Syracuse isn't planning on huddling too often, if ever in 2014. That could mean more than just offensive efficiency. It could spring the Orange into a group that it has, until now, only admired.
Conversation centered around Syracuse’s new, fast-paced offense ever since SU beat Minnesota in the Texas Bowl in December.
So on the first day of training camp, offensive coordinator George McDonald didn’t waste any time.
One hundred and sixty plays on Day One. One hundred and sixty more on Day Two. It was at his fingertips, the team that would carry out his plans to turn a middling Atlantic Coast Conference offense into a machine.
But the players’ responses to the increase in snaps told him, “Not so fast.” Not yet, at least.
“They noticed that we were dying and they didn’t know why. Then they realized we just ran 160 plays and that’s how fast we were going,” SU quarterback Terrel Hunt said. “Teams don’t average that in two games. That was the first two days of camp and we had to kick it back.
“But then we just started going faster and faster and no one was tired and everyone was ready to go.”
Syracuse’s new-look, no-huddle offense could have a little something for everybody. Tight ends previously relegated to one role and one spot will find themselves in a hybridized position. A spread-out attack could lead to fifth-year running back Prince-Tyson Gulley’s best season yet. The Orange’s defense, which worked against the offense in the spring and all of camp, is that much sharper heading into its second ACC season.
Then there’s the intangibles of an all-around sleeker system — from play-calling to route-running to the nuanced schematic wrinkles — that could put Syracuse football on a proverbial map. It’s the facet of the Orange’s no-huddle offense that is easy to lose in the shuffle, but may just matter the most.
Moving fast and not going into a huddle, that's a big swagger to have, man. That's a lot of swagger for us. It could be big for this program to get that identity. That edge.Steve Ishmael, freshman wide receiver
Part of the no-huddle fad, which has swept through college football and is seeping into the pros, can be traced back 11 years to Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium in Amherst, Mass. New Hampshire, led by head coach Sean McDonnell, trailed Massachusetts in the middle of the third quarter.
The Wildcats’ offense was sluggish at best, and McDonnell looked to offensive coordinator Chip Kelly to make a change.
Kelly took huddling out of the equation. The offense moved, the Minutemen defense grew tired and although UNH lost 44-30, something clicked.
“Once we did it to gain ground when we were behind we felt pretty comfortable and thought that maybe the best thing to do would be to run our whole offense that way,” McDonnell said. “The hardest thing to do was figure out the logistics and how to signal everything.”
To do that, Kelly looked at other programs with no-huddle offenses and sculpted a system that fit his personnel. New Hampshire toyed with the new approach for the rest of the 2003 season and went fully no-huddle at the start of 2004.
McDonnell doesn’t think that other programs followed Kelly’s guinea pig offense — the Wildcats’ stadium seats 8,000 fans and it has never played in a bowl game — but in a way, Syracuse has.
In the spring, McDonald and SU quarterbacks coach Tim Lester listed offenses the Orange had broken down while molding its own. One of them was Oregon’s, Kelly’s college brainchild, and another the Philadelphia Eagles’, Kelly’s NFL project.
It’s no coincidence that much of Syracuse’s new offense mirrors Kelly’s first experiment in Durham, N.H.
“There are only so many different ways you can run an offense like this,” SU center John Miller said. “It’s important that we see how other programs are doing it because it’s new to us. There is a common way that teams are successful and I think we’ve tapped into that.”
What’s different is how the Orange has fostered the change.
New Hampshire’s was quick and circumstantial, a necessity-based decision of low risk and high reward. SU’s shift in strategy is somewhat of a spillover from the Doug Marrone-Nathaniel Hackett era, when Ryan Nassib led Hackett’s up-tempo, pro-style offense, and has gained steam and shape over time.
In McDonald’s second game as offensive coordinator at the start of last season, Syracuse trailed Northwestern and made a Kelly-like switch. The offense spread out and with Drew Allen under center, found a groove. In the spring, after Hunt had earned the starting spot and helped the Orange finish the season on an upswing, McDonald went back to the idea and laid out the blueprint for his new scheme.
But unlike other years when Syracuse would teach the offense a new set every day of training camp, McDonald has worked on one for two days before moving on to another. Everyone’s learning, seniors and freshmen, starters and reserves, a backward way of sidestepping a learning curve.
“The beautiful thing about this for me is that they’ve all grown together,” McDonald said. “It’s just like having kids and raising them up, the raising part happened over the spring and now camp, but they’ve all been in the same boat.”
McDonald added the offense has struggled but is now “starting to see the progress of all the work they’ve put in.” The progress that surfaced at times during intra-squad scrimmages at Syracuse FanFest and Fort Drum and has the offense looking, in flashes, like it’s playing in fast-forward.
The key to moving so fast is quickly calling the play. While Hunt used to get the call from the sideline and relay it to the receivers, running backs and line, he now only has to worry about the front. The rest of the players get the play from their positional coach, with DeAndre Smith signaling to the running backs, Bobby Acosta to the tight ends, and so on.
It goes as fast as Hunt wants, but also gives him more time to make adjustments at the line. The time that Hunt used to take relaying plays to his teammates is now spent reading the defense — with five seconds to do so, instead of one or two.
“Those guys are picking up on signals really quick. They know what they’re doing and they’re executing on a high level,” Smith said. “There’s an edginess in that we’re really locked in and can really go as fast as we want.”
As far as raw tempo goes, SU is in the same company as the programs it looks up to. Reaching McDonald’s goals of 84 plays per game and 18 seconds per play would push it well ahead, but Hunt added an important word to the preseason rhetoric:
Execution.
“If you’re going fast and not completing any passes and not having any success then you’re just out there fooling around,” Hunt said. “Anyone can go fast, and some are successful like Oregon and some aren’t.”
Oregon, UCLA, Ohio State, Texas A&M, Texas Tech. They don’t just go fast. They win. Their offensive identities are coupled by success. Their speed is illuminated by statistics.
Whether Syracuse joins that class is now up to the 2014 team.
