What should LSU fans expect from Joe Sloan and Cortez Hankton calling the plays?

With Mike Denbrock off to Notre Dame, Brian Kelly promoted Joe Sloan and Cortez Hankton as interim co-offensive coordinators for LSU’s bowl meeting with Wisconsin.

Sloan and Hankton have strong resumes, which could make them both candidates for the full-time job.

Sloan already served as a full-time FBS coordinator while at Louisiana Tech. Hankton has served as LSU’s passing game coordinator for the last two seasons, after having a similar role on a national championship-winning Georgia team.

Today, we’ll look at some of their tendencies to see what LSU fans can expect in the bowl game, or if they take over the full-time job moving forward.

With Garrett Nussmeier taking over, we were likely to see some changes in the offense anyway, but let’s dive right in.

Joe Sloan's background

Sloan came up under former Louisiana Tech head coach Skip Holtz. After playing for Holtz at East Carolina, Sloan got his start in coaching when Holtz was at South Florida.

Where Holtz went, Sloan went, and Sloan then followed Holtz to Louisiana Tech.

At Louisiana Tech, Sloan did nearly everything. Early in his time there, he was the receivers coach and the recruiting coordinator. Sloan then began working with the quarterbacks after being promoted to offensive coordinator. And when Holtz got fired, Sloan served as the interim head coach.

LSU was Sloan’s first chance to coach at the Power Five level, but after his work with Jayden Daniels, its evident he was ready.

Cortez Hankton's background

Hankton is a New Orleans native and played high school football at St. Augustine, the same high school that produced Tyrann Mathieu and Leonard Fournette.

He played college football at Texas Southern before playing professional football for nearly a decade.

Hankton quickly got into coaching following his playing career, working with the wide receivers at Dartmouth before joining Vanderbilt in 2015. Since then, Hankton’s remained in the SEC.

Hankton was Georgia’s wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator when the Bulldogs won their first of the back-to-back national titles in 2021.

At LSU, he’s fared well, with Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr. emerging as two of the best receivers in the country.

Sloan's playcalling tendencies

Sloan took over as Louisiana Tech’s lone offensive coordinator in 2020 and remained in that position through 2021. So, for this, we’ll just be looking at the years we know the offense was his.

2020 and 2021 tell a bit of a different story from a play calling perspective. One thing that seperates play callers is how often they call runs on second and long (2nd and 7+).

In 2020, Louisiana Tech ran the ball just 39% of the time on second and long but in 2021, it rose to 53.4%. For some perspective, the national average in 2020 and 2021 was 44%.

In 2020, Sloan’s offense also made the most of its scoring opportunities, sitting above average in points per opportunity. They took a step back in that department in 2021.

What do we know about Hankton?

Despite the passing game coordinator title at Georgia and LSU, it’s impossible to know which elements Hankton is responsible for.

That means we don’t have much to go off of when predicting what a Hankton offense would look like, but we can make some assumptions.

A couple of years ago, Hankton did a clinic with Coach Tube.

The series focused on stack and bunch passing concepts. In the free clip, Hankton details his smash concept from the stack formation.

It’s brief, but you get the idea that this is a guy with an advanced understanding of the drop-back passing game. He isn’t afraid to use motion or stack formations to create space for his receivers.

Between working with Todd Monken at UGA and Denbrock at LSU, Hankton’s spent the recent years learning from some of the best play callers in college football.

Story originally appeared on LSU Tigers Wire