Georgia’s new offensive coordinator, Todd Monken has been something of a mystery man since he was named to his current post. The long-time coordinator with stops at both NFL and NCAA programs during his career has been hailed as the man to bring “modern offensive football” to Athens.
The most common term used to describe Monken’s offensive philosophy during this offseason may have been air-raid, but one of the first descriptions from Monken himself began a word that is familiar to Dawgs – balance.
Alright, so that’s a great question because there’s different times when you’ve coached as long as I have where you go through systems of, early on, where variety in offenses was going from pro to slot. I mean that was a variety. Like, ‘Holy cow they’re going from pro to slot.’ And differences in coverages might be what their variations were from pro to slot. And then when you go into the early 90s there were a few teams that were going one back and were spreading it out, but really still your quarterbacks were not nearly as athletic. If a quarterback was a runner, you’d play a triple-option style offense. If he was a thrower, much of those at that time were throwers not runners. Obviously the game has evolved in terms of the athleticism of the position. So, you evolve as you get going. I try to think back, what would have been 18 years ago when I got with Les Miles, and Les Miles was a ‘run it,’ as an offensive line coach. He thinks, fourth-and-four toss it, Jacob Hester on toss power for a first down, as opposed to throwing it. But before then I was at Louisiana Tech, where we were no-huddle and throwing it under Gary Crowton, then you go from there. So you develop things you like then you go to Oklahoma State back again, and I learned a little bit of the air raid with the Dana Holgorsen that he had learned through Mike Leach and that group from previously. You develop the things you like, and then you go to the NFL and, like you said, you bounce around things you like there, ways of identifying how to attack people, and again it still comes down to utilizing your personnel to the best of their ability. You have to be able to be balanced. Balance isn’t just run-pass, it’s ball distribution to players. It’s utilizing the whole field. Obviously, being able to comfortably turn around and hand the ball off is a big part of that for your quarterback. You got to be careful how often you put so much on a player’s plate.
