With today’s newsletter, I’m going to be talking about a team that Florida plays rather than the Gators themselves. Namely, I am going to address the Missouri offense and whether it will continue to be great next year.
After all, it was great last year. The Tigers finished eighth in S&P+ offense, and in the conventional stats, they were 18th with 36.6 points per game and 13th with 481.1 yards per game. This, despite having some very good defenses on the schedule like Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and Florida. Mizzou, of course, torched the sleeping UF defense in Gainesville.
There was a feeling last offseason that 2018 would be a cyclical high for the offense after which it would fall off some. A couple of things have happened since then that have changed a lot of tunes out there.
Head coach Barry Odom made a controversial pick by choosing Derek Dooley to run the offense after Josh Heupel left to take over UCF. Doolander, as Tennessee beat writer Wes Rucker likes to call him, had never been an offensive coordinator before. He went straight from Nick Saban’s WRs coach at LSU to head coach (and later, oddly, athletic director too) at Louisiana Tech and then Tennessee head coach. Afterwards, he went to the NFL and was a receivers coach again. There was legitimate doubt about him calling an offense, but as I covered above, things were excellent. Dooley’s success last fall assuaged a lot of concerns.
The other big development was Kelly Bryant picking Columbia as his destination as a graduate transfer. He, of course, led Clemson to the national championship game in 2017 before losing his job to Trevor Lawrence last fall. He plugs the most obvious hole on the roster, that of graduating quarterback Drew Lock.
I, dear reader, remain skeptical of Missouri’s offense going into 2019, as I don’t consider either of those points settled.
The fact that Dooley had a senior, almost four-year starter in Lock means that I don’t attribute much of the offense’s success last year to the play caller. In those kinds of situations, the quarterback is like an offensive coordinator on the field. The Tigers ran basically the same offense last year as they did under Heupel, so Lock’s extensive experience meant that it was going to be good regardless.
Florida itself made the mistake of taking too much away from a coach getting to coordinate one year of an offense with a four-year starting quarterback. In this, I refer to Brent Pease.
From 2006-2010, Bryan Harsin coordinated Chris Petersen’s offense at Boise State. Some of the offense’s greatest success came with Kellen Moore at quarterback. Moore redshirted in 2007 before taking over full-time in 2008 and started every game thereafter. As a sophomore, Moore had an absurd 39-3 TD-INT ratio. In his junior year, he completed 71.3% of his passes for 10.0 yards per attempt. He mastered that system.
After Moore’s junior year, Harsin took the OC job at Texas. To replace him Petersen promoted Pease, who’d been on the staff since 2006 as wide receivers coach. In 2011 with Moore a senior and Pease at OC, Boise State went 12-1 and was a shanked field goal at Nevada away from perfection. Moore completed 74.3% of his passes with 43 touchdowns. It was a huge success.
Will Muschamp needed a new offensive coordinator after 2011, and like Texas the year before, he decided he wanted to hire the Boise State offense. So with Harsin off the board, he went and hired Pease. You know how that went. Meddling from the head coach and a catastrophically poor fit between the new OC and Muschamp’s hand-picked offensive line coach meant the Pease era was turbulent and short. Those admittedly big issues aside, no one was impressed with what Pease did regardless.
Dooley and Pease aren’t a perfect match despite them both having spent extensive time as wide receivers coaches. Pease had coordinator experience, none of it all that good, before his magic year with Moore in Boise. Dooley also isn’t coming in fresh to a new place but rather knows his players well.
Still, I can’t sign on to the idea that Dooley is actually a very good coordinator until I see him without Lock. You could’ve coordinated Mizzou’s offense last year by simply asking “What do you think, Drew?” on the headset every play.
Further, Mizzou’s offense is losing some key pieces. WR Emanuel Hall was a great deep threat, and while he was injured for a stretch last year, the offense hit a rough patch. He graduated. I think Damarea Keener-Crockett was their best running back despite what you’ll see on the season stat sheet, and he declared for the NFL. Their excellent tight end Albert O coming back and not going pro was huge, but the receiving corps is jumbled and I don’t see a full replacement for Keener-Crockett.
As for Bryant, I’m not sure what he can deliver while not being surrounded by Clemson-level talent — which Mizzou certainly doesn’t have. The rumors are true: passing is not his strong suit. Clemson was 61st in S&P+ passing offense in 2017 despite having future pros Deon Cain and Ray-Ray McCloud along with good ol’ Hunter Renfrow at wide receiver. For comparison, Clemson was 11th in S&P+ passing in 2016 with Deshaun Watson and 13th in 2018 with three games of Bryant and the rest with Lawrence. That offense is built for passing success, and Bryant didn’t deliver.
Missouri’s offense under Odom with Heupel and Dooley has been a passing-based offense. That’s what they’re used to. Now, they will need to do something run-based to get the most out of Bryant. And, they’ll have to do it without a real replacement for the big thumper of a back Keener-Crockett.
It is possible that Mizzou could keep chugging away at a high level on offense. I’m not saying they can’t; I’m saying they need to prove it. Last year is no more proof that Dooley is a good offensive coordinator than 2011 Boise State was for Pease, and Bryant doesn’t fit the system they’ve been running for years.
When you see people saying that Missouri will be just fine on offense this year, remember that it’s far from a guaranteed thing.