Launching a New Offense at Army West Point
By now, most Army Black Knights’ fans have heard that long-time OC Brent Davis has been replaced by a new offensive coordinator, Drew Thatcher. However, that was just the start of a makeover of the Army offense and offensive coaching restructuring by Head Coach Jeff Monken.
Unlike Davis who coached the offensive line in addition to his OC duties, Thatcher will not coach a specific position but will work with the offense as a whole. In addition, a few position coaches have been reassigned and their responsibilities realigned.
There will no longer be separate coaches for slotbacks and fullbacks. Those two positions have been combined into one unit of Running Backs and Darren Paige was hired from the University of Cincinnati to coach the RB unit. Matt Drinkall is moving from coaching Tight Ends to working with Mike Viti in coaching the Offensive Line (the same thing Davis did previously). This is in addition to Drinkall’s elevation to co-coordinator of the offense under Thatcher. Blake Powers will assume Drinkall’s responsibility for coaching the TEs. Aaron Smith will continue to coach Wide Receivers and Cody Worley continues as position coach for Quarterbacks and is also the running game coordinator.
What Does This All Mean?
Removing Thatcher from position coach responsibility is indicative of the amount of change we’re likely to see in the offense. He will be freed up to supervise and coordinate the training for all positions as they transition to the new offensive scheme this spring. The staff hopes to have the new offense installed by the end of spring practice, which will be a big challenge.
The biggest change, from our perspective, is the combining of fullbacks and slotbacks into a single unit of running backs. The new Running Backs coach, Paige, has a strong background as a wide receivers coach, and we expect that may become a bigger part of the running backs’ skill set, especially with the versatility of such players as Tyrell Robinson.
Frankly, we don’t have a solid feel for how the offense will evolve at this point. From what we’ve learned so far, the offense will continue to be a run-first offense with a bit more emphasis on the play-action passes. Our best guess is that the frequency of passing plays may increase from the current 14% to about 25% of all plays although we might still see games in which there are few if any passes thrown. Talking about it and seeing it are two different things; so we’ll just have to wait for spring practice to see what it looks like in action.
In any case, we expect that every player on offense will face a major learning curve in spring and fall training camps. Younger players may benefit as returning players will all be starting from about the same level of experience.
GBK Analyst Joe Iacono has already provided a glimpse of a few things we can expect to see through his interviews with Thatcher and Drinkall, and GBK will continue to provide commentary as the staff begins to get acclimated and implement the changes.
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