I wanted to include a quick preface here, so as to not jump directly into my offseason project without explaining it at least a little bit first. This is the first in what will be an offseason-long effort to preview every single G5 team, from the bottom of the MAC and the CUSA to the top of the American, and including Independents not named Notre Dame. The list is just coming from Bill Connelly’s end-of-season SP+ rankings, starting from the bottom and working our way up.
There are two teams that I can’t cover - Old Dominion and UConn - because neither played this season (nor did New Mexico State, but it has games on the schedule for the spring), but everyone else at the G5 level is getting a preview.
I’ll also note that these aren’t going to be traditional previews, because I don’t really want to go through and break down rosters to give you a full idea of who you should be looking for at left guard on UMass. There are other people that can and will do that.
This is much more of a general look at the program at hand, some of the players that will define it in the coming season, and the ideology that the coaching staff is trying to utilize to win football games. I want to identify the core identity of a program and explain how it works (or doesn’t work, but could). The goal here is not to be negative about these teams or players, it’s to paint a picture of what they’re going for, at least as much as can be gleaned from the film. I want readers of this newsletter to be able to turn on any FBS game and know, generally, what the teams they’re watching are trying to do.
Oh, also! These won’t be coming out as every single newsletter. I’m still going to do other stuff, both on the FCS spring season and on P5 teams, throwback film studies and plenty more. However, expect at least one a week, probably two in most instances, so that I can get every team done by the time the 2021 season kicks off.
Up first: UMass Minutemen.
UMass may be in a more difficult spot than any other FBS program in America. Once a powerhouse at the FCS level, the Minutemen moved up in the ranks early in the 2010s, hoping that the success and consistency they had found would carry into the higher levels of the sport.
However, the timing really couldn’t have been much worse. After finding much of that success and consistency under the guidance of Mark Whipple and Don Brown in the 2000s, UMass slipped up with Kevin Morris and Charley Molnar at the helm from 2009-2013, right when it was preparing to move up into the MAC at the next level.
Whipple’s return in 2014 helped a little, but he was never able to secure more than four wins, as UMass struggled to return to the approach that had worked so well at the FCS level - or failed to translate those ways into any sort of positive movement against more difficult competition. Independence has been a disaster for the Minutemen, though it doesn’t seem as though any conference would take them at this point. This program is not in a good place.
The hire of former Florida State, Maryland and Arkansas State offensive coordinator Walt Bell in 2019 certainly didn’t spark a ton of confidence, either. Once a rising star in the coaching world, Bell didn’t exactly set the world on fire during his one season with the Seminoles in 2018. His offense notched 21.9 points per game, making it one of the worst in the nation at a school that has more talent than UMass will ever see. The two sides split, with Bell leaving for UMass that offseason. He spoke at the time about understanding that this would need to be a long-term build to find any success, and echoed those sentiments again late in 2020, in a Dec. 11, post-season Zoom call with local media. (Credit to the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s Mike Moran for quotes from that call.)
“More than probably anybody else I understood what was going on when I took the job. I knew there was going to be a lot of dark days before there was very much light,” Bell said. “That’s what happens when you inherit a roster with 52 scholarship players. There’s going to be a lot of dark, but we've done all the right things, we have tended very mindfully. At some point that bamboo is going to take off and it’s going to grow really fast.”
While the Bell hire was very strange at the time and still looks shaky at best now, following an 0-4 season that saw the Minutemen score 12 points and allow 161, he isn’t lying when he says that UMass is doing things the right way. It’s obvious that this is a staff aware of the task at hand and comfortable with the amount of time that it takes to build a sustainable program.
In other words: UMass isn’t skipping the hard stuff. This is a program that has focused heavily on recruiting four-year players out of high school, rather than the much quicker (but far less sustainable) model of signing a bunch of JUCO players and transfers, looking to win right away, and then getting the hell out of town before everything falls apart. Bell hasn’t proven himself as a winner yet, but he’s announced very clearly to his program and to prospective recruits that he’s in this for the long haul. That’s intriguing.
It means two things: Firstly, Bell isn’t as ruthlessly ambitious as once thought, and seems to be willing to stick around a place like this much longer than the standard two-or-three year stint for young coaches such as himself. Secondly, this is a man with very strong promises from his administration that he has all of the time and patience he needs to build a winner. This is the approach a coach with job security. UMass doesn’t have a ton right now, but that’s objectively a good thing for this program. it needs some sort of stability, and giving Bell that kind of time helps to provide that.
With that, Bell has taken full advantage. He’s pulling in recruits that can be developed rather than finished products, and he’s doing the actual work of developing them, at least in terms of playing time. UMass was one of the youngest teams in the country in 2020, especially near the end of the season, as it underwent a full-blown youth movement in search of some building blocks moving forward.
“Right now the way I look at it is we are being very mindful, we’re being very present, we’re doing it the right way, we’re doing everything that we need to do with an incredible young program to let that bamboo start to grow,” Bell said. “What we're doing every single day is we're giving it water, a ton of fertilizer and we’re going to let this young group grow and we’re going to get really good really fast. There are no shortcuts at a place like ours.”
In my opinion, it found two players, a coach, and a scheme that can be built around. I’ll note here that I’m only talking about offense here in this preview, because Bell is an offensive coach and wants to build his program around a specific offensive ideology. When we’re finding the core of this program, it’s on that side of the ball.
I’ll start with the players, for the sake of consistency: quarterback Will Koch and halfback Ellis Merriweather. Koch started two games for the Minutemen at quarterback in 2020 as a true freshman and was pretty obviously the best of the bunch (UMass started about a billion QBs last season). He isn’t much of a thrower, but he’s quick on the RPOs and ran very well when given the chance to.
Merriweather is one of the few JUCO pulls on this roster. He was a redshirt junior last season that Bell brought in to fill a pretty massive vacancy at running back and while his stats are wholly underwhelming, he was running behind a truly despicable offensive line. He’s a powerful runner and I think he fits the scheme pretty well.
The coach that I referenced is a brand new face: Alex Miller. Miller played on the offensive line for UMass under both Whipple and Brown, which is nice for the introductory press conference but pales in comparison to the next thing on his resume: Miller was a GA under Chip Kelly at Oregon before he departed in 2011 to work as the offensive line coach under legendary New Hampshire head coach Sean McDonnell, a job that Miller held until this offseason when he departed for UMass.
McDonnell has one of the best eyes for talent in coaching and that he kept Miller around for so long tells me that Miller is both a good football coach and that he’s been around some very impressive football minds in the last decade.
So, by hiring Miller, Bell is landing an experienced offensive line coach (Miller will also coordinate the running game) while leaning further into an ideology that I think makes a lot of sense given the talent here and the program at large.
See, Bell wants to establish an offense built around a RPO, with the emphasis on R. He’s said as much frequently, his play calling reflects that, and this hire just furthers that idea. Bell’s UMass wants to grind out yardage on the ground and then punish defenses that load the box to stop that by hitting quick passes on screens to the perimeter and skinny posts over the top of overly aggressive linebackers.
Like this. Ignore the result - we’re just looking for design and intent here - this is the idea behind this offense, at least in the way that Bell has designed the passing game. The offensive line is blocking as it would on split zone, with a motioned wide receiver coming across on jet motion to take on the isolated end, creating a numbers advantage up front in the case of a run, because UMass already has a pair of extra blockers on the line, making this an eight-man front when all is said and done - essentially 13 personnel.
That’s going to draw any defense in, making this a very easy read for the quarterback. Watch his eyes. He’s reading the play side safety, who has already started to sneak in with the motion, and who collapses into the box fully at the snap. Quarterback sees that, pulls the ball back, and throws to the glance part of this play - a skinny post. The throw is off, but this isn’t UMass’ quarterback of the future anyway, and the ideology behind this play is solid. Without a passer that can really go down the field, this is a pretty good way to move the ball in the air, you just have to find a quarterback that can read it quickly and make these throws 70 percent of the time. I’m not yet sure if Koch is that guy, but I do think he’ll get a good chance to try.
The rest of the passing game is designed with a pretty similar idea in mind. UMass wants to minimize risk while stretching the field, using its strength on the ground as a constant threat to the defense, opening up space for the quarterback to make easy throws to receivers that should, in theory, be open with room to run. There are a lot of plays in this book like this one, a pretty basic trips bubble screen to the field. If the defense is concerned enough about the run, it just isn’t going to dedicate enough defenders to covering this sufficiently. If it does distribute extra help out there, UMass should be able to run. Again, in theory.
However, UMass couldn’t run in 2020. It couldn’t do anything. The line was unable to get any sort of consistent push and Merriweather was frequently stuffed at or before the line of scrimmage because his blockers were being knocked off the line at the start of every play. So why the intrigue?
Well, this is where Miller comes back in. UMass showed quite a few concepts on the ground last season, but had the most successfully with two pretty basic schemes: counter plays and option. Bell originally intended for this to be much more of a straight forward rushing attack, but it’s quite apparent that the line talent just isn’t going to be there to pull that off consistently.
So, he went out and hired someone directly off of the counter and option tree. That’s why I’m intrigued here. Miller understands this stuff better than Bell does, and now he’s in charge of the run game.
Miller will (hopefully) lean into plays like this one and add more of them into this attack. It’s just H-counter, a staple of this offense already, but it gives the ball carrier two clear lead blockers, with time allowed for both by the counter step in the backfield to get into their blocks. There’s a bubble tag attached here that UMass would go to in the case of a loaded box, but this can and will have glance on it too.
While counter is much more of a staple, UMass showed off some pretty cool traditional option stuff in 2020 that I’m hoping Miller will hold onto as well. Koch is a pretty strong runner, and while he isn’t yet perfect on the reads, leaning into this as a part of his skillset should make things easier both in the passing attack and for the halfbacks, who were frequently fighting for any sort of space at all last season. It’s another play for a numbers advantage (trying to make the defense play 11-on-11 by including the QB as a running threat), but that’s how this offense is going to need to operate.
This is what I think the UMass offense is going to be in 2021, and I’ll tell you right now - that’s a good thing. That’s exciting. This is just a standard read option, but when you pair it with good counter plays and good RPO stuff, it’s still going to work when the quarterback reads it correctly as he does here. Koch can run this stuff, this offensive line can support it with any kind of improvement at all, and Miller has as much familiarity with concepts like this one as any coach that UMass could’ve possibly landed for his spot. Pair it with Bell’s knowledge of RPO concepts, a roster that should be improving and gaining consistency as it ages and cycles through more and more four-year players and an administration allowing for a full rebuild, and this program starts to look a lot less destitute.
No, UMass isn’t going to win six games in 2021. It probably isn’t going to win three. But there’s an identity forming here. There’s a program being built. For the worst team in America in 2020, that’s about the best news I could possibly deliver here.
Up next: Bowling Green