2021 G5 Preview: It's Time To See If Dana Holgorsen Can Coach
This is a do-or-die year in Houston.
ICYMI: This is a part of The Outside Zone’s full 2021 G5 preview series, which last looked at San Diego State. You can find a master list for all of the previews here.
In a world without historical context, Houston is probably solidly the AAC West favorite and an NY6 bowl contender entering the season. The Cougars are one of the most talented teams at the G5 ranks - if not the outright leader - and they return 17 starters from last season to this group.
There’s a good reason for that. Houston has hit the portal hard in recent seasons, bringing in five P5 transfers in the class of 2020 and seven in 2021, even as regular recruiting has slipped far below the levels that it reached under previous coaching staffs as Houston signs fewer four-year players and more major school ex-pats.
On top of that, the Cougars famously “tanked” in 2019, redshirting several experienced players to create more playing time for younger members of the roster, while planning to return and deploy all of that talent in 2020, running the table and making a bid for major bowl contention (and potentially a jump to a bigger job for a certain head coach).
Of course, that’s where context is going to hold us back. Houston didn’t break through in 2020. In fact, it was actually Very Bad, going 3-5 and struggling quite a bit against nearly every decent team it played. A good chunk of that hyper talented roster returns, but that historical context really, really hurts its stock.
Even worse? Dana Holgorsen is still the head coach at Houston. Speaking of stock dropping, Holgorsen has gone from one of the Big 12’s brightest offensive minds - a coach that was able to generate the closest thing resembling a steady program that West Virginia will likely see in that league - to the man that tried to tank in a sport without a draft. He’s 7-13 in two years at Houston. He ran one of the best quarterbacks in program history off to Miami for the sake of his redshirting plan, replacing him with a just-inside-the-top-1000 recruit that claimed just two power five offers, one of which came from Les Miles.
Houston can be as talented as it wants, but we’ve seen two seasons of Holgorsen in town. So far, it’s yielded a whole bunch of departures and a football team that looks, for lack of a better term, completely joyless, despite their talent. The Cougars looked like a supremely talented program that has been worn down from years of defending its crown atop a conference that sees it as the king, which would make a whole lot more sense if Houston had been any good at all since the departure of Tom Herman. You can’t look like disheveled and disinterested champions if you aren’t… you know… champions.
Much of the prognostication around this team this season should revolve around that. Talent can take you a very long way and is crucial in college football. It’s likely to lead this team to a bowl game, if for no reason other than a despicably easy schedule. But if Houston is going to do anything more than that, it simply needs to look like a team that has coaches that give a shit. It didn’t in 2020.
The highs of this offense were so high in 2020. Houston put 49 points on Tulane in the season opener, behind an efficient and widely distributed (four players with at least six carries) rushing attack and an awesome passing game (20-of-33 passing for 319 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions). It also ran up 37 points against Navy and 56 on USF. Those are the three wins of the season. Average? 47.3 points per game. With 279.6 yards through the air, 187.3 on the ground. It wasn’t always a supremely efficient group in those wins, but it was damn good.
In the five losses? 19.6 points per game, 257.4 passing yards (with seven interceptions from quarterback Clayton Tune), 116.6 on the ground. As high as those highs were, the lows were just as low. Is that a pandemic thing? I think Holgorsen would certainly make that case, but his offenses weren’t exactly the models of consistency before this season, either. When Houston played capable defenses last season, it fell apart.
Perhaps more continuity helps with that. Tune is back for his fourth year at Houston and third as a starter, though he’s likely hoping for a bit more stability this season after playing seven and eight games in 2019 and 2020, respectively. He’s improved every season that he’s been in college thus far, but he also is what he is as a passer in a sense. He’s fairly accurate and has a decent read for the defense, but his arm leaves a bit to be desired, and he’s very, very confident in his ability to tuck passes into tight windows.
Sometimes, that yields you this. This was a talented receiver room that could make plays on 50/50 balls and frequently made Tune look pretty good on less-than-ideal throws because of it. Other times, he would just throw the ball right to a defender. This is a very quarterback-friendly offense, it just needs its quarterback to lean into that a little bit more.
Unfortunately for Tune and Houston, that may not be quite as true in 2021 as it was in 2020. An awesome receiver room loses Marquez Stevenson, Keith Corbin and Tre’Von Bradley, who checked in at No. 2, 4 and 5 on the receptions board for this group. Leader Nathaniel Dell returns, as do Bryson Smith and Jeremy Singleton, along with tight end Christian Trahan. KeSean Carter from Texas Tech, Seth Green from Minnesota and Jaylen Erwin from UCLA join the room as well, so I’m not worried about it, but new faces are new faces. Any instability around an already shaky quarterback is concerning.
I am encouraged, however, by a lot of the designs in this system. Holgorsen is a questionable talent manager and in-game coach, but his system is at least good. That may be a big deal this season specifically as Houston works in those new receivers, and as it looks to improve on an inconsistent offensive line that returns nearly every starter.
Plays like this one can help with that. The Cougars did a ton of good work in the short-to-intermediate passing game in 2020 and showed off some really cool looks, like this pick slant. The double slant (with the outside slant stopping once the three routes intersect) look to pair with that pick from the slot really forces the defense to announce its intentions early. Houston gets exactly what it wants here, as the off safety has to pick up the intended receiver from several yards out, working through the mess in the process. Easy throws like this for Tune will be crucial early in the season.
I don’t want to make it seem like Tune is a bad player, either. These designs can make things easy on him, but he still has to make the throws. He wasn’t perfect with that in 2020, but he flashed quite a bit of ability to make throws on heavily schemed-up plays, like this smash fade. The receiver is wide open, but you still have to hit him, on fourth-and-long, with the game on the line.
He can make good throws outside of the confines of the offense too, he just didn’t do it very often. The outlook on Tune, essentially, is that he’s capable of running this offense. If he can do it more efficiently, or make a few more plays from outside of the design, Houston’s passing attack should be really good. If he stays the same, it’ll look a lot like it did in 2020.
Although Holgorsen is traditionally considered a pass-first coach, I think that a “good” passing attack may be enough to elevate Houston here if it plays its cards correctly, because this run game can be really, really good.
Firstly, the personnel is strong. Mulbah Car returns, as do Chandler Smith and Kelan Walker. Ta’Zawn Henry is here as well from Texas Tech. The loss of Kyle Porter hurts, but he wasn’t anything terribly special last season, and Houston split up carries pretty evenly.
More important though (for the sake of this newsletter) is that I absolutely love Houston’s run schemes. This is primarily a gap blocking team, though it does show some zone from time to time when it wants to get Tune (a capable runner) involved in the running game as well.
This is what I would consider the base look, a pin pull sweep with the backside guard and tackle coming across the line to lead the halfback, while the playside trio (and a tight end in this instance) block down to clear out the defensive line, leaving a pair of linebackers to take on those pulling linemen. The wide receiver flashes across on a motion here to bring those linebackers further to the play side and into those blocks, while plucking that box safety all the way outside.
Houston has a couple of variations on this. This is a bit of a heavier look, with a slicing tight end to help lead the way alongside the pulling backside linemen. That tight end flashes a nice little bit of counter action, which does just enough to take the entire back side of the defense out of the play, making the job for those down blocking linemen much easier.
Beyond the base, I really like how Houston gets other ball carriers involved. You get a receiver sweep here with the tight end lead blocker, while the line and halfback sell a boundary handoff to the defense, leaving the backside linebacker alone one-on-one against that blocking tight end and the wideout.
The QB rushing attack has some juice, too. Houston picked up the “zone read with a kicking playside tackle” look that Coastal Carolina deployed last season and should absolutely use it more. It’s a great way to use athletic linemen, and you don’t have to take a single receiver off the field to do it. If you’re going to create a numbers advantage by leaving that playside end unblocked for the read, you might as well really do it. This doesn't work if the end sets up further outside, but with this alignment, it’s a lock.
And here’s a nice counter look, again with a lead blocker on the outside for Tune, this time from the halfback. Two tight ends, counter action in the backfield and a lead blocking running back, with the quarterback toting the rock. It’s hard to do much more to create a numbers advantage.
All of this ties back into the passing attack because most of Houston’s shots down the field will be coming off of play fakes in the backfield. Again, Tune can operate within the offense to make this happen, I would just like to see him go above and beyond this season. If he does, and if Houston leans a bit more into the run game, I think this could be a very, very good offense.
I have a lot less to say about the defense, really only a quick note: it wasn’t very good last year, despite an awesome pass rush and two very good cornerbacks. Both of those cornerbacks return, but defensive end Payton Turner departs. However, ends David Anenih and Derek Parish do return, as does middle linebacker Donavan Mutin. A couple of P5 transfers should raise the ceiling here, but I need to see it to believe it.
With that, and with an extremely manageable schedule, I think Houston is a good version of Tune away from a season that saves Dana’s job. It has essentially seven sure wins and no sure losses. Take two of Memphis, SMU, Texas Tech, Tulane and Tulsa, and you’ve got a pretty good season. I think that’s possible with a more consistent offense. Without that, though, the ceiling here is probably seven wins, with Houston dropping a dumb one and winning one that it shouldn’t. The issue for Holgorsen: that may be the floor, too, and it’s hard to think that there’s not another coach out there that could manage to do at least that.