Here is the 2016 game against Ole Miss. Before the game starts you can see that Austin Allen has really developed under Coach Enos and is being coached in a way that he has complete understanding of the offense. A theme you consistently see from the QB’s that Coach Enos has worked with is that they are completely prepared and armed with a total understanding of where to go with the football in various situations.
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At this point of the season Allen is leading the SEC in passing TD’s. This is not what you’d expect from an Arkansas offense based on history. Austin is younger brother of Brandon Allen, and was a pet project for the QB development skills of Coach Enos.
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At every stop along the way, it is pretty apparent that this is the main formation that Enos likes to rely upon.
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A staple of the Enos offense is the deep crosser off play-action. It’s an easy marriage to understand, as the play-action pulls the LB’s and S’s up and the crosser comes open behind them (pass was dropped).
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Power around edge with a pulling C.
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If you read
@romancane you will know that he routinely wants to see more hot reads for our QB’s off of a blitz. This is absolutely a sight adjustment from the slot WR after he sees the blitz from his man. The QB reads it at the same time and this is an easy 1st down. The addition of motion and hot reads for your QB will absolutely improve the quality of reads and completion percentage of passes.
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If you read the infamous Major Applewhite film thread, you saw this play several times. Motion a lead blocker to the flow side with the RT down blocking on the edge. This is a designed cutback run with zone blocking allowing the RB to choose his cut. You can see the giant lane in the cutback for the RB to get into.
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This is a play that Enos has used from Missouri State to Arkansas. Play-action sucks up the LB’s and S, deep post behind it. TD. Pretty.
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Play-action TD on the last possession. Come right out and go Power Off-Tackle. #83 is Jeremy Sprinkle and he gets the block on the edge. #32 is the lead blocker to the second-level. #22 nearly houses it.
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Here is a formation you do not see often and is a good example of Coach Enos using his personnel, rather than forcing a specific scheme on his players every year. This Arkansas team has two NFL TE’s in Jeremy Sprinkle and Hunter Henry. How often do you see TE’s lined up to the sideline in the red zone. In this formation they will motion Sprinkle towards the QB out of Pistol.
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The offense has the defense right now. Play-action sucks up the LB, the two receivers are both putting the defense in a bind. Sprinkle is running a post underneath Drew Morgan. You’ve got a flat-footed S at the goal line and a boundary CB who has to sink towards the corner because Morgan has a two-way go towards it. Since Sprinkle is even with the LB, he’s already leaving that coverage zone.
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S has to go with the post for Sprinkle or he’s wide open. Morgan runs a post off of Sprinkle’s lead and comes right into the area that the S leaves. QB waits for S to clear, boom. TD.
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Sometimes stats can really lie to you, and here is a case of that. Arkansas had a really long run that skews the numbers a tad, so it hasn’t been quite the balance this makes it seem, but big plays are important and they got one in the run game.
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Everywhere Enos has gone they have been good in the screen game.
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If you want a multiple formation offense, you are going to love Dan Enos. The other candidates we heard about were primarily 11-personnel types, but Enos runs everything. I like a coach that can run everything, but some prefer to have a set “identity” on offense.
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There are some jet sweeps in the offense as well. Lots of motion. Lots of eye candy not with just receivers in motion, but also with the OL. LB’s are taught to “read their keys” which is often either the edge blocker or a pulling G depending on what they’re playing. Enos likes to have their flow on the OL move away from where they’re actually going and it creates a lot of open space for his offense.
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What I’m beginning to love so much about Enos’ offense is his ability to stress the defense by putting a defensive player in a bind where he has to cover two receivers at once. The motion brought the outside WR into a stack behind the slot. When the middle receiver here started up the seam from a stack, the outside CB had to hold for the seam. The RB released into the flat behind both stacked receivers, which held the LB. #12 can’t cover the slot and the outside flat at the same time and this route is easy money for the 1st down. A great counter off this route could be to run the two routes the same way but have the stacked middle receiver run a slant. It needs to be off-coverage from the CB on the edge, rather than press, but when you see that look you’ve got them with this.
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Motion the H-back, run a counter toss to the boundary. The H-back is supposed to down block at the second level but he actually blocks his LT here. They recover and get outside, but I’d rather see the H-back release outside and the LT immediately go to the second level to avoid this running into each other problem on the pitch. Could’ve been a huge play, but only goes for 5. It’s a counter because the initial step from the RB is the opposite direction of where the play is going.
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Just an observation that Enos is calling plays from the sideline. They’re often times up in the booth.
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Old-school double-TE I-formation football here.
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LG traps the DT after letting him release up-field and then turning him away from the stretch play outside. Arkansas’s LT is not very good on these plays on the move. He’s consistently whiffs on these plays and costs his offense yards. He touches nary a soul on this play.
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Quick motion just before the snap into a Wildcat look. The play went nowhere. Not really a fan of this one. Also not a fan of kicking a FG on 4th-and-1 against that Ole Miss offense that had Chad Kelly and Evan Engram putting up huge numbers.
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Enos likes to run a play-action stretch play and then run a boot-action off of the play to the other side. Get the opposite side WR’s to run crossers into the field of vision for the QB.
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Arkansas goes on to put up big numbers in this one and wins 34-30.
Alabama
Despite Enos having success in developing in QB’s and in putting a successful offense on the field during his time at Arkansas, once Bielema was fired at Arkansas, Chad Morris decided to bring in his own staff and Enos was let go. He landed on his feet by staying in the SEC with Alabama as their QB’s coach.
There is obviously a certain amount of credit you have to have to parse between Locksley and Enos. Locksley called the plays at Alabama, so I do not include the Alabama numbers into the totals for Enos, but it’s interesting to look at their offense a bit as well and get an idea for what Enos have bring with him. He was quoted as saying how much he learned during his time with Alabama and I believe he has grown from that experience. Just in what ways remain to be seen.
I’ll take a look at what Alabama brought to the field against Auburn because it’s a defense that has pro’s on it, it’s a rivalry game, and Alabama was coming off of an easy game against Citadel so they’re relatively healthy.
Under Locksley, Alabama mostly ran 11 personnel.
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Thus far, I believe there is a lot of influence from Enos on this offense. They are running a lot more motion, screen action, and especially crossers than last year.
Slot post is wide open. Tua threw it early from a clean pocket and just overthrew it. Needs to lead him into the middle a little bit and this is an easy throw. Side note: Sometimes listening to these announcers is painful. Here the announcer says the pressure made him throw it before he wanted. There isn’t a defender within five yards of him when he let this go. He just had too short of a stride, didn’t transfer his weight, and the ball sailed on him.
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This play is one that Enos runs quite often in his career. It’s 12-personnel with two WR’s to the same side. They motion the WR at the snap towards the QB and they fake the jet sweep and the inside draw. It’s a post pattern behind it deep. WR was double-covered and falls incomplete.
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Another formation and play call that you have seen from Enos multiple times previously in this article. The outside WR runs the clear out route, the slot WR cuts underneath him into the flat clearing. Easy completion.
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Motion into the pop pass. This is something I hope to see more of with Coach Enos here. Rather than just the give, make it the pop pass and have the QB carry out the fake to hold the edge. The pass part of things eliminates the fumble out of the equation.
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Alabama goes on to win big. The offense they ran this year was not much different than what Enos has run throughout his career. The motion on most every play, the reliance on play action, the power run game principles, the crossers, the underneath short passing game are all what we’ve seen from Enos previously. The big difference is the talent they have to get their running game going better and the special talent at QB.
Overall
The truth of the matter is that no matter how interested in football you are, you can’t really know every coach and what they’re all about. Coach Enos coached at my alma mater while I was there and in the sports program. Yet, my recollection of him was pretty meh. That was heavily influenced by the fact that Missouri State did what they do best; lose a lot of football games. Then you think of the Arkansas offense’s under Bielema and you think of a boring, three yards and a cloud of dust philosophy.
For these reasons I went into this study thinking I was going to come out pretty down on the hire. A nomadic coach who seemed to move from place-to-place quite often, he is not a candidate I would initially have on my list in my mental rolodex. Also, admittedly, I put a lot of time into Major Applewhite and was pretty happy with his offense, so I wanted that hire to come to fruition.
After spending many hours reviewing everything about Coach Enos and how he develops QB’s and runs an offense I have to say that this hire is going to end up being the right one. Does this hire represent “the cutting edge offense” that Manny Diaz promised? Do you believe the Kansas City Chiefs offense to be cutting edge? Because that is the offense that Enos most resembles in my mind. The Chiefs do not run a wide-open spread offense. They run an offense predicated on motion, play-action, and crossers. Exactly what Enos has his offense predicated on for years. It’s not just the one play above that is reminiscent of the Chiefs offense, but rather in the way they use motion, deep shots, play-action, screens, and an elite TE to create matchups that favor the offense and make it where the defense cannot win.
Positives
- Consistently develops QB’s at every stop. From Missouri State, to Alabama, every QB that Enos has been around has performed their best under him.
- Motion. The offense for Enos uses motion to diagnose what the defense is doing pre-snap and puts the defense in a position that they cannot win by having to cover two receivers with one defender on multiple occasions.
- Play-action. Regardless of your ability to run the ball, play-action works. Having play-action as the foundation for your offense is just smart football and Enos uses it liberally.
- Head Coaching Experience. Just like Major Applewhite & Larry Fedora, Enos has experience as a Head Coach. Unlike the other two, he is also bringing experience working under a legendary coach and program-builder in Nick Saban. As Manny Diaz works to establish his own program at Miami, he can bounce ideas off of Enos and compare and contrast.
- No Prior Link to Coach Diaz. Coach Enos has never worked previously with Manny Diaz. To me, this is a major plus, as I hoped we would avoid a coaching staff of “Facebook friends” for Coach Diaz. Building an offensive staff with outside ideas and perceptions is key to having a healthy and challenging culture.
- Passing Game. Coach Enos is a passing game savant and there is no doubt about it. At every stop that he has called plays he has developed a great passing offense. At every stop that he has been a QB coach he has developed a great passing QB. It is clear to me that he understands how to teach the passing game and how to call passing concepts. In an increasingly pass-happy game- reliant on the QB position- his mix of experience and success in this area is top-notch.
- Middle-of-the-Field. Statistically speaking, the MOF is the most efficient area for an offense to attack. Too often last year the MOF was not even a consideration for the offense, preferring to rely on out-breaking routes. Coach Enos utilizes this area of the field very well.
- Counters. A play-caller needs to have a rhythm and an understanding of when to call certain plays. Coach Enos has a great feel for when to call certain plays and has a counter for every formation to combat a defense getting too aggressive through film study. There were times in his film that I would mutter to myself, “I hope he…” based on what the defense was doing and almost every time the offense had the perfect counter for what the defense was doing. It was football poetry at times.
- Game Planning. Coach Enos is excellent at scripting the first few drives of a game on offense and taking advantage of what the defense does poorly. It is really exciting to see a game-plan specific attack each week.
Negatives
- Running Game. I did not feel as though the run game was especially imaginative on Enos’ film. Too often the run game was ordinary, or relied on broken tackles to be successful. There were some big plays that helped to prop up the stats, but for the most part his run games have been ordinary. Though he does run an effective rushing offense in the red zone (where running the ball is most effective from an efficiency standpoint).
- Nomadic Presence. While it is admirable that he is willing to leave a stop to work towards his football goals, he also has never stayed in one place for long, even going so far to resign as a head coach to move back to an OC role. Will he be a presence with the program long enough to take roots and really grow the system?
- Personally, I would prefer more space-and-pace, as I believe that is where the future of offense is headed. There are two ways to hurt a defense pre-snap. 1. With pace-and-space. Get your guys into space and use tempo to press the advantage 2. Formations and motion. Relies on motion to diagnose defense and get players in position to make plays. Utilizing formations to press advantage. Enos definitely falls into category 2, but I would like to see more of category 1 because south Florida players grow up with simple pace-and-space spread offenses.
Data
How does Coach Enos stack up from a data perspective at his stops calling plays (I. E. there will be no Alabama data in these results)? There were several names who grew favor among the Miami fanbase and I will list many of them here for comparison’ sake.
There is no other way to say it other than to say the data suggests that Dan Enos is one of the very best offensive play-callers in all of college football. His schemes put his players in position to make simple reads and plays and be efficient throwing the football with a CAREER 8.10 Yards Per Pass against peer competition. Here is a chart showing some of the publicized candidates in their careers calling plays:
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We’ve seen that Enos can call a game that is efficient in the passing game, but how does he stack up in terms of having an explosive offense? Lots of double-TE and double-RB sets would cause the offense to be less explosive, correct? He has averaged .434 Points Per Play against peer competition for his career. He is the only one of the group who has called plays against several years’ worth of SEC competition as well. Yost is slightly ahead at .437, but much of his play-calling was spent in the Big-12, where defense is much more optional.
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I mentioned that if there was a knock on Enos’ offense, it would be in the running game. Here are the candidates on a Yards Per Rush basis:
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Here are the results for each of the candidates in simple numbers format:
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Once you add the fact that Enos has developed multiple QB’s to their best season, it is clear that Enos is the winner amongst these candidates. He has shown the ability to beat you with multiple formations, the ability to call plays, the ability to develop QB’s, learned under the best coach in the business last year, and has head coaching experience of his own.
As I said, I went into this exercise a little down because he is not the wide-open pace-and-space shiny toy that I had envisioned. I had envisioned Enos being a tight-formation, old-school offensive system that wants to control TOP and have three yards and a cloud of dust. Once you start to see the results at every stop he’s called plays, you really see that Enos is a passing game savant and that Coach Diaz just took one of the best OC minds in all of college football and brought him to our program.
This hire is an absolute home run in my review of film and data. Be excited Miami fans. Be excited.
