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Volume 5, No. 12
Heading into the 2000 season, the anticipation of watching a new Texas A&M offense resembled the trepidation of going out on a blind date. Would the Aggie offense have personality? Would it be good-looking? Would it be nervous early on and could it spur on a conversation for more than a few minutes? Well, for the Aggies and their fans, this has been love at first sight. At least after four dates, there is talk that things are getting serious. "We were so excited," A&M offensive lineman Chris Valletta said when he first saw the playbook in the spring. "It’s like the coaches are reborn as far as their thinking. You have all these tremendous football minds all melding together. It’s wonderful what they’re producing." What they have produced is an offense that A&M fans have not seen in the last 15 years, at least. The offensive numbers aren’t overwhelming if you’re a stat monger, but the Aggies are accomplishing what they wanted to do when the coaches first met as a staff in the spring. A&M is averaging close to 35 points a game and has defenses reeling to figure out what the Aggies are doing on the field. The Aggies are running out of the shotgun, gunning the ball out of the I-formation and running the option off of everything. "The worst thing you can have is an offense that is predictable," Valletta said. "I remember what a couple of guys on our defense said about some (A&M) teams having such a predictable offense. I remember Dat Nguyen used to walk up to the line of scrimmage in practice and call the play. When you get people doing that, then you need to adjust it." The genesis of the new-look Aggie offense began in late February and continued through two-a-days. Ten-hour film sessions during the offseason were the norm for the offensive coaching staff, led by offensive coordinator Steve Kragthorpe. With tight ends coach Tam Hollingshead and offensive line coach J.B. Grimes already in place, R.C. Slocum hired Pete Hoener away from Iowa State to coach running backs and cherry-picked receivers coach Larry Kirksey away from the San Francisco 49ers. The staff looked at every play the Aggies ran in 1999, throwing out the bad and marking the good, hoping to tweak what was kept in the playbook. Even though the Aggie offense looks like it has had a major makeover, the coaches insist it hasn’t. Attitude, they say, has been everything. "I don’t know if we made a lot of wholesale changes in terms of what we were doing offensively, other than the philosophy of not playing things quite so close to the vest and maybe being a little more dynamic on offense," Kragthorpe said. "I hate to use the term "take chances" because that gives a negative connotation. But maybe we’ve been a little more wide-open and utilized some more spread sets. We’ve tried to be a little more diversified in terms of what we present to the defense." Kragthorpe has always been comfortable with the passing game from his days on the offensive staffs at Northern Arizona, North Texas and Boston College. But he admits that Hoener’s use of misdirection and motion plays and Kirksey’s knowledge of spreading the ball around the field in the passing game have been impressive additions to the offense. It doesn’t hurt matters, either, when Mark Farris has been sparkling as a sophomore quarterback, and newcomers like tailback Richard Whitaker and wide receiver Robert Ferguson have actually lived up to their preseason hype. "I think the biggest thing is not so much the plays, but the mentality in which we were going to approach things," Kragthorpe added. "And the other thing is that everything is in relation to the players you’ve got. You’ve got a great quarterback right now that you feel comfortable putting a game in his hands and letting him do some things. "And don’t ever discount the fact that one receiver can make a hell of a difference, and Robert’s done that. Because it opens things up for everybody. And obviously, we have more weapons than we’ve had. You combine that with the mentality that we’re not going to play things close to the vest, and that’s been a good equation for us." When the A&M coaches have been watching film of their own games, they’ve seen the fruits of their labor pay off in big ways. Defensive ends are biting on the counter plays and fake reverses, and safeties aren’t residing near the line of scrimmage to stop the run. If the Aggies can improve their short-yardage running game, the potential to be one of the best offenses in recent A&M history is there. "Things were just modified," Valletta said of the offense. "They threw out some protections, some runs and some other things, but they kept a lot and modified it, tweaked it and adjusted it. They’ve thrown in some new formations with different plays. "They’ve just done a lot of neat things. When they draw it on the board, as a player, I’m saying I can’t wait to run this play. When you can slow down their ends and get the defensive end to look one second at the reverse, when actually we’re not running the reverse, it messes them up because they don’t know when things are coming." Valletta and the players have even joked about calling the triumvirate of Kragthorpe, Kirksey and Hoener the "Tremendous Trio." The nickname makes a team player like Hoener squirm. "This is a team game, and all the coaches on the offensive staff contribute greatly to everything we do," said Hoener, who spent 10 years as offensive coordinator at Iowa State. "‘The Fabulous Five’ might be better than to point out three guys. "All the coaches had ideas, and we sat down and were looking at different segments of the offense last year at A&M. Steve had made some comments about things he was looking to do with the offense, and that’s when we began to throw out ideas." Many of the plays thrown out probably were devised only with the I-formation in mind. Indeed, the Aggies are running out of every possible formation now. "The I-formation has become a complementary formation for us, whereas in the past, it was our base offense," Kragthorpe said. "And people would think we’re spreading the defense to throw the ball, and there’s some truth to that. But we’re also trying to take out of the game residual hitters, the safeties who are in close proximity to the line of scrimmage, and we’ve been able to do that." The Aggies unveiled their new offense in the season opener at Notre Dame, and while the offense garnered stylistic points, the ones that matter on the scoreboard didn’t materialize in a 24-10 loss. But the scheme was hardly to fault, as dropped passes and a failed goal-line opportunity spelled doom for the Aggies. Kirksey, who admitted the offense took its lumps in the spring while evolving into a capable unit, said the remainder of the season will be determined on how well the Aggies can execute their offense. It just evolved by us sitting around 10 hours a day just watching film, and it continues to evolve every week," Kirksey said. "The system is in, but there are always ways to tweak the offense to make it better. Hopefully, (defensive coordinators) are sitting around and saying we just can’t stop the pass or just stop the run, but they’re multiple now. The bottom line, though, is just to execute." Kragthorpe is all smiles these days. Then again, so are the players and most of the fans in the stands. Suddenly, the Aggies’ good-looking offense has the potential to escort A&M to the Big 12 title game. "It’s fun to coach, it’s fun to watch, and I think it’s fun for the players," Kragthorpe added. "I think they have a better feeling that we’re going out and attacking on offense instead of trying to win, 13-10."
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