Inside the Gameplan: Strong's Strategy

As a defensive-minded coach, Charlie Strong has an exact vision for how his Texas defense is going to work and how it will overcome the spread offenses in the conference.

His 3-3 Under system is ideal for the modern era in how it can attack the weak spots in a spread offense, create confusion for the QB in ID’ing his reads, and still allow the defense to play a physical, bend-don’t-break brand of ball that keeps opponent scores down to manageable levels.

This system wants for athleticism and toughness above all else, but the relative simplicity of the schemes allows Strong to get youth on the field playing fast and violent football in relatively short periods of time.

Texas’ defensive staff is well stocked with coaches who teach compatible techniques and there are three high quality DB coaches on campus in Vaughn, Bedford, and Strong that guarantee the D’s most crucial position is always well-coached.

There is little wanting in the Strong regime on the defensive side of the ball.

But what is Strong’s guiding philosophy on offense?

There’s no “3-3 Under” equivalent on offense for Charlie, rather what we see from his head coaching career is more of a broad vision with Strong hiring staff from different backgrounds to work out the specifics on his behalf.

Charlie’s broad vision for the offense

Defensive coaches like Strong are usually looking to win games by controlling the flow of the game with defense, their personal area of comfort and expertise. Charlie’s offensive vision appears to flow from the starting point that the team will be defined by having a fast, physical defense and that the offense should work in tandem with the established strategies on defense.

Since the defense is heavy on disguise, there’s a high value on keeping them off the field so the opponent doesn’t have opportunities to probe them or learn to recognize their shifts. With the defense creating opportunities in field position, the offense wants to be efficient in the red zone to maximize scoring opportunities. Low score totals yielded by the defense mean that fewer points are required from the offense to win so there’s no rush to score and put the defense back on the field.

Instead, the means to victory is controlling the game and squeezing the life out of opponents, often playing comfortably ahead with a two-possession lead. This is a pretty standard philosophy for defensive-driven teams.

Strong’s hires and statements made before this last offseason reflected this standard desire to control the ball on offense and physically dominate opponents. This is exactly what he experienced with Lou Holtz in charge at South Carolina and with Urban Meyer at Florida, offenses that ran the ball, ran clock, and relied on his defenses to help keep the opponent subdued and allow the offense to avoid having to rely on quick drives or the passing game.

In the hires of Mike Sanford, who came from the Urban Meyer tree, and then Shawn Watson from the Barnett and Callahan school of pro-style offense, we see a re-occurring interest in ball-control.

Watson was hired before the 2011 season and took over for Sanford when the Louisville offense was struggling, which meant that Strong had already hired the former OC and QB coach with a West Coast background to work alongside a spread coordinator suggesting that above all Strong was looking for someone that could effectively teach a talent like Bridgewater how to unlock his potential.

Will Watson be that guy for Tyrone Swoopes, Jerrod Heard, or Kai Locksley?

Beyond ball control, it’d make sense for a defensive minded coach like Strong to have a guiding vision on offense that is shaped by his experience in coaching great defenses.

Defense is largely dependent on talent and athleticism in a way that simply isn’t true for offense. Whereas slower players can rely on physicality and skill to move the ball down the field, defenders have to respond to what the offense is doing. They have to recognize it, and then position themselves to stop it, which is made easier by mental processing but also generally requires pure speed and athleticism.

It’d make sense if Strong’s vision for offense was to accumulate aggressive and athletic players and teach them to play fast and physical on the field, just as it is for his defense. However, the West Coast offense is no longer the “best practice” for achieving that goal.

Charlie’s philosophy on offense

With the hires of Sanford, the promotion of Watson, and the assembly of the Texas offensive staff there is no consistent offensive philosophy for achieving either the goal of controlling the ball or matching Strong’s defensive vision to unleash aggressive athletes in simple schemes.

The only consistent trait in Strong’s initial hires was an emphasis on getting good teachers, suggesting that his defensive focus on simplicity and technique does factor into his broad vision for the offense.

OC/OL coach Wickline was the big splash hire, a spread guru who’d been turning 2/3 star players into amazing offensive units that dominated the league in the Weeden-to-Blackmon era of Cowboy football. His specialty was teaching zone-based running games that could be executed at high proficiency along with an Air Raid passing game.

AHC/Offensive Czar/QB coach Shawn Watson was the hire that no one was terribly excited about but most understood. His tutelage of Teddy Bridgewater and development of the Louisville multiple pro-style system to unleash him had a bigger role in earning Strong his chance at the Texas job than did the Cardinals’ salty defense.

WR coach Les Koenning was coming off multiple seasons working with Dan Mullen in an Urban-spread system that shared little in common with either Watson’s MWC offense or the Holgo-Raid that Wickline had thrived under.

RB coach Tommie Robinson had a pro-style background and has been highly effective thus far at teaching the position but it hardly matters in terms of overall philosophy as there isn’t necessarily a great difference in the play of the back from system to system.

TE coach Bruce Chambers was kept aboard to carry over Mack Brown’s famous recruiting successes within the state and help introduce Charlie and Co. to a new region.

It’s worth noting that immediately after the season Strong fired two coaches and sent Wickline and Watson around the country to study and try to build a coherent vision on offense.

The vision for a ball-control offense that was developed before the 2014 season was poorly implemented. Essentially Watson tried to rebuild the multiple Louisville offense with a few extra spread tweaks mixed in but he did so while surrounded by various spread gurus and bad recruiters. The result of Texas’ attempt to be a “multiple pro-style” offense with a decimated roster and misfit staff was that Texas was average or worse at a bunch of different schemes.

Strong’s response to this, and to the makeup of the 2015 roster, was to change course and instead embrace the spread philosophy that the state’s high schools have made the norm around the league. If you can’t beat ’em….

He then brought aboard Jay Norvell, who has a background in both the Watson-esque multiple pro-style systems as well as in adapting pro-style concepts to a spread/up-tempo philosophy. The hallmark of the OU offenses where he worked previously was simplicity with the aim of winning through execution, essentially an offensive doppelganger of Strong’s defensive approach.

Strong also brought aboard Jeff Traylor, a great mind amongst Texas HS coaches, to ostensibly help the transition to the spread (which he’s done whether that was Strong’s goal or not) and to supply the in-state connections and recruiting know-how that Chambers was supposed to possess.

While Traylor’s approach is similarly geared around simplicity, it features concepts that came up through the high school ranks such as RPOs rather than simplifying pro-style schemes and running them fast.

In the spring game, we saw a new concoction on offense that reflected the current roster as well as conglomerating the expertise of the new staff. Maybe more accurately, we saw two competing visions for the future in the high school influenced, 3rd generation offense oriented around Heard and the more pro-influenced, 2nd generation offense oriented around Swoopes.

Assuming Heard were to grow enough over the summer and fall in the passing game to execute the 3rd Gen offense, it could conceivably fulfill Strong’s apparent broader vision for an offense that can control the ball (via the power run game and RPOs) while working on a relatively simple level that allows aggressive athletes to play fast.

If not, the offense is left with the more complex system built around Swoopes’ rather extensive but unrefined skill set and makes use of the West Coast passing game that Norvell and Watson have made their names teaching.

Interestingly neither system relies as much on Wickline’s expertise in building a fully loaded run game built around zone principles as both systems emphasized gap schemes. Also interesting is the fact that only one of these two systems reflects a philosophy that Watson, Norvell, or Wickline have run in the past, which is the 2nd generation system that Swoopes is operating.

Strong’s plan for building an offensive philosophy

In lieu of an actual philosophy for building an offense to complement his defense, Strong’s preferred strategy seems to creating a competition of ideas and then finding solutions through trial and error. So he sticks a bunch of talented people in the offensive room, gives them broad directives, and then waits to see what results come out so he can adjust.

If the current staff are unable to build a cohesive strategy for 2015 that makes use of the current roster while setting up the team for the future, than presumably Strong will pull the trigger to bring aboard different coaches in an effort to find the right combination that will achieve his aims.

Right now Watson is the main man in charge of making all this work but he’s now operating outside of the pro-style confines where he made his name before this point. By all accounts he seems willing and eager to adapt the system to the talent currently around him and the new, RPO-driven approach is actually philosophically similar to what he taught Joel Klatt back in the day even if it’s completely different tactically.

The RPO spread-option offense’s emphasis on giving the QB multiple pre- and post-snap options on where to go with the ball and how to control defenders is right up Watson’s alley, but in the past he did this with pro-style tools such as TE motion, packaged passing concepts, and audible calls at the line.

Whether he’s the man for achieving Strong’s objectives will depend on whether an old dog can learn new tricks.

As the current situation at Texas demonstrates, Strong’s methodology for building offenses carries certain strengths and weaknesses. On the bright side, he’s not a slave to any systems that would have lower chances for success at Texas, such as a plodding pro-style system that would require a veteran QB and multiple tight ends.

On the downside, he doesn’t have a vision for a particularly aggressive offensive philosophy.

Most importantly, since he lacks the mastery over an offensive system like his own 3-3 Under, he’s basically at the mercy of his own ability to identify and hire offensive coaches who can supply it for him. He needs subordinates like Stonewall Jackson and Pete Longstreet who could receive broad objectives from Robert E. Lee and then fulfill them with independent and flexible decision-making.

Strong isn’t going to become a master of a specific brand of offense anytime soon, he doesn’t seem inclined to do so and if his time with Urban Meyer didn’t impress that system upon him it’s unlikely that any other offensive coach will lose him from his detached pragmatism about what happens in the offensive room.

So what will happen?

In terms of the talent within the state and in the ranks of current Longhorn underclassmen, the direction for the Texas offense is rather obvious. Locksley and Heard are going to make the most of an up-tempo, spread-option offense that uses both their legs and arms to threaten the whole field while allowing them to master RPO schemes that play out like pick’n’roll basketball with their role in the offense as lead guards who determine where the ball should go and occasionally call their own number.

This may prove to require some time for them to master but it’s not a huge leap from the more run heavy spread-option systems that either ran in high school.

Traylor’s offers at TE, the spring game film on his charges, and how he utilized the position in high school suggest a move away from fielding multiple TE sets with dual-threat receiver/blockers but instead getting H-back/FB players that can be mobile blocking surfaces with receiving left primarily to the wideouts. Again, this portends a move towards more of a 3rd generation approach than a pro-style system where tight ends learn to run timing routes.

Finally, the presence of talents like Duke Catalon and Chris Warren on the roster and the personal interest Strong took in getting the latter player on campus guarantee that Texas will look to the spread only to the extent that it allows for a physical running game. This can be difficult to do unless the passing game is designed to complement the run game – RPOs and play-action do this – West Coast timing patterns do not.

So if Texas follows Strong’s pragmatic approach, they’re likely to stick with a more option-oriented system, as the existing talent simply isn’t there for another approach to achieve the desired results.

So either through trial and error with the current staff or future offseason shuffles, Charlie’s Longhorns will probably end up further emulating the local models for offense. Hopefully this happens with enough foresight and cohesion from the staff to complement Strong’s more precisely defined defense sooner than later.