I think this is new waters for Briles. It’s his first time implementing his offense to players that have never played in the offense. At Baylor he just continued what they already had in place and at FAU he was the play caller for Lane Kiffin’s offense.
If I was going to compare this offense to any year, it might be Art’s first year at Baylor. Adding a few points because UH’s talent level is slightly above the average of it’s peers and Baylor’s talent level was slightly below the average of it’s peers.
Across the NCAA I think PPG will be down some because true freshmen will be playing more with the new 4 game rule. Inexperience affects offense more than defense. I also think there will be at least one game where a team is up by around 21, coach puts in the kids too early, and that team loses the game.
“For the first time in his coaching career, Kiffin isn’t calling plays on offense. He isn’t focused on the quarterbacks. He didn’t install his own playbook. Those responsibilities have fallen to offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, who brought Baylor’s offensive system to Boca Raton.”
"With Briles serving as the playcaller, Kiffin has been able to take a backseat for the first time in his career, a process the well-traveled coach explained Tuesday.
“It’s been fine. It was hard at first and frustrating at first, but I spent some time really learning (the terminology of Briles’ offense),” Kiffin said. “The calls and stuff. I just felt like I was on the sideline, not really doing anything.”"
I just did an analysis of G5 recuiting, including independents without ND, and starting with the class of 2016 UH is #2 in average rating per recruit. That includes verbals for the class of 2019. Boise is #1, ahead by .20 per recruit.
So we have the talent, no question.
Incidentally, the AAC has 6 of the top ten spots for classes 2016 - 2019. So that is why our conference ought to be clearly better than any other G5 conference. Which is why losing to 2 MW schools the last 2 bowl games really sticks in my craw!
If you compare 2016 to 2017, the biggest difference was they gave Devin Singletary the ball twice as many rushes.
2016: 152 attempts for 1021 yards and 12 TDs
2017: 301 attempts for 1920 yards and 32 TDs
The QB actually had less passing attempts and less overall yards passing and about the same amount of rushing attempts. He was more efficient but of course when the defenses can’t stop the run, the QB usually puts up better numbers.
That wasn’t KB. That was Kiffin better using the tools given to him than the previous coach. The proof will be when Devin Singletary does more of the same this year at FAU.
So it’s safe to say that under Briles offense, whoever gets the most carries at RB, will have a bigger impact on the success (or lack thereof) on our offense than King?
If we can run the ball 66% of the time and put up 35-40 ppg, we’ll likely win every game we play this year given how good our defense is. If that’s the case, King won’t need to be the major factor and I’m ok with that. But I can guarantee you if the running game is going that well, King will be able to take plenty of shots down the field and this offense will be incredibly fun to watch.
The UH run offense should go very well because we spread the field, pass effectively and take multiple shots down the field in order to keep the defense spread out and back off the line of scrimmage.
Kiffin brought in a really good talent his first year. It was relative to the type we get here. He also got some transfers from some P-5 schools in. I don’t know what he had before (too lazy to look lol) but if we learned anything with Ed then we’d know the impact that one player can have.
I’m not sure I understand the second question about our talent and the rest of the AAC though… Are you saying that our talent is better or less than the rest of the AAC?
I think inheriting a 3 star running back that had offers from Illinois, Miami, Wake Forest and averaged 6.7 yards a carry his sophomore year on a team with a struggling passing game, was the biggest key to their 2017 success.
Baylor was run heavy in 2015, but that was skewed up by both QBs going down late in the season and they relied on the run without a real QB. In their bowl game they basically used the wildcat as their base formation and ran 80% of the time
Was just questioning us in our conference vs FAU in theirs. I believe we probably have at minimum top 4 talent in the conference. I have no idea where FAU’s talent ranked in CUSA. Perhaps we should expect an even better offense statistically.
I think since we’re talking about our offense we’d have to ask how good is the talent/coaching on defense in our conference. I will go ahead and say it; it’s not very good. lol We should be better, but there’s always a learning curve. Good thing we have Rice to start things out. Just need to take care of the football.
