FSU football will be breaking in a new leader on the offensive side of the ball just like their rivals from Coral Gables, but are in much better shape.
It’s been over a month now since the the FSU football team found themselves in the market for an offensive coordinator after Walt Bell took his “talents” to be the head coach at UMass. In that time, the Seminoles went out and got one of the hottest young names in the game on the field – and one of the more controversial off of it – to take over.
The hiring of Kendal Briles has been met with plenty of optimism for what he has been able to do at previous stops (and out of desperation for what took place with the Noles on that side of the ball last season), but the Seminoles can rest easy in knowing that their hire was at least better than their rivals from the southern part of the state.
In the days after their blowout loss to Wisconsin in the Pinstripe Bowl, the Miami Hurricanes saw their head coach retire and be replaced by their former defensive coordinator – who had been head coach at Temple for less than three weeks – who cleared house of the entire offensive staff, something the previous coach wouldn’t do.
New head coach Manny Diaz went out and hired Dan Enos to fill the position of offensive coordinator – something that Enos did for three seasons at Arkansas before being fired and taking the job at Alabama as quarterbacks coach last season.
Both coordinators will be tasked with turning around bad units from last season (FSU football finishing 111th in total offense while Miami was 93rd), but the Seminoles are in much better shape with a coach who has done more with programs that were as big of names.
Here’s a comparison of Enos’ numbers in the three seasons with the Razorbacks as opposed to Briles’ numbers during two seasons at Baylor and one at Florida Atlantic:
"2017 FAU – 5th total offense / 63rd passing offense / 4th rushing offenseArkansas – 97th total offense / 94th passing offense / 70th rushing offense2016 Baylor – 9th total offense / 22nd passing offense / 15th rushing offenseArkansas – 53rd total offense / 36th passing offense / 72nd rushing offense2015 Baylor – 1st total offense / 25th passing offense / 3rd rushing offenseArkansas – 33rd total offense / 31st passing offense / 33rd rushing offense"
Now, I’m not going to sit here for a second and say that Arkansas is one of the better teams in college football or the SEC for that matter – but they certainly have the same level of talent as a Baylor team and better than a Group of Five team like the Owls, and Briles’ units dominated what Enos put out there each and every season.
Last season at Houston, Briles had the Cougars ranked 7th in total offense along with being 14th in passing and 23rd in rushing while Enos was part of a passing game that finished third in the FBS even though he had nothing to do with the play calling for the Crimson Tide.
Time will only tell whether the Seminoles or Canes will be better on offense this season, but the betting odds should be on Briles being able to do more to turn around the Noles a lot quicker.