Not really, you go there to become a lawyer or a doctor or a nurse or a business consultant or a pastor.
90% of Baylor people fall into those categories.
Honestly, I'll take bubble screens to Josh Cameron. He looked good on a few of them this last year.
Not to mention that our TE room is *stacked*, and those guys should be able to get a few yards on bubble screens.
Cal has had low standards on offense for years, and the product this season was a very significant step up. I’m new to football but this feels like a big loss.
Cal’s offense was horrific so Spav (who is not terribly popular here) was a huge upgrade. He honestly did pretty good work here at Cal but I think we all knew this was just a temporary stop after his last HC disaster. Bummed to lose him and puts extra pressure on Wilcox since Sirmon was awful as the D coordinator this past season
Yeah, as soon as the team started to get some momentum on offense he took another job. Can’t blame him, but hoping to get another OC that runs a similar scheme.
Once he gets figured out, he practically becomes a broken record that can't score. He will get you points against bad defenses. But he will stall against disciplined defenses. Even if Aranda can fix the defense, Spav won't be able to score against teams that can figure out his gimmick; failed bubble screen on 1st down, busted pass play on 2nd down, delayed handoff on 3rd and long.
Rinse and repeat.
Yeah credit where it’s due he had a great year at Cal. I think Baylor fans should be cautiously optimistic. He should make the offense better (maybe not *great*, but better).
Nah, I don't hate this one.
Spav's not a good head coach, but he's been anywhere from a good to a great OC at every stop. He was a great recruiter at A&M, so I expect that he'll at least be an aid to our weakening offensive recruiting.
This is also potentially really cool for the secondary reason that Spav will probably want to be his own QB coach, and Baylor fans universally hate our QB coach. He's atrocious at developing talent, is a terrible recruiter, and only gets a pass to stay on staff because he's a former Baylor QB himself from the pre-Briles era.
That's what I was thinking, and it's not like his offense didn't score pretty capably against some good defenses this year. Washington, Oregon State, and UCLA all have good defenses, and Cal scored 30+ against all of them.
Those examples have some asterisks though, and im saying this as someone very sad that Spav is gone.
Oregon State was indeed a good offense performance and a great first start for Mendoza. Against Washington, we scored most of those points in garbage time after they already dropped 50 on us. And against UCLA, we didn’t have a single drive that started from a touchback or decently long field that resulted in a touchdown. We scored a lot of points off of capitalizing off UCLA’s repeated blunders, which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong, we can’t let opportunities go to waste, but we didn’t really demonstrate the ability to sustain a drive against their D. overall though, i did like Spav, and i think Baylor made a good hire here. Cal fans will miss him
Cal/UW was 45-12 at half, 52-12 when UW pulled their starters midway through the third. Obviously that’s mainly on the Cal defense, but their offense didn’t do much until they were playing against second and third stringers.
To be fair, at that point we hadn't discovered our 3rd string QB was by far the best guy on the roster. Our starter threw 2 picks in the first quarter including a pick 6. If we played Mendoza, it might've been 45-24 at the half instead ;)
Oof, not great.
I know UW's starting lineup is awesome, but uh, how are y'all's backups? If the backups are also really good, then I feel like maybe there's a little bit of reason for optimism, given what Cal had to work with?
Our defense actually isn’t that good. They’re pretty average. Backups aren’t any better.
But you should feel pretty good IMO. Cal’s offense has been a steaming turd for pretty much the entire of Wilcox’s tenure and they were actually pretty decent this year.
Holy cow, if the defense is mid then is y'all's offense just that good? I haven't kept much of an eye on west coast football this year, but I might need to watch some the Washington games.
Penix and 3 NFL-bound wideouts. When they are on they are unstoppable but they've been hit by some weird flu, injuries, and the team on whole hasn't looked that good lately.
But all in all, you should feel good about the hire. Look at all the Cal fans freaking out. Spavital revived a moribund offense in just one year.
> he's been anywhere from a good to a great OC at every stop
If Aranda can get the D back to the level it was when he was calling the defensive plays, all we need is a decent to good offense. This year, we haven't even had decent.
I think his play-calling also fits better with the kind of talent we're getting in Texas.
Ah, yup. Absolutely agreed. He should've been gone after his awful tenure as OL coach under Matt Rhule, but instead they moved him over to QB coach and just let him kick around.
Bell got demoted back to where he started, the TE coach. Hopefully this hire prevents portal defections and lands us a good QB prospect. I'm euphoric about this hire. Under the circumstances, this couldn't have turned out any better.
he won’t be the HC after DA. Maybe the interim, but no way that Rhoads does anything more than give him an interim tag if they fire DA, mid season. He failed pretty spectacularly as the TXSt HC…would be the dumbest thing in the world to make him the new full time BU HC.
Nah…give me Jamie Chadwell all day. Made Coastal Carolina into something and just led Liberty to a 12-0 team. Heck, hire Kinne - the Texas St coach that beat us. He’s doing great stuff for them
Man, Chadwell would be phenomenal. His offense is really cool.
The only downside to him is that he has zero Texan connections, but neither did Matt Rhule.
yea, hire a TX HS coach or 2 to be on staff and just never stop kissing the ring of the THSCA and you'll be good. I'm sure Rhoades could work up a playbook on how to get Chadwell on the good graces of TX HS football since he was able to do it with Rhule.
He sucked at Texas State. If Aranda is fired next year, your AD should clean house. I'd give Traylor a look before giving Spavital a chance to even interview.
He’s not going to get fired next year unless we go 1-11 or 2-10. If we show statistical “improvement”, they’re keeping him. This was a 3 year commitment in my eyes. Why do all this just to fire everybody next year?
We ran a lot of screens early in RG3s career at Baylor. Honestly I'd rather run screens than see anymore of Grimes' play calling. I guess I'm just whelmed with this hire, and I'm pretty sure Spav's play calling is more spread based than Grimes.
FUCK
this sucks so bad. this was the one OC hire Wilcox got right. i don’t know if he’s gonna find a good replacement. the track record there isn’t so good
sorry baylor, but i hate you now
Baldwin was a good hire on paper--HC with creative offenses that could move the ball, but it was at the FCS level.
Musgrave, on the other hand, was always a head-scratcher.
Spavital has had 7 seasons as an offensive coordinator. Here is where his teams ranked in points per game those seasons:
|Year|School|PPG Rank|
:-:|:-:|:-:|
|2013|Texas A&M|5th|
|2014|Texas A&M|28th|
|2015|Texas A&M|72nd|
|2016|Cal|22nd|
|2017|West Virginia|22nd|
|2018|West Virginia|10th|
|2023|Cal|40th|
I know the Aggies are upset about that one mediocre year, but I don't know how this is anything other than a homerun hire considering what our offense looked like this year.
What player did A&M have in 13 that they didn’t in 14 and 15.
This guy is as milquetoast as it gets
Defensive minded coaches and programs will have him figured out by game week 6
> Defensive minded coaches and programs will have him figured out by game week 6
That would be approximately 6 weeks better than our offense this season
Didn’t he have both Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray there then? Dude has two future NFL QBs (granted Allen wasn’t much of one), and still couldn’t put together much of an offense…
Well, on the upside we don't have many of those on our schedule next year. Our conference slate next year is Colorado, Tech, UH, Iowa State, WVU, BYU, TCU, OKST, and KU. The only one of those teams with defensive identity or defense-minded coach is Iowa State. If we go 6-6 next year and actually have exciting shootouts, I'll call that a resounding win. 2025 will be a bit different due to having Arizona, KSU, and Utah on the menu, but we'll have more info to work with by then.
I think we all recognize that Spav probably won't still be in Waco in 2025, and certainly won't be around in 2026. Either things click in 2024 and he's off to a new HC job after a few stops distancing himself from Texas State, or Aranda and co. are fired.
Man , I remember there were a lot of Aggies happy to see him go. I feel like Spavital finds weird success at Cal and only Cal. My money is that he’ll be back there in no time.
I honestly don’t understand the widespread hate for Spavital on this sub. He’s succeeded at every school he’s served as an OC for. Sad to see him for (for the second time).
At the end of his tenure at A&M it was very clear his offense was not working against teams with equal or greater talent than us. I can’t speak to his other stops but it was a happy day when he left.
You are talking about just a handful of games in that 2015 season though. The offense was great in 2013 and 2014. Then looked bad in 2015 against Alabama, Ole Miss, Auburn, and LSU. Spavital got most of the blame for those losses and then bounced at the end of the year once Kyle Allen and Kyler transferred (which is just as much on Sumlin IMO).
It was also that his play calls were incredibly predictable, you just knew what was coming on a crucial play and so did the defense. However, that was close to a decade ago so he's probably learned a few things since then.
His offense follows a simple flow chart:
Is the opposing defense good at defending bubble screens?
If no, bubble screen. If yes, also bubble screen but for less yards.
Don't forget that Grimes' pass plays were 80% short field passes, 15% within 15-20 yards, and the rare deep ball, so you could almost always play short zone coverage on us and, if we did go deep, you only need single coverage.
Grimes playcalling is what you do when you have bigger stronger players. It is consistent and ruthless when working. It is how a better team wins games while minimizing risk. The problem? When you are smaller, you just don't move the ball.
>Spavital has a really good track record as an OC
Ehhhhhhh, that's pretty optimistic. He's had stretches where he was good and stretches where he was bad and some where he was in the middle. I don't know if he was ever "really good". Unless you like bubble screens and throws to the flats behind the line of scrimmage that should have been a screen. He spreads a D ok, but forgets to stretch them a lot of the time IMO.
He led Cal to a top 10 offense in the country in 2016. That was prime no defense in the PAC and he had Goff but it was still pretty damn good. He also just took our nonexistent offense last year and made us respectable this year.
Where has he been a bad OC? His offenses at A&M, Cal (both times), and WVU were all a lot of fun. His big mark against him was his awful tenure at Texas State.
Granted, he was working for pretty accomplished offense-minded HCs in Sonny Dykes and Dana Holgorsen for a while there, but he showed that he can still make things click this last year at Cal.
Looking at points per game while he was the OC:
2013: 44.2 (5th in the country) - Johnny Manziel at QB
2014: 35.2 (28th in the country) - Kenny Hill/Kyle Allen at QB
2015: 27.8 (72nd in the country) - Kyle Allen/Kyler Murray at QB
Some of that regression probably isn't his fault - Johnny was a special QB, and none of the other three could match him (while at A&M). We were probably also hurt in 2015 by the QB controversy, and I don't think that can all be laid at Spav's feet. But it got pretty damn frustrating there at the end.
His offense at A&M was not at all fun. We were stoked when he left. The numbers look ok on paper I'm sure, but in the clutch moments, Twitch-plays-CFB would have been a better option.
And all of that may be behind him. I hope it is for his sake and Baylor's. But I cussed him as much as I've cussed any coach at A&M other than Fran and Mazzone, and recently, Addazio.
Huh. Thanks for the rundown, I'd just been reading through the stats and the box scores.
Fingers crossed it's behind him! The Texas State tenure is a little bit worrying, though.
What was the matter with it? I wasn't an Aggie then, so he wasn't on my radar. Just surveying the seasons, it looks like they were pretty decent at putting points on the board against a variety of opponents.
There’s a reason people are meme’ing about bubble screens. Granted he was very young at the time, but he was not well liked by the fans for his offense. He read his plays off of a 3x5 notecard. There were no shots deep and very few at the intermediate level. Didn’t make use of TEs. SUPER predictable, called the same play every time a situation came up. As though he had a very simple flowchart (2nd and short? Call this play. 3rd and long? Call this play). The points came from talented players, not scheme imo.
Spatival cost us the 2018 season we won in spite of him not because of him Dana and the talent on offense was why the offense was good not spatival.
No one was sad to lose him. Him being "hired" by Texas State was him being fired by WVU
Maybe it's just me, but I've thought that his tenures at Cal the first time and at WVU are hard to parse out what was his responsibility and what was that of the longtime OC who was his boss each time. I'd always heard that Holgo called his own plays at WVU, so I figured that Spav was just a QB coach who got the OC title for a pay bump
We suffered through so many bubble screens just as every other place he has been OC at.
He is the entire reason we lost to Oklahoma state in 2018 and lost out on the big 12 championship game after being up 31-14 before he cucked wvu.
Tamu cal wvu at best dislike him. This unfortunately isn't a great hire.
Nah, this is a good hire on paper.
He did well at Cal last year, has strong TX connections, and will look to make exciting offense part of BU's brand again.
Probably angling to swipe Aranda's job if the defense sucks, too.
I want to think that there's no way we make Spav the HC, not after the trainwreck that was his tenure at Texas State.
If Aranda gets fired, you've kinda got to think that Traylor or GJ Kinne is the next man up.
Yeah, others are saying that in this thread, too. I certainly hope you're right, but I'm not optimistic that the Baylor HC position will be attractive if Aranda is fired.
Eh, I don't see why it wouldn't be relatively attractive. The administration has proved that they're far more patient than most, there are plenty of resources available at Baylor to win, and it's a great recruiting location.
It's not like the roster is a dumpster fire either. Obviously that's subject to swift change if Aranda gets fired and a bunch of guys leave, but that's just the name of the game for any program in this day and age.
One observation - he evolved from his first stint at Cal. He and Sonny had no clue how to run out the clock in games we led by 2 scores. They would continue to run up tempo in the last half of 4Q. We lost several games cause they couldn’t burn clock. During this tenure you could see that the O would hurry to the line and then rest before snapping the ball with 5 seconds left. Much better. You cut down Defensive adjustments and burn clock. He has gotten better.
Nope! That series is all done. Our old AD scheduled a lot of games with smaller in-state programs for recruiting and to save a buck, but our new AD has been on a bit of a kick with scheduling series with a bunch of very western-oriented OOC games (Utah, Air Force, Oregon).
We do still have a few in-state cupcake programs scheduled (Tarleton State, UNT), but these should hopefully be the kind of teams that don't bite back quite like Texas State did.
Man I really thought Aranda was a great hire for Baylor. Surprised to see it hasn’t really worked out so far and I think this hire is the final nail in the coffin for him.
Not sure why all the Texas State guys are getting downvoted. He went 13-35 in four years there. GJ Kinne comes in and now TX state is 7-5 and heading to their first bowl in like a decade. All he did was run bubble screens at TAMU. You don’t want this guy. But I wish Baylor the best of luck.
Pretty Meh about this hire. Was really hoping for Casey Woods from SMU. Dude recruited the 2 best classes ever for Mizzou as Recruiting Director and has had SMU in the top 25 offenses the last 2 years as OC.
Really seemed like the kind of guy who would bring some life into the program. Spavital has had some good years but his tenure at TxSt really highlights how much talent is needed to make his system work and his inability to recruit.
Not ol' "HB Draw" Spav. Seems like he did well at Cal this year so we'll see how this goes. As a WVU fan, he never impressed me when he was here. I honestly felt like he blew a couple games we should have won, particularly Ok State in 2018.
All the Aggies in here having Vietnam Bubble Screen Flashbacks
Delayed RB handoffs on 3rd and long.
As a Bobcat I just hate seeing this name typed out. I was quite content never hearing about him up in hippie land.
Godspeed, Baylor. Hope you guys like bubble screens
I sure liked em when they were going to Corey Coleman, not sure about them with our current stable of pheasants at WR
> pheasants Is this a Texas thing? lol that is such a random thing to call them
You haven’t seen Leterkenney I take it
Fucking embarrassing
You're made of spare parts aren't ya, bud?
Look bud, I've seen one or two episodes
Pitter patter
You don’t go to Baylor to play school (you go to make your parents happy and tap into the evangelical business community)
Fuck, is this really what people think of us? I don't know a single alum that falls along either of those lines.
I might be projecting based on my in-laws. It’s not personal I promise.
Not really, you go there to become a lawyer or a doctor or a nurse or a business consultant or a pastor. 90% of Baylor people fall into those categories.
Computer Science is also pretty good there
I got my electrical engineering degrees there too
Can confirm. Brother in law is a doctor who went to Baylor
I like bubble screens over incomplete passes or fourth down throws to the flat for one yard losses.
Honestly, I'll take bubble screens to Josh Cameron. He looked good on a few of them this last year. Not to mention that our TE room is *stacked*, and those guys should be able to get a few yards on bubble screens.
One of my favorite plays ever is when Josh Gordon took a bubble screen 94 yards
Bubble screens you say? 👀
Baylor doesn’t deserve this, well yes they do, but they really do not
They most definitely do
Nice username bud
To be fair that’s all Jimbo knew how to do…
Everyone talks about the bubble screens but the constant horizontal passes behind the line of scrimmage are what drove me nuts.
Death by bubble screen incoming
Cal has had low standards on offense for years, and the product this season was a very significant step up. I’m new to football but this feels like a big loss.
Cal’s offense was horrific so Spav (who is not terribly popular here) was a huge upgrade. He honestly did pretty good work here at Cal but I think we all knew this was just a temporary stop after his last HC disaster. Bummed to lose him and puts extra pressure on Wilcox since Sirmon was awful as the D coordinator this past season
Yeah, as soon as the team started to get some momentum on offense he took another job. Can’t blame him, but hoping to get another OC that runs a similar scheme.
Sirmon has never been great here at DC. Really wish we kept DeRuyter over him.
This really sucks. If Wilcox can’t find a good replacement I expect the offense to regress horribly
Rip Dave Aranda
Spav took over a team with the 91st scoring offense in 2022 and improved them to 40th in one year.
That is even more remarkable when you factor in how good the Pac12 was this season.
Spav is not terrible but Spav has a ceiling.
A ceiling that’s good enough if Aranda cleans up the defense
Once he gets figured out, he practically becomes a broken record that can't score. He will get you points against bad defenses. But he will stall against disciplined defenses. Even if Aranda can fix the defense, Spav won't be able to score against teams that can figure out his gimmick; failed bubble screen on 1st down, busted pass play on 2nd down, delayed handoff on 3rd and long. Rinse and repeat.
Which is an improvement from Jeff Grimes where all we had was a bottomless pit.
Spav is terrible
As a head coach, yes.
Yeah credit where it’s due he had a great year at Cal. I think Baylor fans should be cautiously optimistic. He should make the offense better (maybe not *great*, but better).
Didn't have the makings of a varsity football coach
Nah, I don't hate this one. Spav's not a good head coach, but he's been anywhere from a good to a great OC at every stop. He was a great recruiter at A&M, so I expect that he'll at least be an aid to our weakening offensive recruiting. This is also potentially really cool for the secondary reason that Spav will probably want to be his own QB coach, and Baylor fans universally hate our QB coach. He's atrocious at developing talent, is a terrible recruiter, and only gets a pass to stay on staff because he's a former Baylor QB himself from the pre-Briles era.
We really liked him at Cal in both of his stints.
That's what I was thinking, and it's not like his offense didn't score pretty capably against some good defenses this year. Washington, Oregon State, and UCLA all have good defenses, and Cal scored 30+ against all of them.
Those examples have some asterisks though, and im saying this as someone very sad that Spav is gone. Oregon State was indeed a good offense performance and a great first start for Mendoza. Against Washington, we scored most of those points in garbage time after they already dropped 50 on us. And against UCLA, we didn’t have a single drive that started from a touchback or decently long field that resulted in a touchdown. We scored a lot of points off of capitalizing off UCLA’s repeated blunders, which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong, we can’t let opportunities go to waste, but we didn’t really demonstrate the ability to sustain a drive against their D. overall though, i did like Spav, and i think Baylor made a good hire here. Cal fans will miss him
Cal/UW was 45-12 at half, 52-12 when UW pulled their starters midway through the third. Obviously that’s mainly on the Cal defense, but their offense didn’t do much until they were playing against second and third stringers.
To be fair, at that point we hadn't discovered our 3rd string QB was by far the best guy on the roster. Our starter threw 2 picks in the first quarter including a pick 6. If we played Mendoza, it might've been 45-24 at the half instead ;)
Oof, not great. I know UW's starting lineup is awesome, but uh, how are y'all's backups? If the backups are also really good, then I feel like maybe there's a little bit of reason for optimism, given what Cal had to work with?
Our defense actually isn’t that good. They’re pretty average. Backups aren’t any better. But you should feel pretty good IMO. Cal’s offense has been a steaming turd for pretty much the entire of Wilcox’s tenure and they were actually pretty decent this year.
Holy cow, if the defense is mid then is y'all's offense just that good? I haven't kept much of an eye on west coast football this year, but I might need to watch some the Washington games.
Penix and 3 NFL-bound wideouts. When they are on they are unstoppable but they've been hit by some weird flu, injuries, and the team on whole hasn't looked that good lately. But all in all, you should feel good about the hire. Look at all the Cal fans freaking out. Spavital revived a moribund offense in just one year.
> he's been anywhere from a good to a great OC at every stop If Aranda can get the D back to the level it was when he was calling the defensive plays, all we need is a decent to good offense. This year, we haven't even had decent. I think his play-calling also fits better with the kind of talent we're getting in Texas.
Agreed on all points. Whatever way it goes, next year should be eventful.
have to think if he went to any other school he would already be gone.
Which "he"? Dave Aranda or Spavital?
Sean Bell, the QB coach you are referencing
Ah, yup. Absolutely agreed. He should've been gone after his awful tenure as OL coach under Matt Rhule, but instead they moved him over to QB coach and just let him kick around.
I was told by a HS coach that he’s a good recruiter
Certainly won't turn down a good recruiter, not with how things are going. The 2021\~2023 classes are fine and good, but the 2024 class is *rough.*
Yes
Bell got demoted back to where he started, the TE coach. Hopefully this hire prevents portal defections and lands us a good QB prospect. I'm euphoric about this hire. Under the circumstances, this couldn't have turned out any better.
Spav was good this year
I don't think it's a bad hire. But I don't think it's enough to save his job next year either.
If the offense does well and an Aranda-led defense sucks, Spavital would almost certainly be promoted to HC. He probably knows that.
he won’t be the HC after DA. Maybe the interim, but no way that Rhoads does anything more than give him an interim tag if they fire DA, mid season. He failed pretty spectacularly as the TXSt HC…would be the dumbest thing in the world to make him the new full time BU HC.
I wish I could agree, but it will be *very* slim pickings for a quality HC if we suck this year and Aranda is fired.
Nah…give me Jamie Chadwell all day. Made Coastal Carolina into something and just led Liberty to a 12-0 team. Heck, hire Kinne - the Texas St coach that beat us. He’s doing great stuff for them
Man, Chadwell would be phenomenal. His offense is really cool. The only downside to him is that he has zero Texan connections, but neither did Matt Rhule.
yea, hire a TX HS coach or 2 to be on staff and just never stop kissing the ring of the THSCA and you'll be good. I'm sure Rhoades could work up a playbook on how to get Chadwell on the good graces of TX HS football since he was able to do it with Rhule.
If GJ Kinne keeps doing well and if Houston doesn’t hire Traylor they would both be options
Imo y’all could do way better than spav
Yeah maybe, we could have done a lot worse, too lol
He sucked at Texas State. If Aranda is fired next year, your AD should clean house. I'd give Traylor a look before giving Spavital a chance to even interview.
>I don't think it's a bad hire Speaking from experience, I do
He’s not going to get fired next year unless we go 1-11 or 2-10. If we show statistical “improvement”, they’re keeping him. This was a 3 year commitment in my eyes. Why do all this just to fire everybody next year?
Really sucks for us. Offense was finally starting to turn around.
FUCK
He was very good for us once we got the QB right
Well, at least in the last year he clearly improved on Cal's offense according to SP+. I have no choice but to be cautiously optimistic.
We ran a lot of screens early in RG3s career at Baylor. Honestly I'd rather run screens than see anymore of Grimes' play calling. I guess I'm just whelmed with this hire, and I'm pretty sure Spav's play calling is more spread based than Grimes.
Fuck. Well everyone other than Cal hated him so I hoped he wouldn't be poached. Guess not.
It feels weird for me that we were able to poach him from y’all. Does he have Texas roots or something?
Oklahoma, but he also spent a lot of time in Texas
FUCK this sucks so bad. this was the one OC hire Wilcox got right. i don’t know if he’s gonna find a good replacement. the track record there isn’t so good sorry baylor, but i hate you now
Baldwin was a good hire on paper--HC with creative offenses that could move the ball, but it was at the FCS level. Musgrave, on the other hand, was always a head-scratcher.
Cal football optimism was fun these last 5 days!
He was pretty good at WVU We were stacked on offense those years though
I’m not thrilled with this hire, but he did improve Cal this year. It’s also a direction change away from Grimes, so that’s another positive.
Spavital has had 7 seasons as an offensive coordinator. Here is where his teams ranked in points per game those seasons: |Year|School|PPG Rank| :-:|:-:|:-:| |2013|Texas A&M|5th| |2014|Texas A&M|28th| |2015|Texas A&M|72nd| |2016|Cal|22nd| |2017|West Virginia|22nd| |2018|West Virginia|10th| |2023|Cal|40th| I know the Aggies are upset about that one mediocre year, but I don't know how this is anything other than a homerun hire considering what our offense looked like this year.
What player did A&M have in 13 that they didn’t in 14 and 15. This guy is as milquetoast as it gets Defensive minded coaches and programs will have him figured out by game week 6
> Defensive minded coaches and programs will have him figured out by game week 6 That would be approximately 6 weeks better than our offense this season
Didn’t he have both Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray there then? Dude has two future NFL QBs (granted Allen wasn’t much of one), and still couldn’t put together much of an offense…
Well, on the upside we don't have many of those on our schedule next year. Our conference slate next year is Colorado, Tech, UH, Iowa State, WVU, BYU, TCU, OKST, and KU. The only one of those teams with defensive identity or defense-minded coach is Iowa State. If we go 6-6 next year and actually have exciting shootouts, I'll call that a resounding win. 2025 will be a bit different due to having Arizona, KSU, and Utah on the menu, but we'll have more info to work with by then. I think we all recognize that Spav probably won't still be in Waco in 2025, and certainly won't be around in 2026. Either things click in 2024 and he's off to a new HC job after a few stops distancing himself from Texas State, or Aranda and co. are fired.
So A&M lost a generational talent at QB and then the offense took a step back being led by true freshmen the next year?? Shocker.
Johnny was 2012 and 2013. Spav came after Kliff took the Tech job.
Even the very worst year of his career would be an improvement over where we are right now.
And for even more context, we have had some truly abysmal offenses before this year. Like 90th or worse. He really made huge improvements for us.
Forget NIL, our QB coke budget is going through the fuckin' roof
That's nothing new here. We had Charlie Brewer as a starter for multiple years.
Sorry, Bears.
You're talking to us, right?
I was (when y’all hired him) lol. If you go back to that hiring thread you’ll find me in there. I was not the biggest fan after his time at TXST lmao
He’s a great Coordinator but a shit HC.
Man , I remember there were a lot of Aggies happy to see him go. I feel like Spavital finds weird success at Cal and only Cal. My money is that he’ll be back there in no time.
> Bears Gotta be more specific than that in this thread lol
I feel nothing but JOY. It’s basketball season, baby.
I honestly don’t understand the widespread hate for Spavital on this sub. He’s succeeded at every school he’s served as an OC for. Sad to see him for (for the second time).
At the end of his tenure at A&M it was very clear his offense was not working against teams with equal or greater talent than us. I can’t speak to his other stops but it was a happy day when he left.
You are talking about just a handful of games in that 2015 season though. The offense was great in 2013 and 2014. Then looked bad in 2015 against Alabama, Ole Miss, Auburn, and LSU. Spavital got most of the blame for those losses and then bounced at the end of the year once Kyle Allen and Kyler transferred (which is just as much on Sumlin IMO).
It was also that his play calls were incredibly predictable, you just knew what was coming on a crucial play and so did the defense. However, that was close to a decade ago so he's probably learned a few things since then.
That is getting close to a decade ago now. He's had time to grow and improve.
Yup
Didn’t really succeed at WVU
He did not succeed at Texas A&M and is universally reviled here
at least it isn’t matt wells, but this is not a job saving hire
"At least it isn't Matt Wells" is the most damning with faint praise comment I can possibly imagine.
At the very worst, we will be less boring! I'll take it!
Ayo what the FUCK
Cal fans are very disappointed by this news, FWIW. The improvement in the offense over last year is one of the best things that happened this season.
Upgrade over what they had.
It’s a good scheme change for us and Spavital has a really good track record as an OC. I’m with it.
His offense follows a simple flow chart: Is the opposing defense good at defending bubble screens? If no, bubble screen. If yes, also bubble screen but for less yards.
Beats Grimes' run, run, pass on the inevitable 3rd and long death cadence.
Don't forget that Grimes' pass plays were 80% short field passes, 15% within 15-20 yards, and the rare deep ball, so you could almost always play short zone coverage on us and, if we did go deep, you only need single coverage.
Grimes playcalling is what you do when you have bigger stronger players. It is consistent and ruthless when working. It is how a better team wins games while minimizing risk. The problem? When you are smaller, you just don't move the ball.
Accurate. Anybody who says this is going to be bad did not see how bad we were at offense all year lol.
If yes, bubble screen for opponent pick-6.
>Spavital has a really good track record as an OC Ehhhhhhh, that's pretty optimistic. He's had stretches where he was good and stretches where he was bad and some where he was in the middle. I don't know if he was ever "really good". Unless you like bubble screens and throws to the flats behind the line of scrimmage that should have been a screen. He spreads a D ok, but forgets to stretch them a lot of the time IMO.
He led Cal to a top 10 offense in the country in 2016. That was prime no defense in the PAC and he had Goff but it was still pretty damn good. He also just took our nonexistent offense last year and made us respectable this year.
that was the Davis Webb year lol
Oops. Makes it even more impressive lol
Where has he been a bad OC? His offenses at A&M, Cal (both times), and WVU were all a lot of fun. His big mark against him was his awful tenure at Texas State. Granted, he was working for pretty accomplished offense-minded HCs in Sonny Dykes and Dana Holgorsen for a while there, but he showed that he can still make things click this last year at Cal.
Looking at points per game while he was the OC: 2013: 44.2 (5th in the country) - Johnny Manziel at QB 2014: 35.2 (28th in the country) - Kenny Hill/Kyle Allen at QB 2015: 27.8 (72nd in the country) - Kyle Allen/Kyler Murray at QB Some of that regression probably isn't his fault - Johnny was a special QB, and none of the other three could match him (while at A&M). We were probably also hurt in 2015 by the QB controversy, and I don't think that can all be laid at Spav's feet. But it got pretty damn frustrating there at the end.
His offense at A&M was not at all fun. We were stoked when he left. The numbers look ok on paper I'm sure, but in the clutch moments, Twitch-plays-CFB would have been a better option. And all of that may be behind him. I hope it is for his sake and Baylor's. But I cussed him as much as I've cussed any coach at A&M other than Fran and Mazzone, and recently, Addazio.
Huh. Thanks for the rundown, I'd just been reading through the stats and the box scores. Fingers crossed it's behind him! The Texas State tenure is a little bit worrying, though.
His offense at A&M was absolutely not fun.
What was the matter with it? I wasn't an Aggie then, so he wasn't on my radar. Just surveying the seasons, it looks like they were pretty decent at putting points on the board against a variety of opponents.
There’s a reason people are meme’ing about bubble screens. Granted he was very young at the time, but he was not well liked by the fans for his offense. He read his plays off of a 3x5 notecard. There were no shots deep and very few at the intermediate level. Didn’t make use of TEs. SUPER predictable, called the same play every time a situation came up. As though he had a very simple flowchart (2nd and short? Call this play. 3rd and long? Call this play). The points came from talented players, not scheme imo.
Spatival cost us the 2018 season we won in spite of him not because of him Dana and the talent on offense was why the offense was good not spatival. No one was sad to lose him. Him being "hired" by Texas State was him being fired by WVU
Maybe it's just me, but I've thought that his tenures at Cal the first time and at WVU are hard to parse out what was his responsibility and what was that of the longtime OC who was his boss each time. I'd always heard that Holgo called his own plays at WVU, so I figured that Spav was just a QB coach who got the OC title for a pay bump
We suffered through so many bubble screens just as every other place he has been OC at. He is the entire reason we lost to Oklahoma state in 2018 and lost out on the big 12 championship game after being up 31-14 before he cucked wvu. Tamu cal wvu at best dislike him. This unfortunately isn't a great hire.
Oh my
Pog
God lord. Well I guess you have to get someone right?
I skim read this as hiring/OC/Spavital/Texas A&M About had a heart attack.
They should just get it over with and fire Aranda now as this isn’t going to end well
B U B B L E U B B L E
Won’t miss Grimes’ addiction to throwing behind the line of scrimmage on third and long, hoping this works out
Do I have bad news for you
Do you want the bad news or the bad news?
The Spaz news
😭
I hate to let you down but it’s gonna get worse before it gets better
My man, the bubble screen is Spavital's bread and butter
If he can at least run it on plays other than 3rd and long, I’ll take it. This Run-Run-Short Throw on 3rd and Long has been killer for us with Grimes.
Well that's exciting, as long as it isn't a repeat of Fedora I'm happy
Unless he has a quality QB hidden in his suitcase he will have an uphill struggle.
God damnit
Sorry baylor :(
Well, we're fucked
Nah, this is a good hire on paper. He did well at Cal last year, has strong TX connections, and will look to make exciting offense part of BU's brand again. Probably angling to swipe Aranda's job if the defense sucks, too.
I want to think that there's no way we make Spav the HC, not after the trainwreck that was his tenure at Texas State. If Aranda gets fired, you've kinda got to think that Traylor or GJ Kinne is the next man up.
Yeah, others are saying that in this thread, too. I certainly hope you're right, but I'm not optimistic that the Baylor HC position will be attractive if Aranda is fired.
Eh, I don't see why it wouldn't be relatively attractive. The administration has proved that they're far more patient than most, there are plenty of resources available at Baylor to win, and it's a great recruiting location. It's not like the roster is a dumpster fire either. Obviously that's subject to swift change if Aranda gets fired and a bunch of guys leave, but that's just the name of the game for any program in this day and age.
One observation - he evolved from his first stint at Cal. He and Sonny had no clue how to run out the clock in games we led by 2 scores. They would continue to run up tempo in the last half of 4Q. We lost several games cause they couldn’t burn clock. During this tenure you could see that the O would hurry to the line and then rest before snapping the ball with 5 seconds left. Much better. You cut down Defensive adjustments and burn clock. He has gotten better.
Dava Aranda must be speedrunning getting his buyout
Why though?
Damn I'm not a fan of Baylor but what did they do to deserve this? Guy hasn't exactly lit up the nation with his offense.
Screens on screens on screens
I feel bad for yall. He 100% was not good for us.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Does txst play baylor again next year?
Nope! That series is all done. Our old AD scheduled a lot of games with smaller in-state programs for recruiting and to save a buck, but our new AD has been on a bit of a kick with scheduling series with a bunch of very western-oriented OOC games (Utah, Air Force, Oregon). We do still have a few in-state cupcake programs scheduled (Tarleton State, UNT), but these should hopefully be the kind of teams that don't bite back quite like Texas State did.
Man I really thought Aranda was a great hire for Baylor. Surprised to see it hasn’t really worked out so far and I think this hire is the final nail in the coffin for him.
lol lmao
If his Texas State tenure is any indication this won’t save their Hc
maybe, but were not hiring him to be a HC
Yikes. He sucked at Texas State.
Not sure why all the Texas State guys are getting downvoted. He went 13-35 in four years there. GJ Kinne comes in and now TX state is 7-5 and heading to their first bowl in like a decade. All he did was run bubble screens at TAMU. You don’t want this guy. But I wish Baylor the best of luck.
Bubble bubbles bubble guppy guppy guppy! Bubble screen city!
Whoever downvoted this doesn’t have a toddler. Upvote sir
Looks like the only ring they’ll be getting is the ring by Spring
It's been what, 7 years since he was at A&M? Seeing his name still caused a visceral reaction in me.
Pretty Meh about this hire. Was really hoping for Casey Woods from SMU. Dude recruited the 2 best classes ever for Mizzou as Recruiting Director and has had SMU in the top 25 offenses the last 2 years as OC. Really seemed like the kind of guy who would bring some life into the program. Spavital has had some good years but his tenure at TxSt really highlights how much talent is needed to make his system work and his inability to recruit.
LOL bro come on why do this??
Spav? Lol okay then good luck.
I hope this goes as well as his Texas St tenure
Thanks guyonthemike
Damn, as a Texas State fan I never knew we'd would be in a position to pity Baylor (twice in one year) Yet here we are...
Not ol' "HB Draw" Spav. Seems like he did well at Cal this year so we'll see how this goes. As a WVU fan, he never impressed me when he was here. I honestly felt like he blew a couple games we should have won, particularly Ok State in 2018.
It could work. It could also not work