Raise your jolly rogers: Mike Leach is back. After two years of book-touring, suing ESPN, hosting talk-radio, and chillin’ in Key West, Leach is set to coach again in 2012, this time as head pirate in charge of the Washington State Cougars. History, connections, anecdote, and theories regarding the hire abound, but first thing first: It’s a great hire.
I love Mike and I obviously can’t wait to see his offense back in action, but I was skeptical of the “fit” between Mike and some of the other schools whose name he was connected to. Big Ten schools tend to either like their coaches a certain way — a way not typical for Leach — or probably couldn’t afford him; SEC schools could afford him but the culture shock on both sides would be larger than I think people realized; and while Leach said he’d basically take any job, I don’t think he sat out for two years to coach a non-BCS conference school. Washington State, on the other hand, is, in my mind, perfect. It’s not perfect in the sense that the team has been struggling in recent years, but they’ve had winners there, and if Leach can get them to a bowl game in the next couple of years the perception will be that he’s been successful. Contrast this with, say, Ole Miss, where a bad game in week five and a couple of questionable calls (and trust me, there would be many calls that diehard SEC fans would not understand) and the pressure would be of an entirely different order.
Indeed, at Washington State Leach can essentially say he’s getting back to the tradition of guns blazing offense and great quarterbacking that defined the Cougars in the modern era. In 1987, Dennis Erickson brought his one-back offense to Pullman and engineered a big turnaround in his second season when they went 9-3, including an upset of then #1 ranked (and Troy Aikman led) UCLA. Erickson left for Miami the following season and was replaced by Mike Price, an Erickson one-back protégé (and actually a high school teammate of Erickson’s). Price led the Cougars to several successful seasons, most notably in 1992 when the team was quarterbacked by Drew Bledsoe and later two Rose Bowl seasons, 1997 when led by Ryan Leaf and 2002 when led by Jason Gesser. The 2002 squad shared the Pac-10 title with Pete Carroll’s Carson Palmer led Southern Cal team, and went to the Rose Bowl ahead of USC due to their head-to-head tiebreaker.
Although I don’t expect Leach to junk his Airraid for Erickson’s one-back offense, this history is important, at least to Leach. In his book Leach mentions that, had he not joined up with Hal Mumme and began running their twist on the BYU passing game, he would have run Dennis Erickson’s one-back three-step game, which was in fact what he’d been doing before he and Mumme got together. Further, after Mumme and Leach’s first season at Kentucky in 1997, they visited Mike Price and his staff at Washington State after their Rose Bowl season. There they picked up some information on formations and receiver screens. It may be irrelevant, but Mumme’s Airraid had always been a two-back offense, while in 1997 Washington State ran a ton of four-wides with one back. That personnel group and formation would later dominant Leach’s offense when he began running his own show.
But all this is important because it is possible to win at Washington State; from 2001 to 2003, the Cougars had three straight ten win seasons. It may be that the Pac-10/12 is much better top to bottom than it was then, but this is not as big of a rebuilding job as, say, Kentucky was when Mumme and Leach went there.
Building a staff. The most important job for Mike right now is to quickly and effectively put together a staff. Fans may expect Leach to arrive in Pullman and by sheer force of history and personality begin to tear up Pac-12 defenses, but the quality of assistants is extremely important. Historically, the assistants Leach has been around, both when he was an assistant himself and later as a head coach, have gone on to continued or increased success elsewhere as four or five have become D-1 head coaches and a number of others have gone on to become offensive coordinators. Further, Mike is a strange guy: he talks too long in meetings, can ramble when recruiting, was never known as a die-hard recruiter, and is very focused on certain things — his offense and his quarterbacks — and really needs others to take the lead in other matters.
Specifically, a lot of his success or failure in Pullman will be decided by three hires: his defensive coordinator, his offensive line coach, and his recruiting coordinator. Regarding his DC, it’s well known that Mike spends game day with his face buried in that wrinkly scrap of paper he calls his play sheet. He spends meeting time with the offense, and lots of that time in small film study sessions with the quarterbacks. This is not to say he ignores his defensive players — though some of them have been known to feel that way — but it means he needs someone who can simply run the defense. He famously fired his defensive coordinator mid-season in 2007 after his team lose a shootout to Oklahoma State, and in his book stated that his mistake was not firing him sooner. Like Steve Spurrier at Florida who needed Bob Stoops to finally win a national title, Leach absolutely needs someone who not only is a great defensive teacher but can also keep his troops motivated when all the media attention is on Leach and his offense and when Leach puts his defense in tough spots with a failed fourth down or a three-and-out in the no-huddle following three incompletions and all of eleven seconds having run off the clock. The good news is that Washington State should score points, so the defense should be able to take chances without fearing mistakes, but this is a real concern.
Offensive line coach is incredibly important because of the pressure Mike’s offense puts on those guys. He will probably go back to the wide splits, and he expects his linemen to do their pass blocking one-on-one and not lose. The good news for Leach is he’s probably got a good one in mind that he can get: Robert Anae. Anae was Leach’s offensive line coach in his early days at Texas Tech, before he went on to be the offensive coordinator at BYU and later Arizona. As his gig at Arizona is ending, I expect Leach to make Anae a pretty nice offer to come back and be his line coach. Then again, he’s been running his own show fairly successfully for a number of years, and he may not want to go back to letting someone else call plays. Of course, Mike isn’t afraid to look outside the box for his hires. At Texas Tech after Bill Bedenbaugh (currently the OL coach at WVU) left to follow Sonny Dykes to Arizona, Leach hired Matt Moore, who had one year of D-1 experience at Troy and had been a high school coach, where he ran Tony Franklin’s version of the Airraid, “The System“.
Finally, Leach will need a good recruiting coordinator. There is plenty to say about recruiting and Leach but he’s actually better at it than I think people realize. Historically, Washington State gets a few guys from Washington, a lot of guys from California, and then a smattering of others from Arizona and even Florida. Depending who he brings in on his staff I expect Leach to still recruit Texas (remember, LaMichael James is from Texas and he wound up at Oregon), but I think he’ll do fine in California. He should be able to get the quarterbacks he wants from the surrounding states (Ryan Leaf was from Montana and Bledsoe was from Walla Walla), and his offense is going to be a huge selling point for receivers and other “athlete” skill guys. Many of Leach’s best receivers, including Michael Crabtree, were dual-threat quarterbacks in high school who played that role simply because they were good athletes.
Defense is where recruiting might be difficult. A lot of guys at Texas Tech came in as athletes or skill guys and got moved to defense; that’s just how it goes. But it will be a challenge to convince kids to come to Pullman, to play defense for Washington State, and, for of all people, Mike Leach. And when Washington State has had success they’ve done it with their passing game but also I remember all of those teams having excellent defensive lines. But the advantage Mike has is he runs a pretty tight ship in terms of grades and discipline, which lets him take chances on some guys other teams might ignore; historically a lot of Washington State’s best skill players were transfers or junior college players, including several of the so-called “Fab Five,” Leaf’s receiving corps.
One argument I’ve heard is that Leach benefited from Texas’s year-round commitment to throwing the football and 7-on-7s. This may have been true in 2008, but it was absolutely not the case in 2000. Very few schools threw the ball, and, while Texas did have more in the way of spring practice, those 7-on-7 tourneys were not the norm until much later. One of the biggest reasons all that changed was Leach: Tech was very open to high schools coming in, watching practice, and getting information. And it was a great tactic by Leach: He created a bunch of feeder schools that sent players his way who had run his system for four years in high school (think guys like Graham Harrell), and those coaches felt indebted to Mike because of how he had helped them succeed with his schemes and techniques. I think he can do a lot of that same stuff in California and the Pacific Northwest.
Measuring success. Hiring a staff and recruiting and all that aside, let’s get to the real question: How will Mike do and, more specifically, how will that offense do? There’s no way of knowing but we can make some conjectures. When one thinks of Mike Leach’s offense, everyone remembers Mike Leach’s offense in 2008, with Graham Harrell throwing to Michael Crabtree and a bunch of other guys who inexplicably were always open. But it took them several years to get to that point. Yes, he expanded the four verticals package, fiddled with the wide line splits, and generally came into his own as a head coach, but it took him years to get to that point. By 2008, Leach’s quarterbacks, line and receivers had all been in the season for four or five seasons themselves, and had come up under upperclassmen who themselves had been through it for four or five years. As anyone who is around a football team knows, underclassmen are coached by the upperclassmen as much as they are by the coaches, and the skill and precision that his offense showcased was on display for those guys from their teammates on day one. At a new spot, however, that won’t be the case, and it wasn’t the case when Leach took over at Texas Tech in 2000.
Tech had been a winning program under previous coach Spike Dykes, but didn’t have much experience throwing the ball. And in 2000, though his team won seven games, it was an ugly seven games, including a 13-7 squeaker against North Texas. For the season, then quarterback (and current Houston co-OC and frequent Leach fishing buddy) Kliff Kingsbury averaged a depressing 5.8 yards per pass attempt, threw only four more touchdowns (21) than interceptions (17) and the Red Raiders averaged less than 10 yards per completion and around 60 yards rushing a game. Vaunted offense indeed. It wasn’t until 2002 that the offense really revved up, and while some of it is scheme a lot of it is just that transitions take time. One thing we’ve seen with Airraid coaches going to other schools is that the more similar the approach of the previous staff the quicker the transition, whether it was Sonny Dykes at Arizona or Louisiana Tech or Dana Holgorsen at Houston, Oklahoma State, or West Virginia, or even Chris Hatcher at Valdosta State versus Georgia Southern.
The good news is that Washington State appears to have quarterbacks and receivers, as they are currently in the top-ten in passing, but it’s an open question whether the skills will translate so quickly. Leach is a good natured guy but can be very ornery and gruff when things aren’t to his standards, and it may well be a big shock for him to go from a Texas Tech practice with experienced kids running his offense with precision to a bunch of guys that frankly don’t know what they are doing. I expect them to get there, but 2012 will likely be a very inconsistent year, with some blowout games and probably a dud or two (think of Texas Tech’s 56-3 pasting by Nebraska in 2000).
Lastly, people should remember that the idea of Leach can sometimes be more palatable than the reality. Fans can’t wait for 600 yard passing games, but are they ready for seasons where the team averages less than 60 yards rushing a game, as they did even in 2007 when the number two offense in the country averaged a mere 59 yards rushing per contest? And stats like these mean that on third and one Leach is going to line up in four wides in the shotgun and call a couple of incomplete passes too; there’s going to be someone out there looking at his TV set wondering why the hell didn’t this overpaid jerk get in the I formation and run the ball. I am certainly not saying that’s wrong, just that, well: get ready.
But these are quibbles, just reminders that memories always give off a warmer glow they did at the time. For now, we know that Captain Leach is back roaming the sidelines, calling four verticals, mesh, stick, screens, Y-Cross, and 93, and that will, always, always, always, be enough.