Over the course of spring practice, new offensive coordinator Josh Gattis laid the foundation of Michigan’s new offense.
While it took time for the players to understand the new scheme, by the end of spring, Gattis was very happy with how the group progressed.
“I’m really pleased,” Gattis said. “I’m just fortunate for the kids that we have and the coaches we have. First and foremost, our assistant coaches did a really good job installing the offense throughout the spring, making sure our kids came out to practice prepared. And our kids did a good job developing themselves.”
Understandably, during the first few practices of spring, Michigan looked like a team that was undergoing a big transformation.
“You look at the progress from practice where it was completely brand new, it was kind of eye opening to this last practice, to see our growth,” Gattis said.
About four or five practices into the install, things began to click for the offense and Gattis could tell his players stopped thinking and just executed.
One potential hinderance this spring to the offense was the high number of likely starters that missed a significant portion of spring practice. Junior wide receivers Donovan Peoples-Jones and Nico Collins along with redshirt freshman running back Christian Turner and early enrollee freshman running back Zach Charbonnet were all absent from most of the spring due to injuries.
All four players need to catch up in the offense, but Gattis thinks it will be a seamless transition to reintegrate them.
“When we’ve got that library of plays it’s easy to go back and teach on that because we’ve got the plays on tape,” he noted. “It’s really a plug-and-play situation where overall schematically we have the concepts, we have the plays. Our kids understand what we want to accomplish out of those plays and now we’re just plugging the players back into it.”
While those four key players missed a lot of valuable experience, the group that was able to practice every day went up against Don Brown’s defense. Gattis said 90 percent of the offense is in, but he held some things back because of the challenge of going up against Michigan’s defense in practice.
The offense had to grow during this spring because the players had to find solutions to problems the defense created. One person who didn’t have a big role in the installation of the offense this spring was Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh.
Gattis sees that as a sign of a great coach.
“Coach Harbaugh has been amazing to me just the support he’s given our offense,” Gattis said. “He hasn’t been involved at all, he hasn’t stepped in. I think that’s one of the greatest attributes of a great head coach…This is a sign of what great head coaches do. They’re willing to change.”
Harbaugh has given Gattis the keys to the offense. Gattis’ system is all about putting pressure on defenses.
“One of the things that is to our advantage in this offense is flexibility,” Gattis said. “This offense is like what I call a mutt of a dog. It’s the pretty dog walking down the road that you’re trying to figure out kind of dog it is. For us, we do a little bit of everything. On offense, there’s time when we can pick and choose what we do.”
For Michigan’s new offensive coordinator, the spring has been a whirlwind installing the offense and getting up to speed with everything.
“It’s been a dream,” he added. “All the work and preparation it’s taken to get to this point, now to be able to run my own offense and be in charge from that standpoint, my brain doesn’t stop thinking about the next play or we need to run this or run that…It’s been exciting to be able to see the kids have success and be able to put them in a position to be successful.”
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