Is It Only A Matter of Time?

There have been lots of rumblings in Miami about offensive coordinator Patrick Nix. The criticism goes from Nix being too conservative to not having his players prepared enough on gameday and even being accused of lousy playcalling. Nix’s response (he joked), “We've petitioned to the NCAA to get an extra 20 hours and get a 40-hour week, but they haven't seemed to buy it yet,". So his excuse (and that’s exactly what it is) is that he doesn’t have enough time to teach his young team his system. He says that 20 hours a week is not a reasonable time for college kids to learn an offensive system in 1 or 2 years.

That response made me think. In his second year, is Nix’s excuse valid? Is it really too much to expect a player to learn an offensive system in a year or even 2? I did some research to see if, indeed, it just takes time. I went searching the rest of college football to see if any of the top offenses in the country had 1st year or 2nd year coordinators. What I found was quite surprising.

-As of Thursday, October 16th, the number 1 offense in the country is University of Tulsa. Gus Malzahn is the offensive coordinator. He’s in his second season. They average 602.2 YPG of total offense. That ranks number 1. They average 53.2 points per game, which also ranks them number 1 in the country. What did Malzahn’s offense do in 2007? In his first season Tulsa averaged 549.6 YPG. That was also good for number 1 in the country. His team scored 41.1 PPG, good for number 6 in the country.

-Dana Holgorsen is in his 1st season as offensive coordinator at Houston. Under Holgorsen, the Cougars boast the number 4 offense in the nation at 561 YPG. They also average 38.5 PPG, which is tied for 14th (Florida) in the country. I want to reiterate this is Holgorsen’s 1st season there.

- Chip Kelly is in his second season as the offensive coordinator at the University of Oregon. His offense currently ranks 12th in the nation at 475.2 YPG and 10th in the nation scoring at 39.7 PPG. In his first season, in 2007, his offense averaged 481.2 YPG which was good for 10th in the country and averaged 38.2 PPG, which was good for 10th.

-Doug Nussmeier is in his first season as offensive coordinator at Fresno State. His offense averages 447 YPG, good for 21 in the country. Fresno puts up 33.2 PPG, good for 30th in the nation.

I only looked up the top 25 offenses because it was a lot of work to find out that information. There were more examples down the line but this is enough to prove my point. Don’t tell me it’s impossible to have success in 1 or 2 years. A good offensive coordinator finds a way to have success. The above guys have found a way to teach their players to execute their system in less than 1 or 2 years. The excuse of not having enough time is not valid.