Ten days after the hiring of Charlie Strong, Texas has finally and officially announced Strong's full coaching staff.
Each of the hirings has previously been reported, but here is the staff in full along with each coach''s former employer:
- Shawn Watson, assistant head coach for offense/quarterbacks coach (Louisville)
- Chris Rumph, assistant head coach for defense/defensive line coach (Alabama)
- Joe Wickline, offensive coordinator/offensive line coach (Oklahoma State)
- Vance Bedford, defensive coordinator (Louisville)
- Chris Vaughn, defensive backs coach/special teams coordinator (Memphis)
- Brian Jean-Mary, linebackers coach/recruiting coordinator (Louisville)
- Les Koenning, wide receivers coach (Mississippi State)
- Tommie Robinson, running backs coach (USC)
- Bruce Chambers, tight ends coach (retained from previous staff)
- Pat Moorer, head strength coach for football (Louisville)
For those keeping score at home, that means Texas will have an assistant head coach for offense, an offensive coordinator, an assistant head coach for defense and a defensive coordinator.
On the defensive side of the ball, everything figures to be pretty straightforward. Bedford was Strong's defensive coordinator at Louisville and is again in Austin, logically keeping a chain of command intact that produced a defense ranked first nationally in total defense and second in scoring defense.
The offensive side of the ball is where Strong will field most of his questions during Wednesday evening's press conference. Watson comes with Strong from Louisville, but Wickline holds the offensive coordinator title. Wickline's offensive lines at Oklahoma State allowed the Cowboys to annually crank out one of the most balanced shotgun-based spread offenses in college football, and Watson had offenses shotgun, spread offenses ranked among the top 20 nationally in passing and rushing at Nebraska. Both attacks figure to fit in nicely both in the spread-offense hotbed that is the Big 12 Conference and the spread-obsessed Texas recruiting grounds.
The question is whether or not Strong wants to go with that flow.
At Louisville, Watson's offense was a ball-control offense triggered primarily from under center. Should that scheme migrate from Louisville to Texas, Watson will have to promote practice time introducing the seven-step drop and teaching quarterbacks how to take a snap from center to quarterbacks that have operated out of the shotgun from birth. And that's only a slight exaggeration.
And then there is the issue of tempo. A defensive-minded head coach naturally would prefer his defense to be on the field for as few snaps as possible. Here's how Louisville stacked up against the teams Texas recruits against:
Plays Per Game, 2013
Texas Tech - 87.3
Baylor - 82.7
Texas - 77.3
Oklahoma State - 75.9
Texas A&M - 73.4
Oklahoma - 72.5
Louisville - 68.8
TCU - 68.5
Plays Defended Per Game
Louisville - 59.9
Oklahoma - 64.7
TCU - 73.8
Texas - 74.3
Texas A&M - 74.8
Baylor - 75.8
Texas Tech - 78.1
Importing a replica of Louisville's offense would be akin to walking into a Coca-Cola factory and asking them to make you a tube of toothpaste - or at least that's how it will be spun in recruiting.
Of course, this is all conjecture. Strong has said his offense will mirror that of his competitors. But we won't know for sure until we see it on the field.
That won't happen for a while, but we should at least find out who will call the plays. It's worth noting that, obviously, Watson called plays for Strong for the last three years, that Texas was reportedly subject to a $600,000 buyout should Wickline receive anything less than an offensive coordinator title, and that Koenning was a (non-play calling) offensive coordinator at Mississippi State.
There's a lot of cooks in this kitchen - and that's not counting the 100,000-plus in the stands.