STARKVILLE — Mississippi State hired Joe Moorhead for his offense, and he has not forgotten that. He has made it clear he is going to maintain the playcalling duties as MSU’s head coach, but he’s also made another thing clear: he has going to have plenty of help.
He made that point by hiring three offensive assistant coaches with the term coordinator in their title: offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach Luke Getsy, run game coordinator and running backs coach Charles Huff and passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach Andrew Breiner. On Wednesday, as all of them were introduced in their new roles, they outlined how they will combine their efforts to craft the new MSU offense.
“Joe is the lead dog and we are here to support him,” Getsy said. “We are here to give him every piece of information we possibly can so he can call the best game every single Saturday. My responsibility is to oversee the whole thing and each guy has their own responsibilities and specific areas that they need to dominate.”
Breiner, who worked for Moorhead at Fordham for four years before replacing him as the Rams’ head coach, has seen Moorhead orchestrate a similar system.
“Coach Getsy’s going to take the leadership role within the offensive staff and the offensive players, but the game planning process is very collaborative,” he said. “I think that’s something that’s led to the productivity of this offense is a truly collaborative effort in the game planning process and getting the exact right call sheet to go into a game.”
Huff described a system in which the more specialized job titles give he and Breiner more specialized gameplanning and opponent scouting duties. For example, as a run game coordinator, he would become an expert in how to adapt MSU’s run game to the exact schemes and personnel deployed by each opponent’s defensive line and linebackers, and Breiner is free to do the same for the opposing secondary. Natural crossover will occur in a system that relies so heavily on run-pass options (RPOs).
Huff also has personal experience in helping Moorhead craft game plans, having just done so as Penn State’s running backs coach under Moorhead in the latter’s last two years as Penn State’s offensive coordinator.
“Instead of one person having a wide range of things they need to go through in a week, each person has their individual expertise,” Huff said. “I can be an expert in how to run the ball, whether that’s red zone, short yardage, normal downs. I can marry that with the pass game plan that Andrew has together and Luke can streamline all of those ideas together.
“As a group, we can come together and say this is the best plan to present Joe. At the end of the day, Joe has to put the stamp on it and be comfortable with it.”
It may be many more hands in a game plan than many other programs in college football, but the men inside of it find proof of concept everywhere they look.
Getsy said the setup reminds him of the one he just left when he was the wide receivers coach for the Green Bay Packers: head coach Mike McCarthy was the team’s primary playcaller and remained active in the offensive plan, but could not do everything, which is where Getsy and other offensive assistants came into play. Huff pointed to the Philadelphia Eagles team that just won the Super Bowl: head coach Doug Pederson is the primary playcaller but had an offensive coordinator in Frank Reich, a run game coach in Eugene Chung and a similar overseer of the passing game in John DeFilippo.
Breiner estimated something similar to Huff’s suggestion, that Getsy will give him and Huff assignments of specific things to focus on throughout each game week. Almost all of those ideas will ultimately be reflected in the call sheet Moorhead references throughout each game in the fall.
“I tell people all the time, it’s going to be Joe’s painting with our paint,” Huff said.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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