Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Rutgers Brings in the Fridge

With Kyle Flood firmly on the proverbial hot seat, he really needed to make a big move in his search for two new coordinators. He did just that on the offensive side of the ball, bringing former Maryland head coach Ralph Friedgen aboard to run the team's offense. Friedgen will be the fifth Scarlet Knight offensive coordinator in as many seasons, and he will be the highest paid assistant coach in school history as he is set to make $1 million over the course of his two year deal. Friedgen is a brilliant offensive mind, Sports Illustrated once called him the number one mind in college football, and he represents a big time addition that will bring some positive attention to Rutgers as they prepare to complete their transition into the Big 10.

The Fridge had a very successful tenure as the head coach at Maryland, going 75-50 in his ten years with the Terps, winning one conference title and five bowl games along the way. He was the two time recipient of the ACC coach of the year award (won in 2001 and 2010, his first and final seasons), and he led a pretty big turn around for the program that had not been to a bowl game in the ten years prior to his arrival. Despite all that, he was unceremoniously fired by his alma mater following a 9-4 2010 season in which the Terripans finished ranked in the top 25 for the fourth time in his tenure. The reason behind his dismissal was reportedly because Maryland wanted to court Mike Leach and Gus Malzahn, since they were worried about the long term future of the program after head coach in waiting James Franklin -yes that guy- took the head job at Vanderbilt. Maryland of course missed out on both of them and ended up hiring Randy Edsall.

Friedgen has not coached during the three seasons since his firing, and he told Bruce Feldman a few months ago that he had turned down some opportunities to get back into coaching and was waiting for the right situation. One of those opportunities he turned down was actually at Rutgers, after Flood made a run at him before hiring Ron Prince a year ago. It has also been speculated that Virginia Tech was another program that attempted to hire him last year, since he and Frank Beamer coached together at The Citadel and Murray State in the '70's. But as Tom Luicci reported, Friedgen did not want to take a job last year because his daughter was getting married during football season. There is little doubt in my mind that Rutgers is the right situation for him in part because he wants to stick it to Maryland, whom he had a messy separation from (he claims to have burnt his diploma).

Friedgen has not been an offensive coordinator in 15 years, but he has an outstanding track record running offenses. He was the long time coordinator for Bobby Ross, spending 25 years with him at Maryland, Georgia Tech, and with the San Diego Chargers. With the Terrapins in the early '80's, he had strong offenses that featured  future NFL quarterbacks like Boomer Esiason and Frank Reich, whom he had a hand in developing. When he moved on to Georgia Tech he was part of the Yellow Jackets' national championship team in 1990, and won the Broyles Award given to the nation's top assistant coach in 1991. He eventually followed Ross to the NFL with the San Diego Chargers, and he helped guide the Bolts to the Super Bowl in 1994. He then returned to Georgia Tech in the late '90's and coached Joe Hamilton, who finished second in the 1999 Heisman voting. He took over as the head coach at Maryland in 2001.

As the head man at Maryland, the Terrapins went through some extreme highs and lows offensively. They had very good offenses early in his tenure before completely cratering in the middle and bouncing back to being very good towards the end. I'm not really sure why this was the case, but it seems quite odd. The Terps did have a very good offense in his final season at the helm, and that's probably the most relevant season right now.

Schematically, Friedgen is not necessarily married to one particular scheme. He says he like to mold his playbook to the talent he has to work with, and he has thus run a little bit of everything. Spread, pro style, one back, two backs, man blocking, zone blocking, you name it. He's been doing this a long time, so you have to have the utmost confidence in him figuring out the best way to utilize the talent he has to work with at Rutgers. During his final season at Maryland, the Terps were a vertical passing offense in order to feature Torrey Smith's talents, and a few years prior to that they leaned a lot on star tight end Vernon Davis.

No matter the scheme, Freidgen likes to keep his offense balanced. As he so correctly put it, balance does not mean calling an equal number of pass plays and run plays. Balance means having the ability to beat the defense with either the pass or the run at any given time. The Fridge has traditionally tried to establish the run early in order to open up the vertical passing game.

As an old school offensive lineman, Fridgen likes man /gap blocking techniques, but he also realize that because of today's defensive schemes, it is much easier to run the ball using zone techniques. Because of the background coach Flood and offensive line coach Mitch Browning have, I would imagine Rutgers will be a mostly zone running team under Fridge. One interesting thing I found in researching Fridgen is that he likes to run the ball out of one back sets with two tight ends, one lined up on each side of the line. This creates a balanced formation and one extra gap that the defense has to account for, and you can run a stretch play to the outside or a dive inside to either side and outflank the defense, while still being able to throw the ball. (This is something Boise State did a lot when they had Doug Martin).

One question that will remain to be seen for Friedgen is what kind of an impact he will have on recruiting. He is a well respected offensive mind,and should ease most doubts recruits have about the offense, but how much will of an effect will he have going out on the recruiting trail? He is an older coach who probably does not like traveling a lot, but if he can win recruits over when they are on campus, that should be good enough.

Rumor had it that former Rutgers and Buccaneers tight ends coach Brian Angelicho was the front runner for this position, but he decided to stay in the NFL and join the Cleveland Browns staff, leading to the some what surprising hire of Friedgen. Angelicho is an outstanding recruiter and has been a coordinator before, but Rutgers is definitely better off with Friedgen.

Ironically, the Fridge had a big impact on mentoring current Penn State coach James Franklin and former Penn State coach Bill O'Brien. Franklin called the Fridge a genius during his introductory press conference in Happy Valley, and Rutgers hilariously used Franklin's quote in their official press release for Fridgen's hiring. Hopefully the teacher will be able to outsmart his student come September 13.

Fridegen is an absolutely fantastic hire, and I do not think Rutgers could have possibly done any better than him. It's a home run. He is a big time hire that brings name recognition and a great history of running offenses to the banks. This also (somewhat) shows that Rutgers is ready to spend money to compete with the big boys of the Big 10. I had mentioned Friedgen as someone I wanted Rutgers to hire the last couple of years, so needless to say I am absolutely ecstatic with this hire. He will have his work cut out for him developing one of the quarterbacks on the roster into being a reliable passer, but if he does that, I think Rutgers will have a tremendous offense this season and hopefully beyond.