Just what I said, if you don't think Brown inherited a train wreck you are not honest. Go to the NCAA statistics for the two years before he came and the depth chart when he arrived. Coach Brown was here for two seasons and if you think you can go from the bottom of all of college ball to being competitive in the SEC in a year with our talent level you are delusional. This rebuild is a several year process on both sides of the ball.
The whole staff contributed but Brown ran the offense and the offensive coaching and recruiting. He deserves credit for building this offense. Dawson may be better but he has never had primary play calling responsibility before and was in effect, in the same position as Elliot is now at UK, an understudy to a HC who is very good at coaching one side of the ball. Brown had great offenses as a true OC at TT. You can look that up too and of course Brown benefited from the work done there before he took the job.
Of course the players play the game but getting them to UK when we were a dumpster fire and getting the basic offense structured (Dawson and Brown run the same basic scheme) was up to Brown. This is a silly argument. Brown deserves a lot of credit for helping us through a very tough patch. If Dawson does well he deserves credit for building on what had been done the past two years.
I get that, Brown did inherit a train wreck, and surely enough, at time, he played like he inherited a train wreck. Also, it's been noted that Brown did not play the type of offense that Stoops wanted, and that's why after he left, Stoops went a different direction in terms of scheme. No, they do not have the same basic scheme. They're classified as OC's that use the same offensive philosophies, but the comparison ends there. The players have said that Brown often designed plays that were complicated, and seemed redundant many of the times. Dawson's play-calling has been described as much more simple, and easy to grasp. Brown also rarely took advantage of basic things, like throwing the ball downfield. You can not, I repeat,
can not succeed in the SEC as a passing team if you don't stretch the field. He would just throw screen, after screen, after screen, and run it up the middle with our QB on 3rd and 10 late in the 4th quarter. That's simply terrible play-calling. He's not stretching the field, allowing teams to stack the box with no real threat of throwing the ball downfield, other than a couple of times. Also, he was terrible for not letting our running backs get into a rhythm. Dawson coming in, putting the guards into a 3 point stance and getting them to fire off the ball and being physical, and picking Boom Williams as the first string RB, and ruling out "RB by committee" are two of the best things that he could have done for the offense.
While he did good at Texas Tech, this is not Texas Tech, and his style of playcalling didn't make anything easier for our offense, as the players themselves admit. I also like the idea of having an offense similar to Baylor (like Dawson said he intends to run the offense), much more than I like having an offense similar to Oklahoma State (how Brown has said he intends to run the offense in the past). Dawson's offensive philosophy revolves around having an explosive offense that can stretch the field far and wide, starting with basic things such as where receivers line up. A playbook designed to lead to explosive plays fits our personnel much more than a playbook revolved around short passes, screens, dives, and QB sneaks.
The offense has a ton of potential if used correctly, and I feel that Dawson will use it correctly. Much more-so than Brown did.
