With guys like Zach Kittley, Eric Morris, Jeff Lebby, Garrett Riley & others already signed to new staffs, Miami is now back on the OC market after not being able to come to terms with Joe Brady. Obviously, most of the names that have been thrown about like Kendal Briles, Warren Ruggeiro, Jeff Grimes etc have already been discussed ad nauseum in several other threads, so I’m not really gonna go into much detail on them, other than, they’re all good lol.
I get asked every day my opinion on OC’s, most of time I don’t answer for very specific reasons, in this situation I’ve been really reluctant to because my personal opinion is not really in alignment with Mario’s & that within itself is enough to start a riot lol, so I’ve just refrained from really entering into the Gladiator arena on this topic.
With that said, here’s the disclaimer: THIS IS JUST MY OPINION, NOT WHO I THINK WE WILL ACTUALLY HIRE OR WHO MARIO WANTS, JUST MY OPINON. YOU CAN AGREE OR DISAGREE, BUT DO NOT FORGET THIS IS JUST MY OPINON.. Lol okay?
OC’s list:
Matt Mumme - Son of the Legendary inventor of the Air Raid offense at Valdosta St Hal Mumme. So of course you’d probably assume he runs the same AR that Hal ran right? Nope, he’s also adapted it & incorporates the uptempo rushing attack as well, but he also maintains the core fundamentals of the true Air Raid.
He started out coaching at Southeastern Louisiana with his Dad & then followed him to New Mexico St where he was his OC.
During his 4 year tenure at New Mexico St they produced a QB who wound up passing for 11,846yds 85TD’s & 41INT’s at 69.3% completion in just 3 seasons, Chase Holbrook. Who also had a TF season of 4,619yds 34TD’s & 9INT’s completing 70% of his passes. Obviously, New Mexico St sucked & have always been a bad Football program, but that’s not the point, the point is, even at a lowly program with minimal to no talent at all Mumme’s system manufactured high productivity, take that system & give it better P5 level talent & you have something dangerous.
After a 3 year stint at LaGrange College (a DIII school), Matt got hired at Nevada to be Jay Norvell’s OC. In his first year as OC, he took Ty Gangi, a low level JUCO transfer who was a 2-star QB coming out of HS with a 76 rating & managed to produce a 2,746yds 25TD’s & 11INT’s & then the following year in 2018 had 3,331yd 24TD’s & 13INT’s season out of him. They went 8-5 that season.
But his best feat was recruiting, signing & developing QB Carson Strong who was a low ranked 3-star with an 80 rating coming out HS from Vacaville CA. After being injured his Red Frosh season, Carson Strong in 2020 splashed on the scene throwing for 2,858yds 27TD’s & 4INT’s completing 70% of his passes (Covid season they only played 9 games & went 7-2), he then followed that up by having a record breaking season this year at Nevada throwing for 4,186yds 36TD’s & 8INT’s at 70%cmp, leading Nevada to their first winning seasons since the Chris Ault era. Carson is now considered to be a potential 1st round draft pick if he were to declare this year.
Nevada averaged:
- 36.7 points per game this season
- 439.6 yards per game
- Ranked 15th in Scoring offense
- Ranked 4th in Passing offense
- Ranked 12th in Red Zone offense
Matt is supposed to be following Jay Norvell over to Colorado State, his salary at Nevada was just a little over $260,000, which means even if he got a somewhat nominal pay raise going to CSU, he could easily be brought over to Miami for $1.1mill. Give Mumme TVD, Key Smith, George, Brinson, B. Smith, X Restrepo, Mallory, Arroyo, Knighton, Chaney & Thad, we’d average 500 yards & 40+ points a game.
Barry Lunney Jr - Son of the well respected High school Head Coach Barr Lunney Sr, who was a legend in Arkansas. He won 9 state titles in his career, one with Southside HS in Fort Smith & then went onto to Bentonville Ark where he would coach for 28 years & win 8 State championships.
Barry Jr is another great offensive mind that came from the Arkansas coaching tree, just like Rhett Lashlee who’s from Springdale, Barry from Fort Smith played QB at Arkansas for Danny Ford & started his Coaching career as a GA at Ark under Houston Nutt. He then went on to Tulsa (another program that produced a bunched of offensive minded coaches) as a QB’s coach under OC Jim Gilstrap, followed by a brief stint at San Jose St under HC Fitz Hill, who is also from Arkansas & coached with Barry at Arkansas as a WR’s coach on Danny Ford’s & Houston Nutt’s staff. Barry then went back to the HS ranks to be his dad’s OC at Bentonville for 8 years & then came back to Arkansas as TE’s coach on Bret Bielema’s staff. He stayed with Arkansas for the 2 seasons as ST’s coach under Chad Morris (Chad Morris another TX HS coach with ties to Arkansas through Gus Malzahn who both game up under Todd Graham at Tulsa & Rhett Lashlee is from that same tree as well) & for the last 2 years has been UTSA’s OC under Jeff Traylor, Barry & Traylor coached together on Morris’s staff at Arkansas together, (the 6 degrees of separation is killing me lol ).
UTSA is relatively new football program, they’ve only been around since 2010 & guess who their first HC was ever in their school history?? That’s right, our very own Larry “The Natty Clapper” Coker! This season was the only season in UTSA’s short history in which they won more than 8 games, they finished this year with an astounding 11-1 record winning the CUSA.
UTSA’s QB Frank Harris (another Texas QB) who was a mid level 3-star with an 83 rating coming out of HS, lead them to this historic season throwing for 2,906yds 25TD’s 5INT’s at 66%cmp & rushed for 565yds & 6TD’s off 105 carries.
Their RB Junior Sincere McCormick (from Converse TX) made himself some good NFL money this season rushing for 1,479yds & 15TD’s at 5 yards per carry. Their top 3 WR’s Zakhari Franklin (from Cedar Hill TX) caught 73rec 938yds & 11TD’s, Josh Cepheus (from Houston TX) caught 69rec 793yds & 6TD’s & De’Corian Clark (from Fort Worth TX) caught 46rec 683yds & 6TD’s.
So as an all around offense, the QB, RB & WR’s all ate & produced.
For those of yall that really want us to run the ball Barry should be your guy, UTSA’s offenses ran the ball 532 times this season ranking 15th in rushing attempts on the season. They were 36th in rushing offense, at 4.61 yards per carry, rushed for 2,452 total yards on the season with 3,306 total yards passing, which means they were very balanced. If you want balance, aside from Kendall Briles (who’s OC at Arkansas, there goes that 6 degrees again lol) Barry Jr is one of the more balanced OC’s out there.
It’s a Spread Offense that operates out of a ton of 11 & 12 personnel, they even run some two-back 21 & 22 as well. And yes Barry Jr does call plays, there was some speculation that Traylor called the plays but he actually doesn’t, he’s very integral in the weekly preparation & play script & design for the game, but in terms of the actual play calls, he leaves it to Barry Jr & will chime in from time to time if he feels he needs to to.
UTSA averaged:
- 37.8 points per game
- 442.9 yards per game
- 12th in Scoring offense
- 22nd in 3rd down offense
- 21st in Red Zone Offense, with a 89% scoring conversion rate
Anthony Tucker - Originally out of Los Alamitos (Long Beach) CA, after playing QB at Fresno St he started out coaching at Lakewood HS a school that has produced a number of Football & Baseball players. His first coaching job in college was at Colorado as a GA on Dan Hawkins staff, then got hired by Mike Kramer as WR’s coach at Idaho St. After 3 seasons there he went to Arkansas St (more Arkansas symmetry lol) on Bryan Harsin’s staff, after Harsin left Ark St after just one year he stayed on Ark ST’s staff with Blake Anderson. He was then hired at Maryland on DJ Durkins staff under OC Walt Bell as RB’s coach & after the Durkin regime was cut short, wound up at UCF on Josh Heupel’s staff as RB’s coach & then was elevated to Passing Game Coordinator & Co-OC within two years at UCF. He was hired this year by Blake Anderson (who he was with at Ark St) to be OC/Qb’s coach at Utah St.
This past season at Utah St was his first year as a full time play caller, while he didn’t call plays at UCF, he was absolutely apart of the Brain trust with Heupel, Jeff Lebby & Joey Halzle. They basically schemed up the offense together as a group & Heupel would pick from the myriad of plays that the 3 of them would put in the system, they were all students of Heupel who himself was a student of Kevin Wilson & Chuck Long. Heupel also was OC at Utah St under Matt Wells.
Even being a relatively fresh play caller, he comes from the Air Raid+Spread tree & had Utah ST’s offense humming this season.
Their QB Logan Bonner (from Rowlett TX) who was a lowly 2-star QB with a 78 rating coming out of HS & a Arkansas St transfer finished this year with 3,560yds 36TD’s & 11INT’s at 61% passing. Their RB Calvin Tyler (from Beaumont TX) rushed for 764yds & 6TD’s, to go along with their top 4 WR’s Deven Thompkins (from Ft. Meyers FL) caught 96rec 1,589yds & 9TD’s (2nd in the Nation in receiving yards, 4th in receptions), Brandon Bowling (from McKinney TX) caught 52rec 784yds & 9TD’s, Derek Wright (from Utah) caught 45rec 756yds & 11TD’s & Justin McGriff (from Tampa FL) caught 34rec 410yds & 6TD’s.
Utah St averaged:
- 33.2 points per game
- 452 yards per game
- 15th in Passing Offense
- 20th in Total Offense
- 24th in 3rd down conversion rate
Graham Harrell - Comes from a deep coaching family being the son of State champion HS coach Sam Harrell at Ennis Texas his older brother Zac is the HC at Athens HS in Athens TX & his younger brother Clark is the HC at New Diana HS in TX. A young student of the High octane Air Raid from the Texas Tech coaching tree, played QB at TTech where he set records & finished his career 15,793yds passing & is 4th all-time in passing yards in college football history.
Graham played for Mike Leach at TTech with Sonny Dykes & Dana Holgorsen as his OC’s & was the QB who made the infamous throw to Michael Crabtree when they upset the #1 ranked Texas team at that time who were lead by Colt McCoy. He started out his coaching career as a QC coach on Mike Gundy’s staff at Oklahoma St when Dana Holgorsen was hired as OC there, he then went up to WAZZU as WR’s coach on Mike Leach’s staff under OC David Yost & on that same staff was Mario Cristobal’s RB Coach Jim Mastro, his LB’s coach Ken Wilson & his DL coach Joe Salave’a.
He then went to North Texas to be OC/QB’s coach for Seth Littrell who is also a Mike Leach Oklahoma/TTech disciple with connections to the Oklahoma Bob Stoops, Kevin Wilson, Mike Stoops & Larry Fedora tree. During his tenure as OC at North Texas, Seth & Graham found, recruited, signed & developed a low 2-star QB with a 77 rating (See the pattern here lol) out of Oklahoma Mason Fine, who finished his career with 12,505yds 93TD’s & 34INT’s leading NT to two of their only four 9 wins seasons in school history.
After his success at North Texas he was brought on by Clay Helton as a last ditch effort to save his job but obviously USC had other plans. In his first season at USC in 2019, he took sophomore 3-star QB out of Arizona Kedon Slovis & coached him up to a 3,502yd 30TD’s & 9INT’s at 71.9% passing season leading USC to a 8-5 record. 2020 was the Covid year in which the Pac-12 only played 6 games, USC was 5-1 with Slovis throwing for 1,921yds 17TD’s & 7INT’s at 67%cmp in just 6 games. Graham recruited & signed two high ranked 4-star QB’s in Jaxton Dart (from Utah) & Miller Moss (from LA Cali).
Their WR’s Michael Pittman Jr caught 101rec 1,275yds & 11TD’s, Amon-Ra St. Brown caught 77rec 1,042yds & 6TD’s & Tyler Vaughn caught 74rec 912yds & 6TD’s in the 2019 season. And even this year in the 21 season with an interim HC, USC’s Wr Drake London caught 88rec 1,084yds & 7TD’s before being injured & having to sit the rest of the season after 8 games.
Obviously being on a lame duck staff with Clay Helton getting fired after just the first 2 games of the season this year you can’t hold against him IMO, but even if you did, he’s literally it’s 36 years old, which means he’s significantly younger than a number of other OC’s who are older & haven’t had half as much success that many fans often want us to hire...
In 2019, USC averaged:
- 32.5 points per game
- 454 yards per game
- 5th in Passing Offense
- 13th in Total offense
- 34th in Scoring offense
Graham is a hot name that has been mentioned as a potential replacement for Lebby at Ole Miss, among several other jobs available right now & while I doubt Miami would be interested I believe he would kill it here with our personnel.
Kevin Johns - An experienced & tenured OC at just 46 years old, started out coaching at Northwestern as a GA on Randy Walker’s staff & after getting hired at Richmond as a WR’s coach on Jim Reid’s staff under OC Tony DeMeo, he returned to Northwestern for 7 years with Pat Fitzgerald Nader Garrick McGee & Mick McCall.
Then he got hired as Co-OC/WR’s coach on Kevin Wilson’s staff at Indiana (as already mentioned earlier in thread, Kevin Wilson was a Bob Stoops Oklahoma guy) & while at Indiana he was Co-OC for 3 years with Seth Littrell on that same staff as a Co-DC/Safeties coach was Doug Mallory, our TE Will Mallory’s uncle (that was kinda irrelevant just felt like mentioning it lol).
His best work at Indiana was getting Nate Sudfeld to a 3,573yds 27TD’s & 7INT’s season in 2015. But after 7 years at Indiana, he got hired by Tim Lester at Western Michigan to be OC/QB’s coach & then in 2018 got hired by Kliff Kingsbury to be TTech’s OC. That year he & Kingsbury had TF QB Alan Bowman (from Grapevine TX) throw for 2,638yds 17TD’s & 7INT’s but wound up getting injured in the middle of the season.
After Kingsbury went to the NFL, Johns got hired at Memphis as OC on Mike Norvell’s staff before Norvell would end up taking the FSU job the following year. In Johns first full year as the play caller at Memphis, he had Brady White who was already a multiple team transfer that returned after a big time 2019 season, in 2020 he threw for 3,380yds 31TD’s & 10INT’s.
But Johns most impressive work as a play caller & QB developer was this season with Memphis, Johns recruited & signed 3-star QB Seth Henigan (from Denton TX), he started as a True Freshman this season & threw for 3,322yds 25TD’s & 8INT’s. Now put into perspective that Memphis is a Basketball school that doesn’t spend a dime on Football & that makes it all the more respectable, that’s essentially just a bang up scouting job finding an under recruited kid & coaching him up to very good productivity as a 18/19 year old.
Memphis averaged:
- 30.3 points per game
- 435.8 yards per game
- 17th in Passing offense
- 37th in Total offense
Now this thread already long enough & I already know none of these guys will be considered or hired by Miami, so at this point I’m just going to mention some new upcoming guys that will be getting G5/P5 jobs in the future:
- Joey Halzle; Josh Heupel’s right hand man, been with him since Oklahoma, Mizzou, Utah St, UCF & is the current QB’s coach at Tennessee. Has never called plays in his early career but is being groomed by Heupel to be his OC, he’s the next Jeff Lebby.
- Kevin McGiven; a Gary Andersen disciple from the Utah St tree, as also on Matt Wells staff as OC/QB’s, coached at Oregon St with Gary Andersen as well & has been at San Jose St with Brent Brennan for the last 4 years, a very good innovative play caller.
- Cody Crill; was OC at Incarnate Word under Eric Morris, from San Angelo TX, coached at Navarro JUCO & had them in top 5 in every statistical category on offense averaging 44 points a game, then after 9 seasons at Navarro where he set NJCAA records with offenses that average and 52 points a game & 600+ yards a season he got hired by Morris at Incarnate Word. He’s an under the radar signal caller but with the success of Morris & him getting hired at WAZZU, he will be the next one that gets bumped up from the FCS level to be a G5 guy. He’s an X’s & O’s guru.
- Christian Taylor; another young innovative OC, originally from Virginia, is the current OC/RB’s coach at William & Mary, but made his name from his tenure as OC at University of San Diego. Even on the FCS level, Christina Taylor’s offenses at San Diego we’re ranked top 10 every year he was there in passing offense, scoring offense & total offense, he lead them to 4 straight 10-2 seasons, winning 4 conference titles & set Pioneer League offensive records.
- Ryan Carty; another Coach that comes from the New Hampshire tree (Chip Kelly, Dan Mullen & Ryan Day), Ryan played QB at Delaware under KC Keeler & started off his coaching career under long time NH Coach Sean McDonnell. After spending 10 years at New Hampshire got hired by FCS legend KC Keeler as the OC at Sam Houston St & after 3 years at SH State which featured a 2 seasons 21-0 win streak & 1 FCS National championship (with a chance to win #2 in this year’s FCS playoffs), he just got recently hired as the next HC at Delaware to replace Danny Rocco.
There’s several others, but no need to post’em all!
