Mike Leach is not a fan of SEC offenses
By John Buhler
Washington State Cougars head football coach Mike Leach is at it again. This time he is ripping the offenses of every team in the SEC.
It’s a little over a week into the college football offseason, but we’ve got ourselves our first shots fired heading into 2017 NCAA season. The first critical remarks of this college football season came from none other than Washington State Cougars head coach Mike Leach. His target? SEC offenses.
Leach runs a prolific Air Raid offense in Pullman for a middle of the pack Pac-12 team. His Cougars are led by senior quarterback Luke Falk and should be a contender in the Pac-12 North in 2017. However, why is he ripping a Power 5 Conference literally on the opposite side of the country? What is the genesis of Leach’s most recent gripe.
Well, it stems from former Sam Houston State offensive coordinator Phil Longo getting the offensive coordinator gig with the Ole Miss Rebels. Longo uses the Air Raid offense that he learned from Leach when he was the offensive coordinator ironically for the SEC’s Kentucky Wildcats.
Leach spoke with the Jackson Clarion-Ledger about Longo getting the Ole Miss offensive coordinator job. He went off on the SEC saying the “conference isn’t special” and “everybody’s got the same offense: run right, run left, play action.”
Does the SEC love to pound the rock? With defensive-minded teams like Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Vanderbilt, you better believe they do. Leach does have a point that quarterback play in the SEC is not great, but he does have to realize that there are at least four or five programs that run the up-tempo spread in the SEC.
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Auburn, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas A&M all run a variation of the spread. It’s not to the extreme of what Leach does on the banks of the Palouse in Washington State, but Missouri offensive coordinator Josh Heupel and Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin have their roots in running an Air Raid offense.