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The best laid plans sometimes do work

By Brett Friedlander
©2015 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.

There’s a reason the best coaches, no matter what the sport, never seem to get taken by surprise.

It’s because they’re always thinking one, two, sometimes even three plays ahead.

That approach doesn’t just serve them well on the sideline on game day. As East Carolina football coach Ruffin McNeill demonstrated recently, it’s just as important during the offseason in anticipating potentially damaging staff movement.

Understanding that he wouldn’t be able to keep his upwardly mobile young offensive coordinator in Greenville much longer, McNeill didn’t wait for Lincoln Riley to be cherry picked away by a brand name Power 5 program before starting his search for a replacement.

He went out and hired an heir apparent three years before he actually needed one.

Like Riley, Dave Nichol was a former Texas Tech receiver who learned the intricacies of the Air Raid offense from the master himself — former Red Raiders coach Mike Leach. Like Riley, he is young, aggressive and in sync with McNeill and the culture surrounding the Pirates.

Most important, he’s built the kind of trust with players already in the program during his apprenticeship as ECU’s outside receivers coach — and with recruits getting ready to arrive — that his transition should be seamless now that Riley has left for Oklahoma and Nichol will be the man calling the plays.

“The promotion with Dave to offensive coordinator was thought out long ago,” said McNeill, who brought Nichol to ECU from Arizona in 2012. “When somebody leaves, we’ve got a guy ready to go. Dave was the guy the second I talked to Lincoln and knew he was gone. No hesitation.”

That decisiveness, in this case, was critical.

Because while McNeill knew that it was more a matter of when than if Riley would leave — the 31-year-old turned down four offers before finally taking the OC job with the Sooners on Jan. 12 — the timing of his departure couldn’t have been much worse.

The 2015 season was already going to be one of offensive transition as the Pirates look to graduate from a successful team built around a once-in-a-generation class of players to a consistent winning program capable of carrying on without significant drop-off even after losing the likes of wide receiver Justin Hardy, the all-time leading receiver in FBS, record-setting quarterback Shane Carden and leading rusher Breon Allen.

That made the hiring of Riley’s replacement even more important than the one that brought in Rick Smith to fix a broken defense two years ago.

As effective a CEO and father figure as McNeill might be, he is the type of coach that allows his coordinators the freedom to do whatever they think is necessary to get the job done and win games. That kind of system can only work, however, when the head coach, the play caller and their quarterback — in this case, untested sophomore Kurt Benkert — are all on the same page.

Nichol’s promotion doesn’t guarantee that happening. But there’s a better chance it will, thanks to the chemistry that already exists between the new coordinator, his new quarterback and the rest of an offense that doesn’t figure to change much despite the significant reshuffling of the deck that’s in store.

“This is the ECU offense,” Nichol said. “We’re going to try to keep it going and keep it as similar as we can. The base structure of what we’re going to do is going to be the same. Now, it changes sometimes because of personnel and that changes year-to-year with our personnel. But for the most part, it should look similar to everybody.”

That’s the idea McNeill had in mind when his forward thinking first set this process in motion.

Under Nichol’s guidance, outside receivers Lance Ray and Reese Wiggins both become all-conference performers while graduating senior Cam Worthy has developed into a reliable deep threat with NFL potential. Nichol also served as Riley’s "eye in the sky," contributing his insight from the press box to an offense that ranked third nationally in passing and fifth in total yardage this season while setting 70 individual and team records since his arrival.

The experience he’s gained, along with the continuity he provides through his familiarity with the program, its players and offensive philosophy give the Pirates their best shot at extending their success into the foreseeable future.

Or at least until it’s his time to be cherry picked away by a brand name Power 5 program.

Contact Brett Friedlander

PAGE UPDATED 02/04/15 06:37 PM.

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