Why Kevin Wilson’s Ohio State offense could be amazing

Kevin Wilson’s departure from Indiana was one of the most sudden of the offseason. The Indiana head coach of seven years had earned back-to-back bowl berths, which Indiana hadn’t done since 1990 and ‘91. The former offensive coordinator at Oklahoma hadn’t made the Hoosiers a Big Ten East contender, but he’d made them a respectable team that threatened several times to take down national powers.

Amid concerns that he’d mistreated players, IU fired Wilson before its bowl game. The timing worked for Ohio State, which had a brutal passing game in 2016 and saw the architect of some dominant 2000s Oklahoma offenses on the market. Urban Meyer hired Wilson as his offensive coordinator, letting previous co-coordinators Ed Warriner and Tim Beck leave for jobs at Minnesota and Texas.

Wilson’s first game in scarlet and gray: a College GameDay showdown at his old school. The Buckeyes visit the Hoosiers on Thursday night (8 p.m. ET, ESPN).

His offenses are known for a few things:

During a Big Ten Network training camp segment, Cris Carter asked Meyer how Wilson’s offense would be most different than previous Buckeye units.

“Just tempo,” Meyer said.

He’d “dabbled” with an up-tempo look at Florida, and Ohio State started to use more tempo a few years ago, when current Texas coach Tom Herman showed up as the offensive coordinator. But it’s not been Meyer’s thing. With Wilson and new QBs coach Ryan Day, a former Meyer assistant at Florida, pace is “part of our DNA,” Meyer added.

The way Meyer sounds, Ohio State will transition from a sloth’s pace to a cheetah’s. But Wilson’s offense at Indiana last season was 21st in the country in opponent-adjusted pace, and Ohio State’s was 19th. The two teams worked at a nearly identical speed.

But Wilson’s ‘16 offense was both worse and slower than his ‘15 unit, when the Hoosiers were fifth in adjusted pace and scored 37 points per game. The Hoosiers fielded a top-25 offense that year by both S&P+ and points per game.

At Ohio State, Wilson will have more talent on his bench than he had in his starting lineups in Bloomington. If he can harness it as well as he did in ‘15, the Buckeyes will romp.

Ian Boyd’s breakdown of the Wilson offense (linked up above and here) highlights one:

The offense has to have seven players lined up on the line of scrimmage at the snap. Of those, the only ones eligible to catch a pass are the players on the end of the line. But Ohio State sometimes placed a slot receiver on the line. That might make it easier to run-block, but any team that spotted it could’ve determined with near certainty that the Buckeyes wouldn’t pass. After all, the slot WR wasn’t eligible to catch one.

Wilson, like most offensive coaches, doesn’t do that. He leans on more typical spread formations, where his QBs can decide after the snap if a play is a run or a pass.

Wilson’s affinity for pace and flexibility are more in line with the college norm. Wilson has a redshirt senior Heisman candidate QB in J.T. Barrett, an elite running back in Mike Weber, and too many other weapons to count. He doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to put an elite unit on the field, and he probably won’t even try.

“It’s still going to be the Ohio State offense,” Meyer told reporters at Big Ten Media Days in July. “However, we had some weaknesses a year ago, and I’d like to see some improvement. And I think Kevin will have a major impact.”