I like the hire a lot. Grimes helped make Zach Wilson into a likely first round draft pick. BYU averaged 43 PPG this year. Running game coordinator and O line coach at LSU before going to BYU.

Well done, Coach.

More info on him

Reports: Baylor to hire offensive coordinator on Monday

https://sicem365.com/s/8443/reports-baylor-to-hire-offensive-coordinator-on-monday/2

Looks like a great hire, Texan, played OT at UTEP, has one of the most prolific offenses in college football today! Optimism reigns!

I approve of this message.

This is from the guy that runs HornRecruiting. Note the date.

BUbackerinET said:

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Looks like a great hire, Texan, played OT at UTEP, has one of the most prolific offenses in college football today! Optimism reigns!

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This is mostly correct except that El Paso is the largest city in New Mexico.

Pleased to get him

His Wikipedia page shows current position as Offensive Coordinator for Baylor University. Guess it's official if it's on Wikipedia.

Looks great. Can't do better than this guy. Sic'em Bears!

Appears to be a good hire. For Aranda's sake he needs to produce next season. I think he will. I think this past season was an abberation anyway due to COVID so there was going to be a turnaround anyway in 21 without anyone getting fired.

I guess who ever said January 4th on this free board a week or so ago was right after all.

Welcome Coach Grimes!

Wow....looks like a home run hire to me. Well played Aranda and Mack!

Let's hope we can have a semi-normal Spring ball so our guys can start learning these concepts.

(added bonus....he can help us scout our toughest non-con opponent next year)

Grimes was my top choice, so needless to say, I'm excited.

Expecting a little higher flying offense than we've seen over the last 4 years. BYU moves the ball down field and so hopefully he can implement an offense that fits our options at QB. Developing one of these young guys, and the O line, is top priority.

Found this breakdown of BYU vs UCF. very good to watch

Stranger said:

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BUbackerinET said:

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Looks like a great hire, Texan, played OT at UTEP, has one of the most prolific offenses in college football today! Optimism reigns!

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This is mostly correct except that El Paso is the largest city in New Mexico.

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where I once fell for a girl named Felina

ImABearToo said:

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Expecting a little higher flying offense than we've seen over the last 4 years. BYU moves the ball down field and so hopefully he can implement an offense that fits our options at QB. Developing one of these young guys, and the O line, is top priority.

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I love that Grimes' background is on the line. He's built some really good ones in the past.

Guy says "O line domination!" Now you got my attention.

bear2be2 said:

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ImABearToo said:

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Expecting a little higher flying offense than we've seen over the last 4 years. BYU moves the ball down field and so hopefully he can implement an offense that fits our options at QB. Developing one of these young guys, and the O line, is top priority.

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I love that Grimes' background is on the line. He's built some really good ones in the past.

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It needs to be. I doubt any OC could have done much with what we put on the field this year.

Interesting article from 2018 that gives a little insight to Grimes's thoughts on OL. Looking through his recruiting records he was bringing in a lot of 4* and some 5* OL talent...of course that was at Auburn and LSU where you hold a recruiting advantage.



When it comes to BYU's offensive linemen, more girth is better than less
Jun 27, 2018, 4:13pm MDT

PROVO Jeff Grimes wants girth in BYU's offensive line, so he's challenged the tall and lanky to grow a little more sideways. That's the word from the former SEC offensive line expert at LSU and Auburn, the heart of college football's guys-in-the-trenches animal farms.

Six months ago, Grimes shared with me the traits he most desired in a quarterback. First, competitive spirit. Second, accuracy. Third, toughness. Fourth, cerebral capacity.

When asked at BYU football media day how close BYU's existing offensive linemen are to what he's used to coaching and playing against at Georgia, Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee and LSU, the native Texan explained his thoughts about desired body types. "I think there is a difference in every position between here and other places," said Grimes. "I think our offensive linemen are close to what I've seen elsewhere. "What we have now, by the nature of who we have on campus, is that we have a lot of length. That is good. We do have a lot of height. What we do need is more girth. We need more mass in the A gaps." That, in simple terms, means truck fenders and bumpers on some sedan-type bodies, whale parts on sharks.

"Part of that is the development of the players who are here. I'd say maybe half of the linemen we've asked to put on more weight," Grimes said. "Another 30 or 40 percent we've asked to stay the same and just get stronger. Another couple of guys we've asked to lose weight. At other places I've been we've had to ask guys to go down in weight when they were a little bit too big when they come to us.

"So, we've asked some, the majority, to bulk up. The other thing we work on is recruiting, to find guys at center and guard who wouldn't fit in one of these chairs, guys who'd need two chairs to fit their rear ends in. We need a little bit more of that."

As Grimes and his protg, offensive line coach Ryan Pugh, and graduate assistant coach Dallas Reynolds spent spring "noticing" trends in development among BYU linemen and witnessing interactions, they've seen what good leaders look like.

Grimes likes Austin Hoyt, a veteran tackle, whom he said has done a great job.
The other day Grimes was walking through BYU's locker room with his seventh-grade son, who will play offensive and defensive line. He said to his son, pointing to Hoyt:
"You know what? That guy is an NFL offensive tackle. That's what they look like."
Grimes then complimented Hoyt.

"I told Austin that he looked a whole lot different from when I first met him. When I first took this job, he was the first player I met," Grimes recounted. "He just happened to be sitting on the tailgate of his pickup as I was walking into the SAB and Kalani introduced me to him. "He was a great-looking guy then. He is even a greater looking player now and it is amazing what a guy with the right mindset and motivation will do with his body in six months that he hadn't done in the previous three or four years. He really looks different. "I think that is really going to pay off. During spring he really emerged as a guy who wasn't just focused on his job but cared what the rest of the offense did as well."

Grimes likes Notre Dame transfer Tristen Hoge, who redshirted last year. "Tristen has been a guy who has been very consistent as far as his diligence in being one of the first guys in and last guys out of the locker room. He's a guy who is always going to give you his best on and off the field. He's going to eat right, get in the weight room extra, and study the playbook."

Veteran Thomas Shoaf is another leader on that line, said Grimes. "He did a good job this spring. He's been hurt and has had to sit out. It's hard to be a vocal leader when you aren't out there. But when he came back, we felt the difference he made immediately in the line."

All in all, Grimes and his staff have yet to see the full weight, height and girth in a real game in which their work the past six months can properly be evaluated. That will come after the Sept. 1 game at Arizona. But this is summer. It's a time they are asked and they answer.

Pass the potatoes, guys.

Also saw that Grimes was a recent candidate for Utah State's HC opening and mentioned as a possible candidate for Arizona's HC opening.

ilbb990912 said:

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where I once fell for a girl named Felina

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That is great and looks good on paper. But we had the best staff of assistants on paper in our history from Feb-December. The proof is in the 21 season.

I wonder if he will bring anyone with him.

I think a new thread was just started announcing that.

Another interesting article talking about Grime's use of the "Fly offense" that he learned from Matt Canada at LSU. This is from 2018....so not sure how his offense has evolved from then.


https://www.si.com/college/2018/09/25/byu-cougars-fly-sweep-offense-jeff-grimes

With an Offense Learning to Fly, BYU Is One of 2018's Biggest Surprises

To understand BYU's return to national relevance under Kalani Sitake and first-year offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes, you have to understand fly sweeps, the unmistakable play concept that spiced up the Cougars' stagnant offense and helped topple #5 Wisconsin.

Welcome to the Film Room. This is a weekly analysis of one big play, series, scheme or idea from the weekend's slew of college games and deciphering what it means going forward.

Tanner Mangum had to learn how to multi-task better. All quarterbacks multi-task to some degrees: relaying the play call from the sideline, reading a defensive formation and then dancing around pass rushers before getting the ball outbut Mangum has never had so much to do before a snap. His checklist in BYU's new offense, which former LSU O-line coach Jeff Grimes brought to Provo when he was hired to replace Ty Detmer this offseason, includes shifting and motioning as many as five players on any given play. Often, that presnap activity ends with one of the staple plays of the Cougars' offense: the fly sweep, more commonly referred to as a jet sweep (while offensive terminology differs from program to program, BYU uses "fly" and "jet" interchangeably).
Let's take one play from the Cougars' 2421 upset win over Wisconsin in Week 3 as an example.

Here's all the movement that happens before the snap:

1. Tackle Brady Christensen (No. 67), lined up at tight end, lumbers from the right side of the offensive line to the left.
2. Tight end Moroni Laulu-Pututau (No. 17), lined up at tackle, moves from the left side of the line to the right.

3. Tight end Dallin Holker (No. 32), lined up in the H-back spot just behind the line, follows Laulu-Pututau to the right side.
4. With a flick of his foot, Mangum sends slot man Aleva Hifo (No. 15) in motion. Hifo races behind Mangum under center, then doubles back the way he came as the ball is snapped to either take a handoff or feign like he is.

There are other plays in which a slot receiver moves to tailback, a wide receiver moves to the slot and three tight ends break the huddle lined up bunched together out wide, only to shift to their more typical in-line position. It's a lot to take in.

"Fly sweeps, jet sweeps, shifts and motions, that's us," Mangum says. "Having to remember all the shifts and motions and formations and remembering I have to read the defense ... well, when we were first installing it, I'd be so busy thinking about [the shifts and motions] that I lost track of what the defense was doing and what my read was."

All is well now. Mangum has become a multi-tasking wizard, and Grimes's new sweep-heavy, motion-filled offense has helped BYU surge to a 31 start and a No. 20 ranking in the AP poll ahead of a trip to No. 11 Washington. The Cougars' offense has been far from prolific, averaging just 320 yards a game so far, but it has been effective, producing crunch-time scores on the road against Arizona and the Badgers, and it has hogged the ball to keep BYU's strong defense rested.

Grimes is succeeding with a unique brand of football, a misdirection scheme that incorporates fly sweeps like the one atop this story. BYU has run 27 sweeps in its first four games that have gained 127 yards, a 5.4-yard average. The concept worked to perfection against Wisconsin, gaining 49 yards on nine sweeps and picking up three first downs. "It's been great for us, being able to use different players in that [sweep motion] and spread the ball out more," says third-year BYU head coach Kalani Sitake. "I'm a defensive guy. That's my background. It's a difficult scheme. As an offense, it keeps guys guessing."

In the simplest form, the fly is based around stretching the field horizontally. A player sprints laterally behind the line of scrimmage before the snap, usually passing just behind the quarterback under center or just in front of him in the shotgun. The motion man is a threat as a runner or a receiver. In a way, it is an inverted triple option, and like the traditional triple option, it is a pain for defenses to defend. Maryland interim coach Matt Canada made headlines both positive and negative when he brought it to LSU last season, averaging well over six yards a sweep in SEC play to shake up a conference that crows about its downhill running style and its athletic defenses built to stop the run. (Canada and head coach Ed Orgeron butted heads over the system's complexity, among other things, which led to Canada's departure for College Park.)

Sitake gave Grimes his first coordinator job over the offseason, looking to install the same scheme that LSU blistered his defense with in a 270 Tigers win last year in New Orleans. Grimes says only a portion of his offense is derived from what Canada runs, but the schemes' common feature is their most obvious one: About three-fourths of BYU's offensive plays involve at least one player shifting before the snap. In all, the Cougars have shifted or gone into motion before the snap more than 220 times in four games. "I've seen how it can keep defenses off-balance," Mangum says. "It's been fun.

"The willingness to say, 'We're going to line up in any given formation and we might shift to it from any given formation on any given down and distance,' is something I got from Matt," Grimes says. "I saw the value in it last year."

The presnap sweep motion is essential to the scheme. Grimes learned it during the first big break in his coaching career as an assistant for Dirk Koetter at Boise State in 2000. Koetter's offensive coordinator Dan Hawkins had brought the fly system to Boise from Willamette College, then an NAIA program in Oregon. The roots of the fly sweep are in the desert valley of California, where a high school coach named Gene Beck is believed to have created the system. (The full timeline of the scheme's dissemination can be found at the bottom of this story.) Koetter's success at Boise State resulted in him landing the head job at Arizona State in 2001.

"When Dirk left for Arizona State, he asked me for two favors," Hawkins said in an interview last year. "One of them was, 'Don't give away anything on the fly.'"

BYU has used at least eight different players on sweeps, none more than junior receiver Aleva Hifo (12 carries for 67 yards). The biggest gains on the play (14, 13 and 12 yards) came against Wisconsin; BYU opened the game with sweeps on six of its first 11 plays, scoring a touchdown on its second drive to set the tone for a stunner. Sitake already had gained enough confidence in Grimes's scheme by the season-opener that he went for it twice on fourth down in a 2823 victory at Arizona. He's just hoping his offensive coordinator doesn't leave anytime soon.

"He'll be a head coach someday," Sitake says of Grimes. "He doesn't care about stats other than winning. He doesn't need to pad his stats. He just wants to do whatever's best to win the game, and that's a true O-lineman: get no credit, do your job and be happy with the result."

Sitake even let Grimes run a trick play against Wisconsin. "Bucky" was designed just for the Badgers and named after their mascot. The play went for a 31-yard touchdown. Mangum threw a lateral pass to Hifo that was designed to look like a quick screen, and with the defense drawn up, Hifo turned and threw downfield to the wide open Laulu-Pututau. Aaron Roderick, BYU's pass game coordinator and quarterbacks coach, was behind the concept, which he had seen Boise State run in the past. "We looked at a video of Boise running that play. It fit for me. We decided it on Monday and practiced it every day," Grimes says. "Timed out perfect and it worked out just like we saw Boise do it."


The Cougars executed the play on a second-and-four in the second quarter. "It was awesome," Sitake recalls. "Before we even ran the first-down play, [Grimes] said, 'The next call is going to be Bucky.' I was like, 'Wow. O.K.'"

Sure, Grimes misses spending time in the offensive line meeting room, but his transition to coordinator went smoother than most because of the situation he inheritedthat is to say, one where there was nowhere to go but up. The Cougars finished 124th in the FBS in scoring offense last year, scoring more than 20 points in just four of their 13 games. They are already one away from matching that total in 2018, with Washington's stout defense looming as the season's toughest test.

"They had not been very good," Grimes says. "That's usually a good thing as a coach. You have the opportunity to have an immediate captive audience. Their being willing to do whatever we say gives them a chance for success."

That includes shifts and motion before the snap and those sweeps. Mangum is a pro in the system now, a 25-year-old sixth-year player who can juggle moving parts before a play gets off the ground with the best of them. Reading defenses, relaying play calls, completing passes in a collapsing pocket and triggering one of the oddest things you'll see in football: a 300-plus-pound tackle trotting behind his quarterback before the snap. "Oh yeah," Mangum says, "that was new for us."

Tracing the history of the Fly Offense

Gene Beck: Many believe he was the first to use the offensive system back in the 1950s, and the invention won him so many games at Delano High School in California that the school has a bust of him in its library. To this day the offense is used widely by high schools near Delano in the Central Valley (inland California from Los Angeles to San Jose). Many in the area's large immigrant community refer to the offense as La Mosca, or "The Fly" in Spanish.

Phil Maas: Maas, another high school coach in the Central Valley, used Beck's scheme to win three league titles before he brought it to his next stop, a high school in Monterey, Calif. For the last 37 years, Maas has coached at College of Siskiyous, a community college just south of the Oregon state line.

Dan Hawkins: After learning the system on Maas's staff at Siskiyous in the late 1980s, Hawkins led Willamette College to the NAIA championship game, which propelled him to the offensive coordinator job at Boise State, where he exposed the fly to major college football. Hawkins, after head coaching stops at Boise State and Colorado, is now the coach at UC Davis, where his RBs coach is Mark Speckman.

Mark Speckman: Maas calls Speckman the "modern father" of the fly, a man who, after picking up the offense while on staff with Maas in Monterey, used high school clinics to spread the system far and wide. Speckman was on Hawkins's staff at Willamette College before taking over the program and winning 82 games in 14 seasons, breaking program rushing records in the process.

Dirk Koetter: With Hawkins running his fly-centric offense, Koetter and the Broncos rolled to back-to-back 10-win seasons in 1999 and 2000, jump-starting a dynasty of efficient offenses at Boise State. The Broncos' success got Koetter the job at Arizona State, and he brought a young offensive line coach named Jeff Grimes to Tempe with him.

Matt Canada: Canada learned the offense directly from Speckman, a man coaches consider one of the most overshadowed offensive innovators of his generation. Canada adopted the offense and has "taken it to another level," Speckman says, while at jobs at Pitt, LSU and now Maryland. He worked with Grimes last year in Baton Rouge.

Jeff Grimes: Grimes, in his first year as an offensive coordinator at BYU, is using a similar system to what Koetter used with success at Boise State nearly two decades ago and what Canada refined at LSU in 2017.vv

Ok, this makes me VERY happy. I will be even more happy when I see a release saying Wickline is no longer in charge of the offensive line.

Stranger said:

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BUbackerinET said:

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Looks like a great hire, Texan, played OT at UTEP, has one of the most prolific offenses in college football today! Optimism reigns!

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This is mostly correct except that El Paso is the largest city in New Mexico.

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Marty Robbins says hi.

Yay!

Clean slate! Great QB prospects at Baylor for Coach Grimes.

Glad you're not making those decisions.