Film study: Taking a closer look at Mike Bobo’s offenses
South Carolina has its man at offensive coordinator in Mike Bobo.
The veteran of nearly a decade and a half in the SEC, plus five years as a head coach, was approved as Gamecocks OC on Tuesday. He inherits a group with the likes of quarterback Ryan Hilinski, receiving threats Shi Smith, Nick Muse and Josh Vann and most of the 2019 offense line. The group will also add four-star skill players in quarterback Luke Doty and running back MarShawn Lloyd.
But what exactly will a Mike Bobo offense look like? We went to the film of some of his Colorado State offenses to get a better idea:
▪ Coming from Georgia, Bobo had some reputation as running a lot of I-formation power football. At CSU, the team didn’t do much of that at all in his later years, but they kept elements of that spirit as part of the package. His offense looks very much like a modern spread, but it was flexible, often playing a fullback who acted as a second tight end in a variety of looks (that’s 6-foot, 236-pound former walk-on Adam Prentice).
▪ If someone wants formation diversity, that was certainly apparent. The Rams went both under center and in the shotgun. They had two tight ends attached, sometimes went four wide and deployed a range of single-back looks, sometimes asking big receivers to crack block down.
▪ Bobo’s teams didn’t do a lot of QB running, but they didn’t shy away from it completely. More often than not, passers weren’t run threats, but during Nick Stevens’ senior year in 2017, he ran three times a game for nearly 200 non-sack yards on the season. That included at least some carries on zone reads.
▪ This past season, he had a change at quarterback, losing Collin Hill to injury and playing former Nebraska QB Patrick O’Brien. The latter wasn’t quite the passer the former one was, but he had a little more mobility.
▪ Screens are pretty common, often bubbles and double-screen looks.
▪ They don’t mind motioning receivers in and asking them to contribute as blockers.
▪ They did some fun stuff with speed receiver Dante Wright. Beyond getting him the ball 57 times last year, they worked him in on jet sweeps a good bit. He averaged better than 12 yards a carry. They ran some under center jet stuff and some action off that, both inside zone runs and some play action.
▪ On the statistical side, Bobo’s team’s tend to rely on bellcow receivers. His top pass catcher last season had nearly 37 percent of the squad’s catches. The three teams before that had top receivers each accounting for more than a third of the team’s targets.
▪ Last year’s offense built a lot around Wright and 6-foot-6 Warren Jackson, a match-up problem they exploited often.
▪ One consistent factor at CSU was passing games that were efficient, as in they kept the chains moving. His running games were on the up and down in terms of overall efficiency and explosiveness, whether they relied heavily on it (two backs with 27.5 combined carries a game in 2017) or years where the back took on a less central role.
▪ His first two CSU teams were what you’d consider on the run-heavy side of things, but the next two sided more toward passing. None have been particularly high-tempo on average.
▪ Some older UGA film showed a more I-formation heavy scheme with plenty of toss power and zone runs behind fullbacks. There’s some early RPO screen concepts, something a lot of offenses used at the time.
This story was originally published December 11, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
