Well, it is NOW official. Coach Diaz and Miami have found their man in Dan Enos. Here at Upon Further Review I will take a look at Coach Enos and his career prior to coming to Miami. I will look at both data and film of previous stops to watch his offense evolve and also to see if the data matches the film. Buckle up, it’ll be another in-depth look.
Missouri State
Coach Enos was hired to be the first OC for HC Terry Allen at Missouri State. At the age of 31 Coach Enos landed his first DI OC job in 1999. Now, I have a bit of a secret to share with you all; Missouri State is my alma mater for both undergrad and graduate work and I was at Missouri State in 1999 and am familiar with Coach Enos from that time.
Here is what you should know about Enos from his lone season at Missouri State: He is the greatest OC in the program’s history. The school is not known for football (it is known for baseball and basketball), but here are the results for the offense under Enos in relation to their seasons since:
1st: Completion percentage, Passing Yards, Passing TD’s, Yards Per Pass, Yards Per Play, Points Per Play, Fewest Sacks Allowed
2nd: Scoring Average, Total Touchdowns
In his first job as an OC at a DI school, at the age of 31, his offense put up these results in year one. In fact, the school has never had a season with 8 yards per pass, or 6 yards per play other than his lone season and they were well-above those marks at 8.47 and 6.47 respectively.
As for the film, there isn’t much film on a bad I-AA football team from 1999, but I’ll share what I’ve found.
This is 21-personnel in a traditional I-formation. They motioned the FB to the right and then the run was a counter back off the action to the left and the RB had a huge hole if not for a DT beating his man quickly.
Swing pass to the RB picks up the 1st down, but the QB sure missed the FB leaking into the flat for what could’ve been a big gain. I knew the QB, he was a transfer from Indiana and loved Coach Enos.
It was definitely a lot of physical, I-formation, tight-formation football in this game. They lost the game, but that’s because they tend to lose lots of football games.
This would kick off a very nomadic coaching career for Coach Enos. He would leave Missouri State after one year to become the QB coach at Western Michigan, in his first FBS coaching position.
Western Michigan
Coach Enos took over the QB coaching position and was tasked with developing a new QB once again. This time Jeff Welsh became the new QB and had to replace one of the best QB’s in program history in Tim Lester. Lester completed 60% of his passes, averaged 7.7 yards per attempt, with a 34/13 TD/Int ratio for an overall rating of 143.4. Coach Enos helped get Welsh ready for the job as Western Michigan improved from 7-5 to 9-3 overall. Welsh completed 59% of his passes, averaged 7.2 yards per attempt, with a 15/12 TD/Int ratio for an overall rating of 125.9.
After a full season of working with Welsh, Enos helped develop him into a top-shelf passing QB as Welsh completed 63% of his passes, averaged 8.0 yards per attempt, with a 15/4 TD/Int ratio. Unfortunately, Welsh got injured halfway through the year and things went south from there.
North Dakota State
Continuing the trend of moving to multiple spots in a short period of time, Coach Enos next moved to a traditional power at the lower levels in North Dakota State. Wanting to get back to calling plays, this was an odd fit as a coach with a passing background moving to a school with a traditional rushing background. His offense averaged over 30 points per game, had a 16/8 TD/Int ratio in the passing game, but was merely average in its metrics.
67.7% completion rate, 16-8 TD/Int ratio, 6.57 Yards Per Pass, 4.18 Yards Per Rush, 5.23 Yards Per Play, .443 Points Per Play. All of the Yards Per Play numbers were the worst of his play calling career. This was DII at the time, so the numbers are not included in his overall profile because I did not include anything but peer data for all play callers at the Division I level.
Central Michigan
Enos then spent time at Cincinnati and Michigan State coaching QB’s and RB’s before landing his first HC gig with Central Michigan, replacing Butch Jones, who left for Tennessee. Central Michigan’s best QB in school history also left for the NFL (Dan Lefevour), leaving Coach Enos a complete rebuilding job.
As a HC, Enos was marginal at Central Michigan, but I wanted to get a quick look at how he ran his offense in his first stop as a HC (who also called plays). This game against Virginia Tech was obviously a mismatch from a talent standpoint, but you can get an idea of things schematically.
Comes in his normal 21 personnel look. Offset-I formation.
Switch concept causes a natural pick play. RB leaks into the flat after the switch causes LB’s to drop. Easy completion for 6 yards. This is a pretty smart strategy. You have a QB making one of his first starts of his career, so you get him a simple, easy read to get him feeling ok and in the game.
Next play is a 22-personnel out of single-back formation. Motions slot, defense gives away a CB blitz look early. This appears to be a zone defense from the way they’re playing the motion.
It was a zone defense and the play was a counter-trey run backside. S fills hard and it gets nothing. I do like motion to get a blocker to the edge of the defense. VT just isn’t respecting the offense deep.
3rd down look is more spread out. Shotgun, trips left, single-back to the right of the QB.
It’s a bust, as the HB is supposed to pick up the DE as the TE releases into a pass pattern. The QB uses his legs to release into the spot at the top of the screen and runs for 21 yards.
Another 3rd down play and again they go shotgun with 3-wide but the formation is a 2 x 1 look.
It’s not often you see a 3rd down play where the QB can basically choose where he wants to pick up the 1st down, but this one has several options. The play is a swing to the RB as CMU saw the blitz off the edge coming. RB is open immediately and it goes for a 1st down. Look at the seam for the TE who is looking back at the QB at the 1st down marker. He is wide open for a big play if the QB chooses that. I’m sure the hot read was built-in to the play call and the QB is supposed to go there immediately on the blitz, but that seam is a busted assignment. Then, to the field side they are running a clear-out route deep and coming underneath it with the out route and that is open if he looks that way and forces the defender to stay deep enough to cover that deep route and then sink down on the out. It’s impressive understanding from the offense as to what the defense is doing.
Little more spread out on the next play. I think this play formation is something you could see a lot at Miami with Enos. Cam’Ron and DeeJay fit this perfectly with their pass catching ability and ability to do different things.
Screen out of it for a nice gain. I tend to spend a lot of time on the 1st drive of the game because it is a look into what the coaching staff and play caller saw as potential areas to exploit. Once the game gets going too far you are reacting to game situations, but the start is very much “coaching influenced.” Enos is doing well against a far superior opponent on the road.
One critique that I hope to see improve in subsequent drives/games: the least efficient play call in football is the 2nd & 10 run after an incomplete pass. Football coaches have been doing this for years thinking it will make for a more manageable 3rd down, but why not be prepared to try and pick up the 1st down without ever getting to 3rd down with a non-predictable play call? Thus far, they’ve run the dive on every 2nd & 10 after an incompletion.
On another 3rd down you can see a small glimpse of the coaching of the QB’s. QB is reading downfield first. Went deep left, middle, then came to his third read out wide in a swing pass to the RB in space who picked up the 1st down. A familiar trend for Miami’s QB’s is to go one read, look at pass rush, pull the ball down, run.
This should’ve been a give. No idea why the QB is reading this as a keep. I hope to see RPO’s out of this look where you flip the ball out to the WR behind the LOS and you can block downfield off this look.
Motion across. #43 follows. Obviously man-to-man coverage. If you count the defense, you can see this is a no deep safety look. All 11 guys are right here and the CB is way off in coverage. The QB should see this and say to himself, “I’ve got 1-on-1 coverage on the outside, no S help. This can be a TD.
Play action to this side has the CB’s attention. Look at the far CB in his backpedal take his eye off his man to make sure it’s not a run play to that side.
And the QB saw all the things I’d like for him to see and it’s a TD. This is a great look for the coaching staff as well that they had the team prepared to see these things to start the game on the road. 13-play, 80-yard TD drive.
Tyrod Taylor and the Virginia Tech offense was much too much for CMU in this one, but I am encouraged at the play-calling and designs thus far.
The next game I reviewed was the 2012 Little Caesar’s Bowl against Western Kentucky. That happened to be Willie Taggart’s team, though he left to coach South Florida.
I chose the bowl game to again get a feel for his game planning prowess. In a bowl game, you have several extra weeks of preparation, you generally get healthier as a team, and you are facing a pretty equal foe in most cases.
Starting off, Enos suspended three WR’s for the game, including two of his top three WR’s. Titus is the older brother of Corey Davis, and was a fringe NFL player. Davis broke the receiving yards and receiving TD’s records previously held by Antonio Brown.
Started out in 22-personnel with I-formation. Motion H-back across formation to other side to make a double TE look, one on each edge. Play-action and flip it out to the FB for 6-yards. Again, you see a consistent theme with Coach Enos as a playcaller. He likes to get his QB in rhythm with an early pass completion that is simple and high-percentage.
Central Michigan definitely has some talent on their roster. Fisher went #1 overall in the draft. Addae starts for the Chargers at S.
Incomplete on 3rd down, but they held the TE off play-action who would’ve been wide-open without the hold.
Another 3rd down and they run a staple of offensive football. Outside WR runs upfield, the slot runs an out route to the flat underneath that vertical route, but then #11 runs to the corner five yards deeper and puts the CB in a bind to that side. If he steps up to take the flat, the deeper out is open, but if he sticks with the deeper out the flat is open and he has an easy 1st down. Defender takes the deeper route as he should and it’s an easy 1st down underneath. I like this route combo because so often the defense expects that clear out route from the outside receiver to continue going deep and they use the LB to take away the slant and the FS to take away the seam route. That leaves the outside CB to take the flat. You can see that’s exactly what Western Kentucky did here as the LB can be seen just to the left-corner of the screen and the FS is running over to take the seam route.
Puts the CB in a bind where he has to cover two receivers and he can only pick wrong.
There are times that Enos runs more of a spread look. Goes 5-wide here after a short run. QB stared down a post route and nearly threw a pick. Another flood look though with a natural rub route. This is the type of route combinations that many of us have been asking for in that you put the defense in a bind with picks and natural traffic that they have to communicate through.
3rd-and-9 and what I like so much about this look is that they motioned a WR across and got a LB on a fast guy. This LB cannot run with the slot WR and the S had to take another WR deep, which left this wide open in the middle of the field. You can see the S trying to get into your screen from the right side here. This goes for a 69-yard TD. Two times I’ve looked at opening drives for Coach Enos and two times his offense’s have scored TD’s.
Basically if there is a type of system of formation out there, you’re probably going to see some of it from Coach Enos. Here is an inverted wishbone look. This is basically the look that North Carolina and Larry Fedora killed us with, only they had the QB in the shotgun rather than the RB and the RB offset as a third WR. The play doesn’t work because of pressure.
CMU likes to use double motion and then throw a screen off of that motion one way or the other. The QB looks at the motion man leaking out into a pass pattern first, then the RB or WR on the other side sets up for a screen and it’s really effective for them.
I can say already that I really like Enos’ use of motions and how he plays off of that movement for play-action passes. Here, the H-back lined up offset behind the LT, motioned across, then reversed back left again. They run a play-action behind it to the other side, which causes the defense to go flat-footed. Is the flow of the play going playside or backside with the run? You can see the long-haired LB now running at a cross angle because his first step was towards the H-back at the top. Play-action to the backside pulls up the S, who is screaming down the hash here.
See the middle safety way behind this play at about the 14-yard line? That’s the S that came screaming up in the first screen shot. Post behind him is an easy TD.
The broadcast is poor quality, but you can see a man wide-open in the middle of the field (MOF) on this 3rd down play. The QB missed him badly, but he’s open. Get ready for the MOF to be a big weapon in this offense. Enos uses it often. Here he got that slot WR open by using another crosser underneath and the defender stepped up too far and the slot slipped behind him.
CMU goes on to win this game. Hopefully we see lots of wins over Willie Taggart teams in the future.
2014 was the best season on offense for CMU under Enos from a Yards Per Pass standpoint, which shows how he can build a passing offense with some time. His team averaged an absurd 8.75 Yards Per Pass against their peers. The bowl game that season was against Western Kentucky again, and this time it ended with a miracle play. Deep throw catch. Lateral while being tackled. Lateral just thrown over RB’s head. Picked up off ground. Lateral to Titus Davis on the other side of the field. TD.
Enos goes for two.
I truly cannot stand the fade call on this play. It’s to the WR to the top of the screen and it’s not even close. Shoot that play call into the sun, Coach Enos.
Arkansas
Coach Enos made the unique decision to step down from a head coach position to become an OC in the SEC. Arkansas fans are most likely very happy with his decision as he put up a 2015 season for the ages with Arkansas in 2015. His passing offense put up a 9.90 Yards Per Pass number against his peers. That total would’ve finished 3rd in the nation among P5 teams this year. When your peers are the SEC, you’re doing something right. For reference, the 2018 Alabama team that everyone knows had absolutely excellent talent on offense averaged 10.41 Yards Per Pass against peers, in the same league. Arkansas averaged .522 Points Per Play in 2015, which puts them right in elite territory in that metric. Alabama this year averaged .632.
Starting with the 2015 offense, here is the game at Tennessee. As an FYI, I just happen to be watching the playoff game as I’m writing this article. I’ve been poring over games for Enos throughout his career and I just keep thinking to myself the formations and the motion resemble the Kansas City Chiefs offense so much. Obviously, they have an elite QB and playmakers, but the formations and the motions themselves just line up so well. Here is an example:
First play of the 2015 Tennessee game.
Here is a formation for the Chiefs during the playoff game today.
Enos does such a great job of targeting the TE. Here they have Hunter Henry offset, motion him towards the bottom of the screen and just have him leak right into the flat for an easy completion for his QB. Brevin Jordan is going to be huge in this offense.
If Mark Richt came to Miami known for the shallow cross, I believe Enos will come to Miami known for the deep crosser. He attacks that area of the field on 3rd down repeatedly. Bad pass, but the play was there.
This is double-motion pre-snap. The H-back motioned from one side to outside RT, then the outside WR motions towards the QB.
Play-action away from TE and towards the motion. The receiver who motioned down then heads across the field. Then roll bootleg to QB’s right.
TE holds the defender into the flat. That leaves the WR who was originally in motion the opposite direction, free to run to the deep cross behind him. Drew Morgan takes this to the 22-yard line.
Here is an example of the counter to some of the bootleg and counter options they’re running. They’ve been getting the defense to flow against the play all game. Here you can see the LB’s flowing away from the WR coming down on the jet sweep and they give it to him.
Arkansas comes back and wins this game on the road 31-30. Of course, the coach for Tennessee was Butch Jones, whom Enos succeeded at Central Michigan.
Missouri State
Coach Enos was hired to be the first OC for HC Terry Allen at Missouri State. At the age of 31 Coach Enos landed his first DI OC job in 1999. Now, I have a bit of a secret to share with you all; Missouri State is my alma mater for both undergrad and graduate work and I was at Missouri State in 1999 and am familiar with Coach Enos from that time.
Here is what you should know about Enos from his lone season at Missouri State: He is the greatest OC in the program’s history. The school is not known for football (it is known for baseball and basketball), but here are the results for the offense under Enos in relation to their seasons since:
1st: Completion percentage, Passing Yards, Passing TD’s, Yards Per Pass, Yards Per Play, Points Per Play, Fewest Sacks Allowed
2nd: Scoring Average, Total Touchdowns
In his first job as an OC at a DI school, at the age of 31, his offense put up these results in year one. In fact, the school has never had a season with 8 yards per pass, or 6 yards per play other than his lone season and they were well-above those marks at 8.47 and 6.47 respectively.
As for the film, there isn’t much film on a bad I-AA football team from 1999, but I’ll share what I’ve found.
This is 21-personnel in a traditional I-formation. They motioned the FB to the right and then the run was a counter back off the action to the left and the RB had a huge hole if not for a DT beating his man quickly.
Swing pass to the RB picks up the 1st down, but the QB sure missed the FB leaking into the flat for what could’ve been a big gain. I knew the QB, he was a transfer from Indiana and loved Coach Enos.
It was definitely a lot of physical, I-formation, tight-formation football in this game. They lost the game, but that’s because they tend to lose lots of football games.
This would kick off a very nomadic coaching career for Coach Enos. He would leave Missouri State after one year to become the QB coach at Western Michigan, in his first FBS coaching position.
Western Michigan
Coach Enos took over the QB coaching position and was tasked with developing a new QB once again. This time Jeff Welsh became the new QB and had to replace one of the best QB’s in program history in Tim Lester. Lester completed 60% of his passes, averaged 7.7 yards per attempt, with a 34/13 TD/Int ratio for an overall rating of 143.4. Coach Enos helped get Welsh ready for the job as Western Michigan improved from 7-5 to 9-3 overall. Welsh completed 59% of his passes, averaged 7.2 yards per attempt, with a 15/12 TD/Int ratio for an overall rating of 125.9.
After a full season of working with Welsh, Enos helped develop him into a top-shelf passing QB as Welsh completed 63% of his passes, averaged 8.0 yards per attempt, with a 15/4 TD/Int ratio. Unfortunately, Welsh got injured halfway through the year and things went south from there.
North Dakota State
Continuing the trend of moving to multiple spots in a short period of time, Coach Enos next moved to a traditional power at the lower levels in North Dakota State. Wanting to get back to calling plays, this was an odd fit as a coach with a passing background moving to a school with a traditional rushing background. His offense averaged over 30 points per game, had a 16/8 TD/Int ratio in the passing game, but was merely average in its metrics.
67.7% completion rate, 16-8 TD/Int ratio, 6.57 Yards Per Pass, 4.18 Yards Per Rush, 5.23 Yards Per Play, .443 Points Per Play. All of the Yards Per Play numbers were the worst of his play calling career. This was DII at the time, so the numbers are not included in his overall profile because I did not include anything but peer data for all play callers at the Division I level.
Central Michigan
Enos then spent time at Cincinnati and Michigan State coaching QB’s and RB’s before landing his first HC gig with Central Michigan, replacing Butch Jones, who left for Tennessee. Central Michigan’s best QB in school history also left for the NFL (Dan Lefevour), leaving Coach Enos a complete rebuilding job.
As a HC, Enos was marginal at Central Michigan, but I wanted to get a quick look at how he ran his offense in his first stop as a HC (who also called plays). This game against Virginia Tech was obviously a mismatch from a talent standpoint, but you can get an idea of things schematically.
Comes in his normal 21 personnel look. Offset-I formation.
Switch concept causes a natural pick play. RB leaks into the flat after the switch causes LB’s to drop. Easy completion for 6 yards. This is a pretty smart strategy. You have a QB making one of his first starts of his career, so you get him a simple, easy read to get him feeling ok and in the game.
Next play is a 22-personnel out of single-back formation. Motions slot, defense gives away a CB blitz look early. This appears to be a zone defense from the way they’re playing the motion.
It was a zone defense and the play was a counter-trey run backside. S fills hard and it gets nothing. I do like motion to get a blocker to the edge of the defense. VT just isn’t respecting the offense deep.
3rd down look is more spread out. Shotgun, trips left, single-back to the right of the QB.
It’s a bust, as the HB is supposed to pick up the DE as the TE releases into a pass pattern. The QB uses his legs to release into the spot at the top of the screen and runs for 21 yards.
Another 3rd down play and again they go shotgun with 3-wide but the formation is a 2 x 1 look.
It’s not often you see a 3rd down play where the QB can basically choose where he wants to pick up the 1st down, but this one has several options. The play is a swing to the RB as CMU saw the blitz off the edge coming. RB is open immediately and it goes for a 1st down. Look at the seam for the TE who is looking back at the QB at the 1st down marker. He is wide open for a big play if the QB chooses that. I’m sure the hot read was built-in to the play call and the QB is supposed to go there immediately on the blitz, but that seam is a busted assignment. Then, to the field side they are running a clear-out route deep and coming underneath it with the out route and that is open if he looks that way and forces the defender to stay deep enough to cover that deep route and then sink down on the out. It’s impressive understanding from the offense as to what the defense is doing.
Little more spread out on the next play. I think this play formation is something you could see a lot at Miami with Enos. Cam’Ron and DeeJay fit this perfectly with their pass catching ability and ability to do different things.
Screen out of it for a nice gain. I tend to spend a lot of time on the 1st drive of the game because it is a look into what the coaching staff and play caller saw as potential areas to exploit. Once the game gets going too far you are reacting to game situations, but the start is very much “coaching influenced.” Enos is doing well against a far superior opponent on the road.
One critique that I hope to see improve in subsequent drives/games: the least efficient play call in football is the 2nd & 10 run after an incomplete pass. Football coaches have been doing this for years thinking it will make for a more manageable 3rd down, but why not be prepared to try and pick up the 1st down without ever getting to 3rd down with a non-predictable play call? Thus far, they’ve run the dive on every 2nd & 10 after an incompletion.
On another 3rd down you can see a small glimpse of the coaching of the QB’s. QB is reading downfield first. Went deep left, middle, then came to his third read out wide in a swing pass to the RB in space who picked up the 1st down. A familiar trend for Miami’s QB’s is to go one read, look at pass rush, pull the ball down, run.
This should’ve been a give. No idea why the QB is reading this as a keep. I hope to see RPO’s out of this look where you flip the ball out to the WR behind the LOS and you can block downfield off this look.
Motion across. #43 follows. Obviously man-to-man coverage. If you count the defense, you can see this is a no deep safety look. All 11 guys are right here and the CB is way off in coverage. The QB should see this and say to himself, “I’ve got 1-on-1 coverage on the outside, no S help. This can be a TD.
Play action to this side has the CB’s attention. Look at the far CB in his backpedal take his eye off his man to make sure it’s not a run play to that side.
And the QB saw all the things I’d like for him to see and it’s a TD. This is a great look for the coaching staff as well that they had the team prepared to see these things to start the game on the road. 13-play, 80-yard TD drive.
Tyrod Taylor and the Virginia Tech offense was much too much for CMU in this one, but I am encouraged at the play-calling and designs thus far.
The next game I reviewed was the 2012 Little Caesar’s Bowl against Western Kentucky. That happened to be Willie Taggart’s team, though he left to coach South Florida.
I chose the bowl game to again get a feel for his game planning prowess. In a bowl game, you have several extra weeks of preparation, you generally get healthier as a team, and you are facing a pretty equal foe in most cases.
Starting off, Enos suspended three WR’s for the game, including two of his top three WR’s. Titus is the older brother of Corey Davis, and was a fringe NFL player. Davis broke the receiving yards and receiving TD’s records previously held by Antonio Brown.
Started out in 22-personnel with I-formation. Motion H-back across formation to other side to make a double TE look, one on each edge. Play-action and flip it out to the FB for 6-yards. Again, you see a consistent theme with Coach Enos as a playcaller. He likes to get his QB in rhythm with an early pass completion that is simple and high-percentage.
Central Michigan definitely has some talent on their roster. Fisher went #1 overall in the draft. Addae starts for the Chargers at S.
Incomplete on 3rd down, but they held the TE off play-action who would’ve been wide-open without the hold.
Another 3rd down and they run a staple of offensive football. Outside WR runs upfield, the slot runs an out route to the flat underneath that vertical route, but then #11 runs to the corner five yards deeper and puts the CB in a bind to that side. If he steps up to take the flat, the deeper out is open, but if he sticks with the deeper out the flat is open and he has an easy 1st down. Defender takes the deeper route as he should and it’s an easy 1st down underneath. I like this route combo because so often the defense expects that clear out route from the outside receiver to continue going deep and they use the LB to take away the slant and the FS to take away the seam route. That leaves the outside CB to take the flat. You can see that’s exactly what Western Kentucky did here as the LB can be seen just to the left-corner of the screen and the FS is running over to take the seam route.
Puts the CB in a bind where he has to cover two receivers and he can only pick wrong.
There are times that Enos runs more of a spread look. Goes 5-wide here after a short run. QB stared down a post route and nearly threw a pick. Another flood look though with a natural rub route. This is the type of route combinations that many of us have been asking for in that you put the defense in a bind with picks and natural traffic that they have to communicate through.
3rd-and-9 and what I like so much about this look is that they motioned a WR across and got a LB on a fast guy. This LB cannot run with the slot WR and the S had to take another WR deep, which left this wide open in the middle of the field. You can see the S trying to get into your screen from the right side here. This goes for a 69-yard TD. Two times I’ve looked at opening drives for Coach Enos and two times his offense’s have scored TD’s.
Basically if there is a type of system of formation out there, you’re probably going to see some of it from Coach Enos. Here is an inverted wishbone look. This is basically the look that North Carolina and Larry Fedora killed us with, only they had the QB in the shotgun rather than the RB and the RB offset as a third WR. The play doesn’t work because of pressure.
CMU likes to use double motion and then throw a screen off of that motion one way or the other. The QB looks at the motion man leaking out into a pass pattern first, then the RB or WR on the other side sets up for a screen and it’s really effective for them.
I can say already that I really like Enos’ use of motions and how he plays off of that movement for play-action passes. Here, the H-back lined up offset behind the LT, motioned across, then reversed back left again. They run a play-action behind it to the other side, which causes the defense to go flat-footed. Is the flow of the play going playside or backside with the run? You can see the long-haired LB now running at a cross angle because his first step was towards the H-back at the top. Play-action to the backside pulls up the S, who is screaming down the hash here.
See the middle safety way behind this play at about the 14-yard line? That’s the S that came screaming up in the first screen shot. Post behind him is an easy TD.
The broadcast is poor quality, but you can see a man wide-open in the middle of the field (MOF) on this 3rd down play. The QB missed him badly, but he’s open. Get ready for the MOF to be a big weapon in this offense. Enos uses it often. Here he got that slot WR open by using another crosser underneath and the defender stepped up too far and the slot slipped behind him.
CMU goes on to win this game. Hopefully we see lots of wins over Willie Taggart teams in the future.
2014 was the best season on offense for CMU under Enos from a Yards Per Pass standpoint, which shows how he can build a passing offense with some time. His team averaged an absurd 8.75 Yards Per Pass against their peers. The bowl game that season was against Western Kentucky again, and this time it ended with a miracle play. Deep throw catch. Lateral while being tackled. Lateral just thrown over RB’s head. Picked up off ground. Lateral to Titus Davis on the other side of the field. TD.
Enos goes for two.
I truly cannot stand the fade call on this play. It’s to the WR to the top of the screen and it’s not even close. Shoot that play call into the sun, Coach Enos.
Arkansas
Coach Enos made the unique decision to step down from a head coach position to become an OC in the SEC. Arkansas fans are most likely very happy with his decision as he put up a 2015 season for the ages with Arkansas in 2015. His passing offense put up a 9.90 Yards Per Pass number against his peers. That total would’ve finished 3rd in the nation among P5 teams this year. When your peers are the SEC, you’re doing something right. For reference, the 2018 Alabama team that everyone knows had absolutely excellent talent on offense averaged 10.41 Yards Per Pass against peers, in the same league. Arkansas averaged .522 Points Per Play in 2015, which puts them right in elite territory in that metric. Alabama this year averaged .632.
Starting with the 2015 offense, here is the game at Tennessee. As an FYI, I just happen to be watching the playoff game as I’m writing this article. I’ve been poring over games for Enos throughout his career and I just keep thinking to myself the formations and the motion resemble the Kansas City Chiefs offense so much. Obviously, they have an elite QB and playmakers, but the formations and the motions themselves just line up so well. Here is an example:
First play of the 2015 Tennessee game.
Here is a formation for the Chiefs during the playoff game today.
Enos does such a great job of targeting the TE. Here they have Hunter Henry offset, motion him towards the bottom of the screen and just have him leak right into the flat for an easy completion for his QB. Brevin Jordan is going to be huge in this offense.
If Mark Richt came to Miami known for the shallow cross, I believe Enos will come to Miami known for the deep crosser. He attacks that area of the field on 3rd down repeatedly. Bad pass, but the play was there.
This is double-motion pre-snap. The H-back motioned from one side to outside RT, then the outside WR motions towards the QB.
Play-action away from TE and towards the motion. The receiver who motioned down then heads across the field. Then roll bootleg to QB’s right.
TE holds the defender into the flat. That leaves the WR who was originally in motion the opposite direction, free to run to the deep cross behind him. Drew Morgan takes this to the 22-yard line.
Here is an example of the counter to some of the bootleg and counter options they’re running. They’ve been getting the defense to flow against the play all game. Here you can see the LB’s flowing away from the WR coming down on the jet sweep and they give it to him.
Arkansas comes back and wins this game on the road 31-30. Of course, the coach for Tennessee was Butch Jones, whom Enos succeeded at Central Michigan.
