Working for Urban Meyer has its perks. The exposure and eventual blessing that comes along with grinding under such a successful head coach pays dividends more often than not and is a reason the branches on his coaching tree are so extensive.
It isn't easy, however. Meyer is as intense and meticulous as they come particularly with his offense. It is important to remember that his power-spread attack is just that — his. So when things go awry, Meyer is the one who feels the need to step in and attempt to fix them.
But Meyer doesn't necessarily want that to be the case, or so he says. He wishes to put trust in his offensive coordinators to do their jobs effectively and efficiently, so his energy is spent elsewhere.
“I want to be the head coach, and I want to run special teams,” Meyer said last week. “I want to be the game manager and the motivator.”
Some coaches are defensive-minded. Others have a background that lies on the offensive side of the ball. Meyer is obviously the latter. While he evolves as a coach and takes a step back, Meyer sees when Ohio State was at its best in his now five-year stint in Columbus. That came when he managed the offense without being the lead dog. Enter Kevin Wilson.
| SEASON | TEAM | RECORD | OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR | PASS YPG (RANK) | RUSH YPG (RANK) | PPG (RANK) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | BOWLING GREEN | 8-3 | GREGG BRANDON | 217.0 (59th) | 166.1 (46th) | 30.3 (31st) |
| 2002 | BOWLING GREEN | 9-3 | GREGG BRANDON | 229.8 (49th) | 219.1 (11th) | 40.8 (3rd) |
| 2003 | UTAH | 10-2 | MIKE SANFORD | 214.0 (65th) | 160.5 (48th) | 28.7 (42nd) |
| 2004 | UTAH | 12-0 | MIKE SANFORD | 263.7 (21st) | 236.1 (13th) | 45.3 (3rd) |
| 2005 | FLORIDA | 9-3 | DAN MULLEN | 226.7 (52nd) | 146.8 (56th) | 28.6 (49th) |
| 2006* | FLORIDA | 13-1 | DAN MULLEN | 236.8 (28th) | 160.0 (38th) | 29.7 (24th) |
| 2007 | FLORIDA | 9-4 | DAN MULLEN | 257.0 (38th) | 200.2 (24th) | 42.5 (3rd) |
| 2008* | FLORIDA | 13-1 | DAN MULLEN | 213.9 (61st) | 231.1 (10th) | 43.6 (4th) |
| 2009 | FLORIDA | 13-1 | STEVE ADDAZIO | 236.1 (41st) | 221.8 (10th) | 35.9 (10th) |
| 2010 | FLORIDA | 8-5 | STEVE ADDAZIO | 184.3 (88th) | 166.5 (44th) | 29.8 (43rd) |
| 2012 | OHIO STATE | 12-0 | TOM HERMAN | 181.5 (105th) | 242.3 (10th) | 37.2 (21st) |
| 2013 | OHIO STATE | 12-2 | TOM HERMAN | 203.3 (90th) | 308.6 (5th) | 40.1 (5th) |
| 2014* | OHIO STATE | 14-1 | TOM HERMAN | 247.1 (52nd) | 264.5 (9th) | 44.8 (5th) |
| 2015 | OHIO STATE | 12-1 | ED WARINNER | 188.8 (100th) | 245.3 (11th) | 35.7 (28th) |
| 2016 | OHIO STATE | 11-2 | ED WARINNER | 213.9 (81st) | 245.2 (11th) | 39.4 (13th) |
| 2017 | OHIO STATE | – | KEVIN WILSON | – | – | – |
*Won national championship
Meyer brought in the former Indiana coach to coordinate his offense (and coach tight ends) after Ed Warinner left to be the new offensive line coach at Minnesota. Quarterbacks coach Tim Beck is also elsewhere, now in the same position at the University of Texas under head coach Tom Herman.
It is important to remember the two-year Warinner-Beck-Meyer offensive experiment wasn't exactly terrible, at least statistically. But it wasn't what the head coach knows the Buckeyes are capable of, like how things hummed on the way to the 2014 national championship with Herman calling the shots in addition to Warinner (then the offensive line coach) and Meyer assisting.
“[The 2014 season] is the perfect — that's what we want to be, and that's great balance,” Meyer said. “A 1,500-yard rusher, receivers that are making plays — have the ability to stretch the field, and we have to get back to that, and we have to play with better tempo.”
Meyer added that tempo is what Herman brought to Ohio State's offense, something that "really enhanced" it two seasons ago when the Buckeyes won it all. Herman earned his first head coaching gig as a result, working at the University of Houston the last two seasons before taking over in Austin.
“I want to be the head coach, and I want to run special teams. I want to be the game manager and the motivator.”– Urban Meyer
Warinner and Beck are not head coaches after working for Meyer, however. That is not to say the head coach didn't trust them — he also claimed each left Columbus on his own accord — but things were noticeably not as smooth as they were with Herman steering the ship.
There is more to it than play calling, too. Meyer wanted to make that clear on signing day.
“I'm very involved in the offense, but I try to hire the best possible guys I can to coordinate, because coordinating the offense isn't calling a play. That's the misunderstanding,” he said. “Coordinating the offense is the practice, the motivation, inspiration of the staff in that room right there. Those are all titles of the coordinator, not so-called 'who called the reverse?' That really has no bearing on the coordinator.”
It sounds like Meyer is asking a lot because well, he is. He and Wilson are friends and Meyer has respected his new coordinator ever since he sent members of his Bowling Green staff to Evanston, Illinois, in 2001 to take everything they could from Northwestern's spread offense. Wilson coordinated the Wildcat offense for the late Randy Walker, part of the early wave of the spread attacks that surged across the sport.
This isn't to say Ohio State's offense hasn't been productive the last two seasons. It just blatantly let the team down in each of its three losses. Play calling and execution doomed them against Michigan State in 2015 and the steady decline in the passing game came to a resounding thud against Clemson in an embarrassing 31-0 loss at the Fiesta Bowl.
“I was going through all our stats, we led the Big Ten in offense this year. I think that's three or four out of five years,” Meyer said. “We were I think .07 points away from leading the Big Ten in scoring offenses. No. 1 in 3rd down conversions.”
But, like anything else, things can always improve. And they must if Ohio State wishes to recapture the Big Ten Championship and return to the College Football Playoff. Twenty-three wins the last two seasons is nothing to scoff at but the noticeable steps back in the passing game in 2015 and 2016 put an added onus on Wilson and new quarterbacks coach Ryan Day to get things where Meyer wants them.
“Where before we wanted to be 250, 250. I believe we were 250 rushing or 247 or something like that [in 2014],” Meyer said. “We were only 213 passing, and we want to be 250, 250. I'm going to be perfectly clear, though, this is the Ohio State offense, and we're going to enhance it and make it better.”
The directive is in place, with Meyer insisting he wants to be more of a supervisor instead of the administrator. And quarterback J.T. Barrett calls Wilson a "go-getter" with a desire to have the offense as a whole operating at full capacity.
“Try to make sure that we just function our best as a group,” Barrett said on Jan. 22. “I think that is one of his main focuses.”
It is Meyer's too, which is why he made the changes he did, moves that fall in line with what he calls a "refresh of the program." It also adds stress to Day and Wilson but mostly the latter. Wilson is in Columbus to be the mastermind behind the offense.
Why? Because Meyer trusts him. The head coach's new minds are in place. Game on.
“I'm getting all these things we did well, and same thing, what we didn't do well,” Meyer said. “What you find out, productivity in the passing game has really hurt us, and we need to be more productive.
“Now, what does that mean? I hear the term receivers must separate. Exactly. Quarterbacks must be more accurate. Exactly. And the offensive line must do — we gave up 25 sacks this year. That's not acceptable. So those are all things that we're going to really focus in on.”
