Shotgun Snaps are Here to Stay in Liam Coen's Offense

Kirby Lee | USA TODAY Sports

Liam Coen’s move to Lexington is the story of the offseason for the Kentucky football program. The former L.A. Rams assistant quarterbacks coach is charged with revitalizing a stale UK offense.

It’s still early in the journey for Coen. Friday morning he joined the Voice of the Wildcats on The Leach Report to discuss what he’s been up to since arriving in Central Kentucky. His first act as offensive coordinator was rather simple.

“We did a pretty thorough personnel evaluation with the staff, just really diving into the personnel because at the end of the day, I have opinions and things, philosophies that I would like to instill and do here, but if it doesn’t match our personnel then it’s probably not the best fit,” Coen said.

That evaluation could not take place on a practice field. Coaches have a few hours a week where they can meet with players, albeit without a football being used. To see if the shoe fits certain feet, coaches studied film and had lengthy conversations with players. One talk with a UK quarterback led to a surprising revelation.

“We were so much under center in Los Angeles and we would like to be that here, but a lot of these quarterbacks have never taken a snap under center before really in games,” said Coen. “Talking to Joey Gatewood, he’s never taken a snap under center in a game ever, not even in Pop Warner or in high school. They’ve been doing it here at Kentucky in practice over the last couple years, so they’ve gotten some reps at it.”

As much as Coen would like to operate most of the offense under center, it might not be a battle worth fighting. His time with the players is limited. Why waste all of it on perfecting footwork out of a snap when there are more important things to work on in the passing game.

“That’s a lot of time invested taking the snap under center, handing the ball off. It sounds elementary to us, but it’s so much more natural for these kids to take a shotgun snap and hand the ball off or to take a drop from the shotgun or the pistol. It’s a lot more natural for them and there’s other things we need to focus on.”

Things could change once Coen’s able to work with the players in spring practice. For now, expect to still see plenty of shotgun mixed in with snaps under center in Coen’s offense.

Of course, Coen did not get too detailed elsewhere in his observations of the team, however, he happily heaped praise on Josh Ali’s work ethic. Coen’s also excited to see what the ground game can do with Chris Rodriguez running behind the Big Blue Wall.

“We’re big up front. We’re big. We’ve got a running back, a number of backs, but specifically Chris Rodriguez that I think can run some of the concepts that we’d like to in the run game, getting downhill on people, mixing up a little bit of the outside stretch run game with some of the power run game that we’d like to be able to instill.”

Spring practice will be up and running before you know it. Until then, listen to the rest of Coen’s conversation on The Leach Report.