Overall
The truth of the matter is that no matter how interested in football you are, you can’t really know every coach and what they’re all about. Coach Enos coached at my alma mater while I was there and in the sports program. Yet, my recollection of him was pretty meh. That was heavily influenced by the fact that Missouri State did what they do best; lose a lot of football games. Then you think of the Arkansas offense’s under Bielema and you think of a boring, three yards and a cloud of dust philosophy.
For these reasons I went into this study thinking I was going to come out pretty down on the hire. A nomadic coach who seemed to move from place-to-place quite often, he is not a candidate I would initially have on my list in my mental rolodex. Also, admittedly, I put a lot of time into Major Applewhite and was pretty happy with his offense, so I wanted that hire to come to fruition.
After spending many hours reviewing everything about Coach Enos and how he develops QB’s and runs an offense I have to say that this hire is going to end up being the right one. Does this hire represent “the cutting edge offense” that Manny Diaz promised? Do you believe the Kansas City Chiefs offense to be cutting edge? Because that is the offense that Enos most resembles in my mind. The Chiefs do not run a wide-open spread offense. They run an offense predicated on motion, play-action, and crossers. Exactly what Enos has his offense predicated on for years. It’s not just the one play above that is reminiscent of the Chiefs offense, but rather in the way they use motion, deep shots, play-action, screens, and an elite TE to create matchups that favor the offense and make it where the defense cannot win.
Positives
- Consistently develops QB’s at every stop. From Missouri State, to Alabama, every QB that Enos has been around has performed their best under him.
- Motion. The offense for Enos uses motion to diagnose what the defense is doing pre-snap and puts the defense in a position that they cannot win by having to cover two receivers with one defender on multiple occasions.
- Play-action. Regardless of your ability to run the ball, play-action works. Having play-action as the foundation for your offense is just smart football and Enos uses it liberally.
- Head Coaching Experience. Just like Major Applewhite & Larry Fedora, Enos has experience as a Head Coach. Unlike the other two, he is also bringing experience working under a legendary coach and program-builder in Nick Saban. As Manny Diaz works to establish his own program at Miami, he can bounce ideas off of Enos and compare and contrast.
- No Prior Link to Coach Diaz. Coach Enos has never worked previously with Manny Diaz. To me, this is a major plus, as I hoped we would avoid a coaching staff of “Facebook friends” for Coach Diaz. Building an offensive staff with outside ideas and perceptions is key to having a healthy and challenging culture.
- Passing Game. Coach Enos is a passing game savant and there is no doubt about it. At every stop that he has called plays he has developed a great passing offense. At every stop that he has been a QB coach he has developed a great passing QB. It is clear to me that he understands how to teach the passing game and how to call passing concepts. In an increasingly pass-happy game- reliant on the QB position- his mix of experience and success in this area is top-notch.
- Middle-of-the-Field. Statistically speaking, the MOF is the most efficient area for an offense to attack. Too often last year the MOF was not even a consideration for the offense, preferring to rely on out-breaking routes. Coach Enos utilizes this area of the field very well.
- Counters. A play-caller needs to have a rhythm and an understanding of when to call certain plays. Coach Enos has a great feel for when to call certain plays and has a counter for every formation to combat a defense getting too aggressive through film study. There were times in his film that I would mutter to myself, “I hope he…” based on what the defense was doing and almost every time the offense had the perfect counter for what the defense was doing. It was football poetry at times.
- Game Planning. Coach Enos is excellent at scripting the first few drives of a game on offense and taking advantage of what the defense does poorly. It is really exciting to see a game-plan specific attack each week.
Negatives
- Running Game. I did not feel as though the run game was especially imaginative on Enos’ film. Too often the run game was ordinary, or relied on broken tackles to be successful. There were some big plays that helped to prop up the stats, but for the most part his run games have been ordinary. Though he does run an effective rushing offense in the red zone (where running the ball is most effective from an efficiency standpoint).
- Nomadic Presence. While it is admirable that he is willing to leave a stop to work towards his football goals, he also has never stayed in one place for long, even going so far to resign as a head coach to move back to an OC role. Will he be a presence with the program long enough to take roots and really grow the system?
- Personally, I would prefer more space-and-pace, as I believe that is where the future of offense is headed. There are two ways to hurt a defense pre-snap. 1. With pace-and-space. Get your guys into space and use tempo to press the advantage 2. Formations and motion. Relies on motion to diagnose defense and get players in position to make plays. Utilizing formations to press advantage. Enos definitely falls into category 2, but I would like to see more of category 1 because south Florida players grow up with simple pace-and-space spread offenses.
Data
How does Coach Enos stack up from a data perspective at his stops calling plays (I. E. there will be no Alabama data in these results)? There were several names who grew favor among the Miami fanbase and I will list many of them here for comparison’ sake.
There is no other way to say it other than to say the data suggests that Dan Enos is one of the very best offensive play-callers in all of college football. His schemes put his players in position to make simple reads and plays and be efficient throwing the football with a CAREER 8.10 Yards Per Pass against peer competition. Here is a chart showing some of the publicized candidates in their careers calling plays:
We’ve seen that Enos can call a game that is efficient in the passing game, but how does he stack up in terms of having an explosive offense? Lots of double-TE and double-RB sets would cause the offense to be less explosive, correct? He has averaged .434 Points Per Play against peer competition for his career. He is the only one of the group who has called plays against several years’ worth of SEC competition as well. Yost is slightly ahead at .437, but much of his play-calling was spent in the Big-12, where defense is much more optional.
I mentioned that if there was a knock on Enos’ offense, it would be in the running game. Here are the candidates on a Yards Per Rush basis:
Here are the results for each of the candidates in simple numbers format:
Once you add the fact that Enos has developed multiple QB’s to their best season, it is clear that Enos is the winner amongst these candidates. He has shown the ability to beat you with multiple formations, the ability to call plays, the ability to develop QB’s, learned under the best coach in the business last year, and has head coaching experience of his own.
As I said, I went into this exercise a little down because he is not the wide-open pace-and-space shiny toy that I had envisioned. I had envisioned Enos being a tight-formation, old-school offensive system that wants to control TOP and have three yards and a cloud of dust. Once you start to see the results at every stop he’s called plays, you really see that Enos is a passing game savant and that Coach Diaz just took one of the best OC minds in all of college football and brought him to our program.
This hire is an absolute home run in my review of film and data. Be excited Miami fans. Be excited.
