Derek Dooley is Missouri's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, which is interesting because Dooley has never been an offensive coordinator or a quarterbacks coach before.
A former Tennessee and Louisiana Tech head coach, Dooley coached every skill position but quarterbacks in his climb up the ladder. He coached wide receivers at SMU, tight ends and running backs at LSU and then tight ends on Nick Saban's staff with the Miami Dolphins before landing the Louisiana Tech job in 2007. After his 6-year run as a head coach ended in 2012, Dooley landed with the Dallas Cowboys, where he spent the past five years as wide receivers coach.
But Barry Odom selected Dooley to replace Josh Heupel as his offensive coordinator, and Dooley takes over one of the most explosive attacks in college football. The Tigers finished the 2017 campaign ranked sixth in yards per play, 14th in scoring and passing and 20th in yards per carry. You don't just scrap a scheme that averaged 7.13 yards per play and 38 points per game, particularly not with quarterback Drew Lock back for his senior season.
So Dooley has taken on the process of melding his scheme with the existing one.
"I call it Wikipedia. That’s what it is right now, our offense,” Dooley told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Every day you can go on there and there’s a new sentence (and say), ‘Oh, I wonder who added that?"
In addition to Dooley, much of the Missouri offensive staff is also new. Offensive line coach Brad Davis was hired from Florida and wide receivers coach A.J. Ofodile was promoted from director of recruiting operations.
"The idea is I don’t want to just cram some system down them," Dooley said. "Everything they do is brand new. We want to build on some things they did well here. We want to add some things to help us have a little flexibility in how we attack defenses."
Dooley said the concepts he will add to the Mizzou offense will be pro-style passing concepts he learned with the Cowboys, at Lock's request.
"It’s something he wants," Dooley said. "But it’s not something you just get in a day. You’ve got to go out there and run it, run it, run it. You’ve got to make mistakes. Hopefully the mistakes he makes are in practice and he learns from it. Over the course of time by the time we get through training camp hopefully we’ll have tightened up what he feels comfortable running in a game."