The case for, and reservations about, Mike Bobo as South Carolina’s OC
So South Carolina has a new offensive coordinator or will completely as of about 2 p.m. Tuesday.
News started leaking out through last week Gamecocks coach Will Muschamp has his third play-caller in his time in Columbia. It’s an old friend of his and a familiar face for Gamecocks fans from Athens in Mike Bobo.
Fans online expressed reservations, sometimes strong ones, about Bobo from the first time his name started circulating. In the end, it only matters that it works (otherwise USC might be looking for a whole new staff next season) but it’s worth looking at the case for him, and some of the reservations.
The case for
▪ Bobo has built a range of productive offenses, both at Georgia and at Colorado State. He’s not batted 100% on them, but his top-end ones in Athens were really good, while his best at Colorado State were top-15 nationally in yards per play.
▪ He’s a coach who brings a lot of personnel and formational diversity, deploying four-wide looks and sometimes two-back looks for power formation. The creativity on some of last year’s film will be apparent as compared to his early UGA days.
▪ His offenses trend toward balance, and that downhill element could be helpful for a Gamecocks running game that had moments but cratered down the stretch this past season.
▪ That power-football element likely meshes well with Will Muschamp, who has ended the past two Septembers talking about needing to be more stubborn running the ball.
▪ His experience developing QBs, whether they were highly-rated recruits or more unheralded players, could be good working with Ryan Hilinski.
▪ He’s got a good reputation as a recruiter, which can’t hurt. It’s not clear if this was on him or his staff, but at Colorado State, they had a good eye for under-the-radar guys who grew into NFL receivers.
The case against
▪ For as good as those Bulldogs offenses he ran were, they had a lot of talent. And despite that, the group never had that massive breakthrough offensive year like LSU has this year or Alabama did when Lane Kiffin arrived. USC will not have that level of talent to fall back on.
▪ UGA fans also dogged Bobo often, with the refrain “run the damn ball, Bobo” getting some traction. The irony is it seems Gamecocks fans worry he’ll run it too much. In either case, when a rival wasn’t happy, that will stick, although many Georgia fans seem interested in him coming back, whatever that tells us.
▪ The head-to-head history against South Carolina wasn’t all that high-flying. Bobo became OC in 2007. Against the Gamecocks, his offense scored 12, 14, 41, 6, 42, 7, 41 and 35 points. South Carolina went 5-3 in those games, with UGA usually having plenty of talent.
▪ His offense was not good in 2018, when he was dealing with some scary health issues, and had some good and some bad in 2019.
▪ This is a bit of an aesthetic complaint some might have. On film at times, his teams would go with back-to-back power sets and then run the ball. Few things get fans more riled than running from an obvious run look and not having it work (at some point across a season, it will not work), and then doing it again. That probably doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme, but in terms of the thing people will be bothered by, it popped a bit.
