2021 G5 Preview: Western Kentucky Is Trying The Air Raid
Certainly can't be worse than what they were doing before
ICYMI: This is a part of The Outside Zone’s full 2021 G5 preview series, which last looked at Wyoming. You can find a master list for all of the previews here.
I don’t think that Western Kentucky has a whole lot of business being this high up on the list of previews, but here we are, and we’re going to talk about the 5-7 Hilltoppers, led by head coach Tyson Helton.
First, let’s start with the record. The Hilltoppers put up a 5-7 campaign, yes, good enough to place them in the CUSA’s soft middle class, but those five wins came against Middle Tennessee State, FCS Chattanooga, Southern Mississippi, FIU and Charlotte – the four FBS teams combined for an 8-22 record, and WKU won just two of those games by more than three points. Meanwhile, the seven losses saw just two one-score games.
Essentially, this team is the inverse of conference mate Rice, which only lost close, and always won big. WKU got as much luck as it could have possibly asked for and still only went 5-7. That’s… troubling.
It does make a little sense, though, and I’m not sure if it’s predictive of what we’ll see in 2021, for two reasons:
Firstly, this was a defense-first, -second and -third team in 2020. The Hilltoppers had very little interest in scoring but had one of the best defensive secondaries in the group of five ranks and a very strong pass defense on the whole. The secondary is depleted, but much of the front six returns and should help WKU keep opponents off the board again in 2021 (which is going to lead to some close games).
Secondly, as it relates to using the 2020 season to predict the 2021 campaign, the offense is undergoing a pretty significant shift and very little from the last season will carry into this season. WKU has (presumably) a new quarterback and three new receivers, all of which came from Houston Baptist to join Helton’s answer for his woeful offense: new OC Zach Kittley.
Kittley is a product of the Kliff Kingsbury tree and produced a mean and true to form air raid system with HBU, and WKU wants to import to the CUSA. Kittley is bringing starting quarterback Bailey Zappe, 2019 leading receiver Ben Ratzlaff and the Sterns brothers, both receivers, Josh and Jerreth.
Those are four of 16 transfers in the 2021 class for WKU, along with North Dakota State running back Adam Cofield, Michigan receiver Kyle McNamara, Oregon receiver Daewood Davis, Oklahoma tight end Dane Saltarelli, Buffalo tight end Zac Lefebvre, Nebraska lineman Boe Wilson, Bowling Green lineman Cameron Stage and five defenders: Michigan State cornerback Davion Williams, Nebraska LB Nico Cooper, North Carolina LB Matthew Flint, Cincinnati LB Michael Pitts and North Carolina CB Tre Shaw.
I believe every single one of those players is immediately eligible, meaning that WKU should be in for immediate improvement just about everywhere.
There are two issues with that. One, because of all these changes, there’s not a whole lot that I can do here. There are so many things up in the air around this team, and very few pieces from last season that will matter again this season. I can tell you that the pass rush should improve and the defense will be good against the run, but the offense is going to look completely different than it did last season.
Secondly, all of these guys have to learn to work together, which will always be easier said than done at this level. We’ve seen portal teams fail to click pretty often already, and success here would be the exception, not the norm.
Because of the former point, this breakdown is going to focus instead on the Houston Baptist offense that WKU is importing. I have very little to say about the defense, and as mentioned, much of the starting lineup is coming from the portal, not from players that can be studied as a pre-existing unit.
How Does The Houston Baptist Offense Work
It’s an air raid offense. This is going to be a shorter one because this stuff isn’t all that complicated. You all know how the air raid works generally speaking, and Western Kentucky is going to run the capital A, capital R air raid.
Additionally, I don’t really like the air raid, if I’m being honest with you. I know that’s funky for a scheme writer to say, but I’ve always been a bit bothered by it. It feels too much like trick plays to me, and I’m not a fan of trick plays. I appreciate it for what it is and understand why it works so well, but it’s not my favorite to watch, nor is it my favorite to break down.
Kittley, to his credit, is very good at running it, as is Zappe. Houston Baptist adhered closely to the models set by Kingsbury and Leach under his guidance and isn’t going to look to move too far away from that tradition. That will probably pay off with this group in the CUSA, even if it doesn’t make for amazing football to watch.
From the jump, we get uncut air raid action. Very loose play fake in the backfield, wide splits up front and a quick pass underneath to a receiver coming off of a pick against man coverage. Zappe hits his man on time and can help create yards after the catch because of it.
Pretty much the same play here, this time from a five-wide look. Same pick, same route, same result.
Kittley uses these underneath, air raid staples to open up space behind the linebackers. Almost every pass that goes down the field in this system is going into the seam because the formations force the defense into an open center safety alignment and the underneath attack draws linebackers in. That leaves room in that soft middle for very easy passes like this one. The air raid is all about setting a defense up with repetition and then striking for big plays once it starts to feel comfortable defending that repetition. The theory has always been that the offense can do this longer than the defense can, and will because of it. It’s not wrong, it’s just boring (to me).
I don’t have much to say about the running game (because there’s not much there to begin with), but I’ll mention that Kittley sets up passes with it very well when he wants to and I imagine that he’ll take a similar tact with this group.
Here’s what I mean. Same wide splits, as usual, h-back is slicing away from the play, the running back is looking for the C gap to the boundary. It’s a nice little outside run that looks to sell inside zone with that slice block.
Four plays later. Same look in the backfield, even down to the h-back on the slice and the halfback fake. The defense reads it and jumps it, the nickel linebacker is held in place trying to defend the run, the boundary cornerback blitzes, and HBU has a wide-open receiver for the first down. This is how you set a defense up. I hope to see the running game integrated into the offense more for looks like this; because it can separate a good or great air raid attack from an average one. I think Kittley can get it done and turn WKU into a bowl team in year one, but I need to see this before I believe that he can do much more than that.