The resurgence of the Veer and Shoot

The scheme which transformed Baylor football was nearly lost to time but is now emerging all over the country.

One of my more popular, earliest works back at Football Study Hall was a two-part series called, “How the hell do you stop Baylor?” My goal was to try and explain how it was that Baylor’s offense was lighting up defenses and elevating a longtime woebegone football program into a regional power.

Part I

Part II

Those articles are a bit dated now, my more recent series on the Veer and Shoot in light of Tennessee’s success is more precise on the offensive system and came after observing defenses grapple with it over a full decade.

Part I

Part II

What’s been an interesting story for the offense is how it appeared to be fading from college football with some of the principles sticking but the actual system and the coaches in the Art Briles tree disappearing. When the Art Briles tree was cut down after the shameful scandal at Baylor, that set things back for a time, but now we have a veritable orchard growing.

If you’re not familiar with the offensive system, take the time to read the articles above (start with the more recents unless you have a lot of time and curiosity on your hands). Today we’re going to talk about the history of the system since Briles was fired and how it’s been able to make a comeback with offensive coaches in place at 3.5 SEC schools and a number of other prominent programs.

The Veer and Shoot coaching tree

Here’s what the coaching tree looks like right now as best as I can tell:

There’s a number of guys on here who have popped up at a few different spots. Jeff Lebby has worked for Art Briles, Josh Heupel, and Lane Kiffin thus far in his career. I have a suspicion he could end up as the next head coach at Oklahoma if his offenses keep having to carry Brent Venables.

Sterlin Gilbert has worked for Dino Babers, Phillip Montgomery, and now is at Ole Miss. Kendal Briles has been around to a few different places, mostly on his own but at one point under Lane Kiffin at Florida Atlantic.

The bigger the tree grows the more opportunities for guys within it to find new jobs. Andrew Sowder showing up at already RPO-heavy Minnesota suggests PJ Fleck could become a repository of Veer and Shoot knowledge and opportunity in the future, Deion Sanders having Sean Lewis around in Boulder could do something similar for Colorado. Briles working with Sonny Dykes at TCU and Philip Montgomery at Auburn with Hugh Freeze…it’s really getting some traction now.

In the tree above I’m trying to capture most of the main actors in the system’s tree, where they first encountered the system (as best as I can tell), and their current occupation. However, there are particular nexus points which have been instrumental in seeing the system survive and evolve.

Nexus point 1: The blood line

Kendal Briles was able to survive the wreckage of the Briles crash and keeps floating around to new islands for fresh misadventures.

I’m not sure he’d keep getting all these jobs if not for the fact that hiring him gets you access to the full system with its language and practice secrets as well as the chance to sneak Art himself into the backdoor of your building for some consulting. There are rumors floating about every program who’s hired Kendal that they also paid Art himself to do a Veer and Shoot seminar.

Here’s what he’s been up to since everyone at Baylor was canned to make room for Matt Rhule.

• 2017: Florida Atlantic OC under Lane Kiffin. I’ve heard Kiffin wasn’t blown away by Kendal and took over play-calling early in the year but he did clearly appreciate the extra tidbits on running an RPO system. This may have been the most important development in the V&S post-Briles timeline.

• 2018: Houston OC under Major Applewhite. The Major needed to save his job at Houston and brought in Briles to help him. They scored a lot of points but he was still canned for Dana Holgorsen.

• 2019: Florida State OC under Willie Taggart. Briles basically kept getting promotions to help bail out higher status, failing coaches. Taggart didn’t even survive the season.

• 2020-2022: Arkansas OC under Sam Pittman. More losing and less offense in Arkansas.

• 2023: TCU OC under Sonny Dykes. We’ll see how this goes.

Overall Kendal hasn’t really done much to carry the torch for Veer and Shoot potency save for in year one when he imparted it to the much more capable Lane Kiffin.

Nexus point 2: The former assistants

Philip Montgomery seemed like he’d be one of the most important Veer and Shoot figures early on in this saga. He got out of Baylor just before it hit the fan and became head coach at Tulsa, where he probably did as much to boost the Flyover defense by hiring a young coach named Joe Gillespie (now DC at TCU) as he did to carry the V&S flag.

However three other Baylor assistants who were not OCs but worked under the Briles family all ended up finding their footing elsewhere and doing considerable work to promote the system.

Joe Jon Finley, Jeff Lebby, and Dino Babers.

Joe Jon Finley was an Oklahoma tight end who got a job as a quality control assistant for Baylor in 2015 and was then snatched up by a V&S curious coach named Josh Heupel to be the tight ends coach at Missouri.

Josh Heupel never worked directly for Briles but was emulating him at Oklahoma before he was fired (to hire Lincoln Riley) and repeatedly hired Briles assistants along his journey to bolster his understanding of the offense. Like Lane Kiffin, he became a sort of satellite university for V&S studies and practice where different coaches could come and pick up the arts.

Jeff Lebby was at Baylor for the entirety of the Briles era. He was hired in 2008 and married Art’s daughter in 2011, making him the son-in-law and in my opinion he should be considered the adopted heir of the system as his creativity within it surpasses that of his brother-in-law.

Lebby hasn’t done just a ton to build out the coaching tree just yet. However, he escaped the Baylor wreckage to work for Heupel at UCF and then Kiffin at Ole Miss before taking the Oklahoma OC job in 2022.

Dino Babers got out much earlier. He was an established coach before working at Baylor and was wide receivers coach there until after 2011 when he left to coach at Eastern Illinois. He took a local high school coach named Sterlin Gilbert with him and there they found a fantastic star to help propel them named Jimmy Garoppolo.

Yes, Jimmy G got his start toward becoming a well known NFL quarterback thanks to his FCS school hiring young Veer and Shoot coaches. He’s been the quarterback now for V&S coaches, Bill Belichik, and Kyle Shanahan…really puts his career into proper perspective.

Babers then worked at Bowling Green and was hired by Syracuse where he’s been ever since. While up there he’s helped send out Sterlin Gilbert, who has struggled to find traction, and Sean Lewis whom I think may have a chance to make a splash especially now that he’s partnering with Primetime recruiting.

Nexus point 3: The satellite institutions

As I noted before, one of the two most important developments in V&S post-Briles history came when Lane Kiffin said, “hey Kendal, come down to Last Chance U at Boca Raton, I have carte blanche here” and imported the offense.

Kiffin was already RPO-heavy and had installed them at Alabama under Nick Saban’s withering eye, even helping his longtime pal and USC/Norm Chow coaching tree partner Steve Sarkisian get established in the system. I often refer to Sark’s offense as “pro-style Briles” for its similar emphasis on deep shot passing and power running.

I’m not sure how much of the Veer and Shoot Kiffin has taken, his offenses have often had a deeper bank of formations and plays from his own considerable background, but there’s certainly some. I’ve also noticed that Ole Miss’ fondness for motion and tighter bunch formations which I assumed to be a Kiffin wrinkle have made their way to Oklahoma so either Lebby was instrumental in adding those flourishes or (more likely imo) he effectively added them under Kiffin’s guidance.

On both occasions that Kiffin had a V&S coach work for him as offensive coordinator at FAU and Ole Miss, they were both followed by the same replacement, Charlie Weis Jr. Before you google it, yes Charlie Weis Sr is exactly who you’re thinking of, evidently his son has learned some different “decided schematic advantages.”

Weis Jr is apparently some kind of genius with a photographic memory and was only 24 when Kiffin hired him at FAU. He didn’t follow Kiffin to Ole Miss but took a gig with Jeff Scott at South Florida which went terribly before heading back to Kiffin when Lebby left for Oklahoma. We’ll see what he can do over time, he’s still only 30 years old.

The other key development was Heupel hiring Joe Jon Finley and starting to get more of a sense of how to reconstruct the Veer and Shoot from outside the auspices of the Briles family. Heupel was also able to help propel Lebby at UCF and his first replacement for Lebby, Alex Golesh, is now in charge of salvaging Veer and Shoot-prone South Florida football.

Heupel’s new offensive coordinator is Joey Hazle, who was yet another Oklahoma quarterback who played under Heupel in Norman as a back-up and has been with him for some time since.

Finally we have this fascinating new development down on “the plains.” I was a little surprised when Hugh Freeze hired Philip Montgomery as Freeze is a RPO spread guru in his own right who doesn’t need Briles’ system or tricks to befuddle defensive coordinators.

But with just a little bit of contemplation, it makes a lot of sense. Montgomery is a great assistant for a guy like Freeze, who could just call his own plays and draw up his own designs but would probably rather outsource some of that to a steady hand so he can oversee other projects (like Auburn recruiting). It makes sense for Freeze to be interested in grafting in concepts and ideas from a similar offensive system. In particular a system with less quarterback run game since Freeze’s quarterback in 2023 will probably be strong-armed pocket passer Payton Thorne from Michigan State.

Freeze can afford to give Montgomery as little or as much autonomy as he likes and we may see some fresh developments in the system as a result of their union.

Count Sonny Dykes here as well. For a long time Dykes has been an Air Raid guy who was a part of the movement to add more run game and play-action to the system. Art Briles actually got his start in college football as an assistant for Mike Leach before branching out on his own and getting back to his own system at Houston, so guys like Dykes have known Briles for a long time.

But this will be the first time we see Dykes directly import the Briles system, his last two OCs were Rhett Lashlee of the Gus Malzahn school and Garrett Riley who shares some ideas with his brother Lincoln and also worked for Mike Norvell.

These coaches’ interest in learning the Veer and Shoot are a reflection of the potency in its simplicity and nearly perfect (for the college level) engineering. Say what you will about Briles, and I have, but you can’t deny the brilliance of his system.

What’s next for the Veer and Shoot?

The system was on life support for a minute. Briles going down in flames certainly hurt the lineage of the offense and it appeared that some of the obvious ideas like mixing in wider receiver splits to create space for the run game, or building around spread run and play-action, were going to be the lasting imprints while the full-bore approach faded into history.

Instead, both Lane Kiffin and Josh Heupel have helped the Veer and Shoot become a burgeoning empire by preserving its methods like dark age Irish monks and then utilizing it to accomplish the one sure-fire way to achieve notoriety in college football. They scored lot of points and handed Ls to Nick Saban’s Alabama.

The Veer and Shoot is firmly back on the map now, which means it will begin to take fire from defensive coordinators adjusting to the stress it creates, which in turn will lead to further evolution.

Some of the big stressors it will need to account for will be effective man coverage to deny the easy pitch and catch throws and the Flyover defense. Before those challenge it though, the V&S is likely to gain more prominence as an effective solution to the “Mint front” 3-3-5 defenses common in the SEC.

We’ll dive into all that in another article. If you have any updates or additions to the coaching tree and history laid out above, let me know in the comments or on Twitter and I’ll work to confirm and update.