Richt: Schottenheimer fit desired offensive philosophy
How did Mark Richt decide he wanted Brian Schottenheimer to become his team's offensive coordinator? Well, Richt didn't want his offense to be dominated by spread-out formations.
Schottenheimer came to the Bulldogs from the St. Louis Rams. Georgia was looking for an offensive coordinator after Mike Bobo left to become the head coach at Colorado State.
"In the process of replacing Mike Bobo, we were looking for someone similar in philosophy as to how you think offensive football should be played," Richt said Thursday at SEC Media Days. "There's so many teams that are just spread. They're spread, and they're going fast. They have four receiver sets, sometimes five and all that. We'll get into the spread to some degree, but we still want to have a physical running game to complement a play action passing game and complement our ability to spread and do those kinds of things. So it's kind of hard to find those guys in the college ranks."
"Coach Schottenheimer, being an NFL coordinator for, I think, nine years, the last nine years, and watching the style of play, he was very similar to what we do. So the common fan may not see a whole lot different as far as the sets and the types of plays that we run, but I think the players have taken to him well. He's a very good teacher and communicator, and I think he's got a great personality for the college game as far as being able to recruit and being able to relate to young people."
Schottenheimer hasn't coached in the college ranks since 2000. Before coaching for the Rams, Schottenheimer was with the New York Jets, San Diego Chargers and Washington Redskins.
As Todd Gurley was suspended and subsequently tore his ACL and Keith Marshall was hurt as well, Georgia turned to freshman Nick Chubb last season. He ran for over 1,500 yards and carried the ball 30 or more times in three games. He had 219 carries despite carrying the ball fewer than 10 times in five of Georgia's 13 games. Richt said he expected Chubb's workload to decrease in 2015.
"But not until he really had to start carrying the load did I realize how much stamina he could have in a game, in an SEC game, at times carrying it 25, 35 times in a game," Richt said. "That's pretty impressive. And that's not our goal for our back. I don't want a guy to carry 35 times a game his whole career all season long. We want to share the load, but we had some issues with injuries and all. So there wasn't a lot of depth at that position. So he probably carried it more last year in certain games than he probably will this year."
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
