Can Leopards benefit from some Sooner advice?

I think I found the answer to Lafayette football’s offensive problems.

Or, I found AN answer worth trying. And, it comes via another collegiate head coach who has no offensive coordinator.

I have been saying Lafayette Coach John Garrett needs to hire an offensive coordinator and actually give him charge over the Leopards’ attack, which produced an average of just 13 points per game in 2018 and 12 ppg in 2017.  

Lafayette won three games in ’17 and scored a grand total of 31 points in the three games combined. The Leopards got a lot better in winning in 2018, scoring 81 points in their three wins. But they also had five games in which they scored six points or less.

The one statistic that stuck out above – or below – all others was that Lafayette scored only four touchdowns on pass plays in 2018. Eleven games, four passing TDs. Only one other team in all the FCS had fewer TD passes (Jacksonville with three), and that team threw just 63 passes all year. Lafayette threw 361. It was horrible.

Spring football '19: The rest of the story

It sounds a lot like a cliché, but it really isn’t.

“A day like today is tough because when the defense does well, it means the offense isn’t, and when the offense does well, the defense is not. Either way, somebody on Lafayette is going to win. That’s a positive.  How we play is most important.  One fumble, a couple of tipped passes on which defensive players did the things we’ve been stressing all spring, not a lot of penalties. Spring ball goes quickly, mainly because you’re having fun.”

That was Lafayette Coach John Garrett’s glass-half-full assessment of the final practice of spring football camp on Saturday. They called it the spring game, but it didn’t have much of a game look to it.

That’s understandable because, as I wrote in my story for The Morning Call, the number of players not taking part (20} was nearly as large as the number of available offensive players (23, including the kicker and five quarterbacks) and more than the number of healthy defensive players (18).

The list of “watchers” starts with running backs Selwyn Simpson, J.J. Younger and Mike Dunn … goes to o-linemen Jake Marotti, Casey McCollum, Austin Pyne and Taron Hampton … and tight ends Scott Zadok and Jake Taggart.

That said, I’m giving the running game pretty much of a pass. Devin On, a walk-on, gave a good effort running and receiving; tight end-turned RB Ryan Monteyne got what looked like a parting of the Red Sea late in the day and ripped off an uncontested 55-yard “touchdown” run.