a team apart or lend confusion to an offense.

One example of this was the 1997 Florida upset of No. 2 Florida State, a result which knocked the Seminoles out of that season’s Bowl Alliance national championship game. (Tennessee got in due to FSU’s loss and played Nebraska. The Cornhuskers split the national title with Michigan, the AP national champ and Rose Bowl winner over Washington State.) Spurrier played his strong-armed QB, Doug Johnson, and game manager Noah Brindise. Johnson was not a disciplined quarterback, but he could throw the ball down the field like nobody’s business. Brindise made better reads and decisions. He threw shorter passes and often came in to hand the ball off. Juggling the two quarterbacks throughout the game, Spurrier reduced the burden on both, and as a result, both played better on the snaps they had. Johnson threw a 63-yard pass to set up the winning touchdown in the final minutes. He had struggled for much of the year but played one of his better games that season. Spurrier got the most out of his offense that day by dividing the workload.

Here is a separate example in a somewhat different but still related vein: In the 1994 SEC Championship Game between Florida and Alabama, Spurrier took out star quarterback (and future Heisman Trophy winner) Danny Wuerffel for one play. He put in backup Eric Kresser. Naturally, putting in a backup quarterback for one play would suggest a simple and timid play call, but Spurrier did exactly the opposite. Kresser threw a downfield pass and completed it for 25 yards. Spurrier put in a downfield passing specialist and used an unconventional move not to be safe, but to be even more aggressive.

What can Paul Chryst learn from this? Plenty… and I think you can see where I am going with this, too.

Jack Coan grew and evolved as Wisconsin’s quarterback late in the 2019 season. He should be a very good quarterback in 2020. Yet, Coan does not have a cannon for an arm. Graham Mertz just redshirted in 2019. Chryst doesn’t have to choose between Coan and Mertz. Coan is the guy. Few would dispute that. However, Chryst can certainly insert Mertz for a play here or a drive there. He can have Mertz enter the game to throw a long pass. He obviously wouldn’t want Mertz’s presence on the field to be a “tell” for opposing defenses that a long pass is coming, so he couldn’t restrict Mertz to throwing nothing but long balls. However, Mertz could still get some meaningful chances to contribute in such a framework, which would integrate him into the offense without depriving Coan of the bulk of playing time and responsibility for the offense. Mertz would then gain the benefit of having some high-leverage snaps as a teaching tool for 2021, when he would presumably be given the keys to the car.

Steve Spurrier has something to teach Wisconsin? It seems like such an odd fit, but when you look at the details, it doesn’t seem all that absurd.