The Sean Lewis Offense

[Big Jim]

If you follow the link, he's got a series of clips of different plays. It's a thing of beauty the way different motions and OL actions motions subtly move the LBs around and forces flow that opens things up. With that the WRs are responding with their reads on route trees and the QB is able to make very quick decisions. I'm so excited to see this at Folsom.

What link? I can only go to his tweet but not finding any links beyond that.

 

[Bread]

What link? I can only go to his tweet but not finding any links beyond that.

scroll down to the very first reply to the thread. And then keep on scrolling for more.

 

[Big Jim]

scroll down to the very first reply to the thread. And then keep on scrolling for more.

I don't see a thread. I'm guessing I'd need a twitter account?

 

[skibum]

I don't see a thread. I'm guessing I'd need a twitter account?

Yeah. Elon broke browsing twitter threads for people without accounts last week.

I want to view the thread, but I don't want to badly enough to re activate my previously abandoned account.

 

[hawg1]

If you follow the link, he's got a series of clips of different plays. It's a thing of beauty the way different motions and OL actions motions subtly move the LBs around and forces flow that opens things up. With that the WRs are responding with their reads on route trees and the QB is able to make very quick decisions. I'm so excited to see this at Folsom.

This O leaves a lot up to the WRs. I’m not used to that.

 

[Buffnik]

This O leaves a lot up to the WRs. I’m not used to that.

Fvck, I'm not used to seeing the QB's first read open. Need to re-set our brains for this season and flush most of what we've gotten accustomed to for 20 years.

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

Fvck, I'm not used to seeing the QB's first read open. Need to re-set our brains for this season and flush most of what we've gotten accustomed to for 20 years.

And for the first time in forever, we’ll have multiple WRs who are athletic enough that if an LB misses a tackle or a DB takes a bad angle, that play is going to the house!

 

[CUAviator]

Not sure why, but it bothers me that he said "is making the move" as if Lewis hasn't been here for over 6 months

What doesn’t bother me is that Kent State is playing Arkansas for parent’s weekend and apparently Lewis is “making a move CU”.

 

[Bread]

What doesn’t bother me is that Kent State is playing Arkansas for parent’s weekend and apparently Lewis is “making a move CU”.

I am confused.

 

[Gary Indiana]

I am confused.

Aviator thought he was on AllHogs.com

 

[Denver_sc]

If you follow the link, he's got a series of clips of different plays. It's a thing of beauty the way different motions and OL actions motions subtly move the LBs around and forces flow that opens things up. With that the WRs are responding with their reads on route trees and the QB is able to make very quick decisions. I'm so excited to see this at Folsom.

Look- I know we’re all joking about this, but after watching that I can pretty confidently say that Shedeur is going to put up a TON of points in that offense next year, and he may very well be a Heisman candidate.

 

[CUAviator]

I am confused.

- the article is acting like Lewis may be in the process of coming to CU
- He’s already at CU
- My daughter goes to Arkansas
- Arkansas plays Kent State on parents weekend (which I’ll be at)
- I’m glad Lewis won’t be the coach…but subtly jabbed at the article that he “may not” be the coach

 

[Hank]

Sean Lewis (Offensive Guru)

Today, this is the next progression of offense seen this year at Tennessee (Heupel offense pretty much a mirror of Lewis's).

This starts with Dino Babers and what he'd learned under Art Briles at Baylor, which was a total innovation to college football.

As a HS coach, Briles was having a lot of success running an old school split back veer. You can go back to Bill Yeoman's Houston offense he created in the 1960s and was an evolution of option football which delivered the best offense in the country and has been a mainstay of option football either as a play (or play tree) or an entire offense for decades.

Briles was seeing the Run n Shoot and Air Raid offense begin to dominate Texas football. Traditional programs were running spread passing attacks. It was leading to what we saw on the college level where teams were putting up a ton of points and winning more than they lost despite talent disadvantages in the trenches -- if you can get the ball out quickly to players in space, you can offset the fact that you can't physically dominate the other team's front 7.

So Briles took those spread passing attack concepts and integrated them with a single back veer running attack which made the QB the 2nd option to run the ball (or RPO where the QB could pull the ball and hit a WR after the defense had read run).

Here's a basic veer play out of single back - what most of us call a zone read. Basically, the OL crashes down and the OT to the play side gets to the 2nd level. This leaves the DE having to defend 2 guys to make a decision. And the wrinkle with RPO is that if a DB crashes then you can throw for a big play.
View attachment 56554
Notice how the QB is in shotgun instead of under center, mimicking the split back look of traditional veer. What you lose in the run game is the inside veer as part of the option. So you either run what you see above or you can option similarly to the inside with the RB running between the guards and the QB either trailing or planting to run outside. Also with RPO potential. (Not pictured is the 4th WR, so you have 2 slot receivers with 1 or both being TEs and 2 boundary receivers in whatever formation.)

Now, you stack on Air Raid concepts to that.
View attachment 56555
Defensive call hardly matters. There are route trees for every possibility and the offense can go fast because the adjustments happen on the fly with the QB and receivers needing to be able to read what's happening. All routes designed to put different defensive players to decisions and get the ball out quickly into space.

This is what Dino Babers learned under Art Briles. When he got the HC job at Eastern Illinois in 2012, he took over a team that had gone 2-9 (1-7) the year before. In 2 seasons, he went 7-5 (6-1) and 12-2 (8-0) the next 2 seasons before moving up to the HC job at Bowling Green in 2014 (taking over from Dave Clawson who had things going well there - and we've seen how good his offense is at Wake Forest). Babers went 8-6 (5-3) and 10-3 (7-1) there before landing the HC job at Syracuse in 2016.

That 2014 offense was 59th in scoring (30.0) and 44th in ypg (432.9). Then came 2015 - 6th in scoring (42.2) and 4th in yardage (546.8).

Lewis had been a position coach on the Eastern Illinois teams. It was his first full-time position coach job (WR/TE), with him being a GA at Akron the year before. Babers brought him to Bowling Green where he was the WR coach that first year and became OC/QB the second year when things took off. Because of that, Babers brought him to Syracuse to be his OC/QB coach in 2016 and 2017.

Syracuse's 2016 offense was only #90 in scoring (25.7) but was #42 in yardage (440.9). 2017 was the year that Syracuse upset #2 Clemson. They improved the 2017 offense to #75 scoring (26.7) and #23 in yardage (456.3). That led to Lewis getting hired as the HC at Kent State as the youngest HC in D1 at 32 years old at the time, one of the most under-resourced programs in the nation. The 5 seasons before he took over were 4-8, 2-9, 3-9, 3-9, 2-10. Definition of a bad job, honestly.

Lewis had played his college ball at Wisconsin and is familiar with the upper midwest. His evolution of the Briles/Baber offense was to integrate Big Ten style OL play to it. Even added power concepts with 2 backs (1 can motion out to slot or line up there without substituting).

Here are the summaries (note that with KSU being under-resourced, they play 3 body bag non-conference games a year - in 2022 that was at Georgia, Oklahoma & Washington):

2018 Offense: #105 scoring (20.6) and #83 yardage (383.7) running +21 more than he threw. 2-10 (1-7) record.
2019 Offense: #64 scoring (29.2) and #65 yardage (405.7) again running more (a lot more - +15) because he didn't have a QB who could throw. 7-6 (5-3) record.
2020 Offense: #1 scoring (49.8) and #1 yardage (612.5) running +18 more. 3-1 record. Covid year, so I'd discount a bit but also notable is he only had to play MAC teams.
2021 Offense: #30 scoring (33.0) and #5 yardage (494.6) running +17. 7-7 (6-2 record) - going to aTm, Iowa & Maryland doesn't help.
2022 Offense: #66 scoring (28.4) and #44 yardage (417.3) running +14 and with deficiency at QB (only 55% completion). 5-7 (4-4) record that put him on the hot seat (crazy profession).

So what we get here is an offense that goes fast, puts up tons of yardage, can score in bunches, and will take what the defense gives it. Whether it's zone, man, blitz heavy, or nickel/dime - that determines whether it's going to kill you in the air or on the ground. Skill set of QB determines the tendencies and it works whether it's more of a running QB or passing QB. But this offense does need the QB to be able to be an effective runner.

I've been salivating over the possibility of running this Sean Lewis offense at altitude. Explosiveness that we saw with Briles' teams modified to be able to grind you down with Big Ten sized OLs. It's the perfect system for entertaining football that can also wear defenses down to close out games (a negative of pure Air Raid).

I could go on, but I've typed enough. Watch the damn video and then you'll probably need to smoke a cigarette.

Perhaps Nik’s sh*ttiest preview of them all?

I keed, I keed. Actually googled “Sean Lewis RPO” and this was one of the top hits.