“What is the offense?”
This would be both a correct response to a Jeopardy! “answer” that read something along the lines of, “What is the biggest thing ailing Michigan State football?” AND a general thought a Michigan State football fan might have had at any given moment during the last few seasons in East Lansing.
The Spartans finished 105th in points per game in 2019, a nice improvement from them finishing 126th in that same stat the year prior. The 2017 team wasn’t much better–despite winning ten games–as they finished 96th in points per game. Of course the 2016 season–which saw MSU go 3-9 directly off a College Football Playoff appearance–wasn’t any better; 105th in points per game was the final rank that year. Sure, points per game isn’t the most accurate representation of the quality of an offense, but I don’t need to dig any deeper with those stats. Four years of a team finishing 96th or worse in average scoring equates to a bad offense. Full stop. It’s no question (or answer?) that fixing the offense is one of the most important things Mel Tucker and his staff need to accomplish to get MSU football back to where it was in the mid-2010s.
With that as the backdrop, a lot of attention was given to who Tucker might bring in as his first offensive coordinator at Michigan State. Tucker has a background in defense, making his choice to run the offense that much more important. He ultimately went with someone close to him, bringing Jay Johnson–his OC and QB coach from Colorado–to East Lansing to fill those very same roles at MSU. He is also bringing former Colorado offensive line coach and run game coordinator Chris Kapilovic with him.
To some, it was an underwhelming hire. Colorado’s offense wasn’t exactly dynamic last season and Johnson isn’t a household name, or a young up-and-comer; the next big thing. I’d argue most of those thoughts stem from who Jay Johnson is not, rather than who he is or what he has done. Prior to last season Johnson was a quality control assistant with the Georgia offense for two seasons. Before that he was the offensive coordinator and QB coach at Minnesota for a single season in 2016. He got to Minnesota via Louisiana (back when they were known as Louisiana Lafayette) where he was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for five seasons.
Some important context on his career: Johnson was only the OC at Minnesota for one season, because PJ Fleck was hired there at the conclusion of the 2016 season and he brought in his own staff. And we’ve already covered why he only had one season at Colorado.
I say that to say this; it’s really hard to know how effective Johnson has been as an OC at the power five level. In Minnesota he was hired as OC under Tracy Claeys who took over when Jerry Kill abruptly had to retire due to medical concerns. Claeys got to coach the entire 2016 season, but it was a lame duck year, bridging the gap to the Fleck era. In both Minnesota and Colorado he was running an offense with players he didn’t recruit or that weren’t recruited for his offense. As we’ll get to, for this offense, that can really matter. I put more stock into what he did in Louisiana, but even that was Sun Belt football, five plus years ago.
It takes a few years to really know if an OC is good at his job and the stretch of football Johnson is about to embark on will be the first legitimate power five sample size to judge him on. That is if he stays in East Lansing for more than a season.
When figuring out how I wanted this post to go I struggled, because Johnson is a bit of an enigma. He has a lot of experience, yet I’m not sure how applicable any of it is to the job he has now. So we’re going to go through a ton of stats from his offense and then I’ll get into some film work of what the offense will look like and what it is designed to do. There won’t be an opinion on whether or not this is a great hire, because I genuinely don’t believe I have enough information to make that call.
Let’s get into the numbers.
A note: You will see me reference SP+ in this post. From the creator of the stat ESPN’s Bill Connelly, “What is SP+? In a single sentence, it’s a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency.”
You’ll also see “Tempo” stats measured in seconds per play. For reference, Michigan State ran a play ever 25.9 seconds in 2016, 2018, and 2019. They were a little slower in 2017 and 25.9 seconds is a below-average pace. You can read more into that here.
Colorado 2019
- Points per game – 100th
- Yards per play – 81st
- SP+ offense – 51st
- Tempo – 25.3 seconds per play
Minnesota 2016
- Points per game – 63rd
- Yards per play – 105th
- SP+ offense – 76th
- Tempo – 26.6 seconds per play
UL – Lafayette 2011-2015
- Points per game – 32nd, 24th, 34th, 61st, 83rd
- Yards per play – 40th, 5th, 47th, 47th, 94th
- SP+ offense – 94th, 41st, 76th, 59th, 98th
- Tempo – 23.7 seconds per play, 25.4, 25.5, 26.5, 24.8
OK. So that’s a lot of numbers, ranging from elite to terrible–hence the “hard to draw a conclusion” thing.
First, the advanced numbers liked the Colorado offense a great deal more than their production suggested. Finishing 51st in SP+ offense is, by definition, above average. So why the disconnect between their efficiency and the ability to translate that to points? Well, the first thing to point to is usually luck. Luck plays into football a tremendous amount and can take an above average offense and make them score like a bad offense. Luck can show itself in a number of ways: officiating, fumble recovery rate, dropped (or not dropped) interceptions, injuries, etc. The divide can also be explained by football reasons, like if a team is great at getting to the red zone, but can’t seem to score touchdowns when they get there. That can be a personnel issue, a play calling issue, a luck issue, or a number of other things. I’m going to get much more in depth on the Colorado offense, but just wanted to point out that their offense, while certainly not good, wasn’t as bad as counting stats might indicate. Points per game is also a team stat, with defense and special teams having impact on field position and non-offensive touchdowns.
The opposite can be said for Johnson’s time in Minnesota. The offense was below average in SP+, but finished 63rd in scoring. Again, these were both one-year stops with somebody else’s players. It’s tough to make any sweeping judgements off of these numbers.
Johnson had far more success in Louisiana, even helping his 2012 offense finish 5th in yards per play that season. That is an elite stat. Yards per play is a pretty good stat to determine the quality of an offense and finishing top five in the country is obviously great. An offense can’t really fluke its way to that. Johnson’s Lafayette offenses were generally pretty good with the exception of the 2015 season. And not to totally excuse that year, but n 2015 UL-L was replacing a three-year starter at quarterback and ended up using three different signal callers en route to a 4-8 season. It was a complete mess.
As far as tempo goes, Johnson’s teams don’t play that fast. Some of his UL-L offenses were on the faster side, but even then they were probably hovering around average. I’ll get into more specifics on tempo when I get into 2019 Colorado.
Overall the numbers aren’t much to write home about, although there are certainly some good things to point to during the UL-L years. As I mentioned above however, that was in the Sun Belt and five to ten years ago, so take it with a grain of salt. There is some information to glean from those seasons that might be more indicative of what the Jay Johnson offense is, compared to last year in Colorado.
So let’s get to that.
Schematics
Jay Johnson’s offense, from personnel and formation, looks a lot like what Michigan State did when Brad Salem took over as OC in 2019, with a few tweaks. I would identify their base personnel as something like this:
Colorado was in 11 personnel (1 running back, 1 tight end, hence “11”) a ton last season. Quarterback Steven Montez spent a lot of time in the shotgun, or pistol formations (pistol pictured above) and would dip under center from time to time. In 2019 Michigan State ran almost exclusively out of the shotgun or pistol (with a heavy lean to shotgun), but used 12 personnel (1 running back, 2 tight ends) a lot more often than Colorado did.
So, from a foundational standpoint, Colorado in 2019 was slightly more spread out than Michigan State, but used shotgun a little bit less.
Both teams operated without a huddle and I’d expect that to continue. Colorado’s tempo was slightly faster than MSU’s last season and the buffaloes deployed it in a different way. Michigan State generally played at the same pace over an entire game, with the exceptions being game management situations; i.e. two-minute drives, bleeding clock, etc. On the other hand, Colorado–multiple times a game–would go into lightning tempo and be ready to snap the ball right as it was set. They used tempo like a pitcher might use an off-speed pitch; as a way to keep a defense off balance. Again, it was only a few plays a game, but they definitely used tempo as a weapon more than MSU did.
Colorado also showed a more diversity in formations than MSU did. Like I mentioned above they mostly prefer 11 personnel, but certainly used two-back sets and multiple tight ends. They might line up in the shotgun with four wide receivers and then next play they’d look like this.
That is an offshoot of the old double-wing formation a lot of us ran in high school. It’s basically the same except the H-backs are lined up parallel with the line, as opposed to slightly angled towards the center.
You see, at its heart, this is an option offense.
A real quick Jay Johnson history lesson. At UL-L Johnson was the OC under head coach Mark Hudspeth. Hudspeth is an option guy. He was the OC at Navy for a year and ran a number of option variations while head coach at North Alabama and during his time at UL-L.
Why does this matter? Well, option offenses are based on very simple math. It’s a constant game of getting a numbers advantage, by formation, motion, shifts, tempo and–most importantly–a running quarterback.
With that in mind, let’s talk about scheme.
Scheme
As hinted at above, Johnson runs a modern version of an option offense. It is built upon inside and outside zone as base run plays with a billion different ways to run them with different formations, motions, personnel groupings, etc.. From there it builds out to zone read (aka “read option”) and those new fangled RPOs that nobody can seem to properly identify.
Here’s a standard outside zone play Colorado ran against Utah last season. Because of the formation Colorado gets a 4 v 4 blocking situation on the play side and all the back has to do is find the open space, which he does to the tune of seven yards. Pretty simple.
Outside zone was used somewhat sparingly by MSU last year. It’ll be used more often by Johnson in 2020.
Here’s a good look at inside zone read. The backside defensive end is left unblocked and the quarterback reads him while the front side of the play is a standard inside zone run. The threat of QB run neutralizes the backside DE, the QB makes the right read and hands it off to the back who is running behind a 5 v 5 blocking situation.
We saw a fair amount of this play in East Lansing last season.
The threat of QB run is tremendously important to this offense. If you don’t believe me go back and watch Steven Threet try and run Rich Rodriguez’s offense that first year at Michigan.
That detail is pertinent to evaluating Colorado’s offense in 2019. For all of the things Steven Montez can do–and he was a solid college football player–he wasn’t built for this offense. It was a round peg, square hole situation. There was no shot Colorado could go with anybody other than Montez at QB last year. He was a three-year starter with NFL potential. Johnson’s offense had to adapt to the guy running the plays. And it did. Montez had 44 non-sack carries in 2019. Of those, a number were scrambles, not designed runs. For comparison, Terrance Broadway, Johnson’s QB from 2012-14 at UL-L had non-sack carry totals of 106, 104, and 121 in chronological order. Mitch Leidner, his 2016 QB at Minnesota, had 104 non-sack carries.
That’s an average of 6-8 fewer QB runs per game with Montez compared to Johnson’s other quarterbacks. And I think it’s fair to assume that a higher percentage of Montez’s runs were scrambles, compared to the other guys. While 6-8 plays in a game might not seem like a lot, it’s ~10% of a teams total plays. And that number doesn’t factor in plays where a zone read is called but the quarterback gives the ball instead of keeping it. Flatly, Jay Johnson’s play calling, and the design of the offense, were impacted greatly by having a non-runner at quarterback in Steven Montez.
Let me show you a specific play that illustrates this point further.
Here’s a still frame:
This was Colorado’s first drive of the second game of the season. An inside zone read that set up easy for Montez to keep the ball for an easy first down. And he doesn’t get it. If there were any questions about whether or not Montez could be an effective runner, I think they may have been answered on this play.
Montez was a legitimate productive runner in four games in 2019. In those four games Colorado went 3-1, averaged 204.5 yards on the ground and scored 29.75 points. It’s a funky sample size because they put 52 points up on Colorado State, but I thought it worth mentioning.
The main point is this type of offense just operates better with a quarterback that can run and Colorado didn’t have that last year. That, again, makes it hard to judge.
Let’s lastly look at the mindset of the offense and then I’ll sum this all up.
Mindset
I would classify Jay Johnson’s offense at Colorado as on the conservative side. At UL-L it was an interesting mix. For two seasons the Ragin’ Cajuns were incredibly explosive and for two seasons they were much more efficient. I’d say Johnson, and by extension Mel Tucker, like to run and possess the ball, but aren’t tied to that concept like Mark Dantonio was at Michigan State. There will almost certainly be more deep throws in Spartan Stadium in 2020 than there were in prior seasons. Johnson’s offense isn’t as much run-run-pass as MSU has been in the past. From what I saw, and it admittedly wasn’t everything, 2019 Colorado was a little too conservative for my liking on offense.
But . . . but . . . there is a little bit of friskiness in Jay Johnson. Let me show you a couple of examples.
In this first play I would like you to notice, the down and distance, time left in the game, score and play call.
I, and many Spartan fans, have been aching for a better late-game offensive approach. Too often MSU would try and start bleeding clock halfway through the third quarter, just hoping to get to the finish line before they run out of gas. Throwing an intermediate route on first down with a lead and less than three minutes left was unheard of during the Dantonio era. At the very least, we know Johnson (and Tucker) are capable of (and cool with) calling that play at that moment.
Here’s another bold play. I’m not sure what to make of it honestly, because it’s kind of insane. But I just wanted to make sure it was out there.
That’s just your casual, run-of-the-mill 96-yard flea flicker while down ten in the fourth quarter.
Like I said, it’s a generally conservative offense. In 2019–factoring in sacks– Colorado ran the ball 402 times and passed it 431 times. They took some deep shots, but more often played in a shorter box–much like MSU used to do under Dantonio–preferring to make their hay on the ground and pass when needed.
Conclusion
The Michigan State offense in 2020 will look different than the 2019 version and much different than any previous version. It will be more spread out than Michigan State ever was during the Dantonio era, and given MSU’s strength at receiver, that’s probably a good thing. The run concepts will be similar to 2019, although with less gap (or power) scheme and more outside zone. QB run will absolutely be a factor and the use of a second tight end will be diminished.
There should be more aggression in the pass game, but not too much more. There will be more motion and shifting pre-snap. It will be a modern take of an option offense that works to get a numbers advantage wherever it can. Ball control and defense will probably still be the name of the game in East Lansing, but hopefully some more juice on the offensive end comes with it.
Last point. Almost all of the numbers used in this story, whether they’re good, bad or in-between, are better than the numbers the MSU offense has produced in the last four years. The Michigan State offense under Jay Johnson, quite literally, cannot get much worse.
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