Ever since the portal opened up, we’ve had many a discussion on how to build a team. Do you go the Deion Sanders or G.J. Kinne route and just sign a bunch of players? Hire a new coach that’ll go Curt Cignetti or Charles Huff and bring his roster with him? Plug some holes in the roster like Ryan Day or Dan Lanning? Or do you completely deny the portal’s existence like Dabo Swinney?
Portal and recruiting strategies will always be discussed. It’s part of the framework of college football as a whole. And we’re starting to see a new strategy form and it’s showing early signs of success. Why would you just sign a quarterback? Why not import an entire offense?
The thought process
Year in and year out, we see experience often win out. Quarterbacks that have time in a system almost always do better.
We don’t want to discount the players that show up and ball out in their first season, like D.J. Lagway, or long-tenured graduate transfers like Cam Ward, but the experienced quarterback allows the coordinator to open up the scheme more and feel more comfortable with their guy calling the shots.
That’s what we’ll be looking at today: teams that bring in a quarterback-offensive playcaller duo. That can be as a head coach or as a coordinator, but the key is to have the offensive playcaller and quarterback with experience together and on the same page.
We’ve seen it play out in the past. Perhaps the most relevant, yet obscure case is that of Western Kentucky. After lighting up scoreboards at Houston Baptist leading up to and during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Hilltopper head coach Tyson Helton needed a new coach. He elected to hire away offensive wunderkind Zach Kittley (now Florida Atlantic’s head coach) from the FCS program to install his Air Raid in Bowling Green.
It wasn’t just Kittley heading to the Hilltoppers. He brought his senior quarterback with him - Bailey Zappe. How did it go? How does setting NCAA records for passing yards (5,987) and passing touchdowns (62) in a season sound?
So yeah, that worked out pretty well. But we didn’t see it repeated much post-Zappe. Deigo Pavia and Tim Beck at Vanderbilt is the only other major pairing I can think of. Before this season, at least.
The current batch
In my Season Preview, I counted seven teams that followed the Kittley-Zappe formula of importing a quarterback and playcaller. Let’s run through them, shall we?
We’ll start in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where Tyson Helton has double-dipped. This time, he went down to Abilene Christian to pull his new dynamic duo. New Hilltopper offensive coordinator Rich Bowie has a similar mold to Kittley, running an Air Raid variant that tore through the FCS ranks. He brings quarterback Maverick McIvor with him. Currently, the Hilltoppers sit at 5-2, with McIvor ranking 78th in the nation with 0.06 EPA/dropback.
Speaking of Western Kentucky, the duo of Kittley and quarterback Caden Veltkamp are the starting point of the rebuild down at Florida Atlantic. The Owls are 3-4 and sit at 2-2 in American play, though their losses are to the top of the league in USF and Memphis. After a slow start, Veltkamp has eclipsed the 2,000 yard mark, but ranks 58th in QBR and 105th in EPA/dropback.
Over in the Big 12, Utah is counting on the duo of Jason Beck and Devon Dampier, imported from New Mexico, to kickstart the offense. They’ve been up and down. The Utes just fell out of the SID Sports rankings after a Holy War loss, and Dampier has looked uncomfortable unless he’s off schedule. Dampier ranks 41st in EPA/dropback. He’s also adding 0.26 EPA/rush, ranking 42nd in the nation and giving the dual-threat an astounding 0.42 EPA/touch overall.
In Oklahoma State’s effort to salvage a Mike Gundy-led disaster, the Pokes threw their hat behind the ring with new offensive playcaller Doug Meacham coming over from TCU along with quarterback Hauss Hejny. Hejny did start the season alright, completing half of his 10 attempts for 96 yards and a score, but he broke his foot in that season-opening action and is set to miss multiple weeks, if not the whole season. So we can’t chalk that one up to much.
Speaking of the state of Oklahoma, perhaps the nation’s most well-known pairing is the Sooners’ import of Ben Arbuckle and John Mateer to Norman by way of Washington State. Mateer doesn’t have the gaudy stat totals - he only ranks 44th in EPA/dropback and 36th in QBR - but he does have the hype. He was in the Heisman conversation until a hand injury threatened to derail his system. A strong showing against South Carolina last week might show that Mateer is back on track, though.
New Mexico is all in on Idaho-made magic, with new head coach Jason Eck bringing his playcaller, Luke Schleunser, and quarterback, Jack Layne, with him to Albuquerque from Moscow. The Lobos don’t look great this year, but they can at least hang their hats on a 35-10 win over UCLA in the Rose Bowl. Layne hasn’t had the same success as with the Vandals in the FCS ranks. He ranks 84th in EPA/dropback and 104th in QBR with eight touchdowns and eight interceptions.
Marshall, in a full overhaul, is bringing Jacksonville State coordinator Rod Smith and quarterback Zion Turner to Huntington. Turner started the season hot, but has since been supplanted by Syracuse transfer Carlos Del Rio-Wilson, so the Thundering Herd are out.
Does Florida State count? After all, Tommy Castellanos was a Gus Malzahn recruit. I’m going to say it doesn’t, but is something worth considering here.
The Verdict
We’ve only really got a half season to look at these numbers, but it’s hard to see sustained success. Dampier and Beck in Utah have been up and down. Layne and Turner have been replaceable. Hejny’s hurt.
Perhaps John Mateer and Ben Arbuckle are the best-case scenario. The hand injury to Mateer was unfortunate, and he’s showing a lot of guts playing through that injury. But it’s clearly affecting him. We saw that in the Red River Shootout two weeks ago when he just didn’t look like his normally effective self.
So, what’s the verdict here? Should you import your offense?
The answer isn’t as simple as just parsing those above numbers and seeing what it spits out. As with anything in college football, you need context.
Of the eight (I’ll count Florida State and Marshall in this case) quarterback-playcaller pairings, three are first-time head coaches taking over a roster in need of a total rebuild (Florida Atlantic, Marshall, New Mexico). Four are in situations where the head coach is under a lot of pressure and is facing either a firing or forced retirement (Florida State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Utah). The last, Western Kentucky, has built their program around doing this.
Sure, we’ve seen success stories like mentioned earlier with Pavia and Zappe, but more often than not, teams that are making these moves aren’t good. That’s kind of a given. If you’re doing well, you’re not looking to shake up your entire offense.
If we’re going to bottle this up into one big, emphatic answer, I’d have to go with a no. Importing an entire offensive system isn’t a good practice.
Is that going to stop coaches from chasing this? Absolutely not.
College football is a copycat game. You see success like Pavia, or Zappe, or even Mateer and you think that’s the ticket to taking the next step. But the best roster construction is still building a program and developing your talent.
To make a long story short, you’ll see these pairings throughout the season and into the future. Take them with a grain of salt. We’ve seen more implosions than successes with this method.
Have any questions, ideas, article pitches, or information? With the new Substack features, you can directly message me! Hit the button below to send me a message, or reach out via email to griffin@sid-sports.com, or find us on your favorite social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Substack Notes and Bluesky.