A look at what Hurricanes are getting with their coordinators Gattis and Steele
Chatter on the Miami Hurricanes’ new coordinators, Josh Gattis on offense and Kevin Steele on defense:
▪ With these hires, all roads lead to Nick Saban, and that makes sense because he’s the gold standard of college coaching and Cristobal spoke of getting a PHD in coaching when he worked four years for Saban (2013-16).
Gattis was Alabama’s co-offensive coordinator and wide receiver coach in 2018 before Jim Harbaugh lured him to Michigan.
Gattis said, famously, at the time: “I had just left a meeting with Nick Saban getting my butt chewed out for about 20 minutes telling him I was leaving [when Saban thought Gattis would be joining former Alabama assistant Mike Locksley’s staff at Maryland] and he was trying to keep me to stay.
“It did not go over well. So if there was any band-aid to the bruise or what he left on me, it was that phone call [from Harbaugh to offer him the Michigan job]. It was exciting to hear [Harbaugh’s] voice.”
Gattis later made clear how much respect he has for Saban and that he was kidding about Saban chewing him out. Saban subsequently praised the job that Gattis did at Michigan.
Steele, meanwhile, worked twice for Saban — as the defensive coordinator from 2006 to 2007, and as player personnel director and linebackers coach in 2013-2014.
“I think Kevin is just really sound, fundamental,” Saban said before the 2020 Alabama-Auburn game, when Steele was the Tigers’ defensive coordinator. “You win with execution. Their players really do a good job of executing. They make really good adjustments to take away what you’re trying to do. And the players play hard, and they play with a lot of toughness. I think those are all signs of Kevin’s leadership.”
▪ In Gattis, the Hurricanes not only are getting the 2021 winner of the Broyles award given to the nation’s top assistant, but they’re also getting a coach whose offense ranked in the top 25 in several major categories last season (16th in scoring, 15th in rushing, 25th in yards per game).
And they’re getting a coach with experience working in several different styles of offense.
He initially ran elements of a pro spread offense at Michigan before moving to a run-heavy offense that maximized the Wolverines’ personnel last season. After losing top receiver Ronnie Bell in the 2021 opener, Gattis wisely recognized that Michigan’s offensive strength would be its running backs and tight ends.
“He had a quarterback, Cade McNamara, who was a middle-of-the-road passer and pedestrian runner,” Paramount Sports handicapper Lee Sterling, who studies Michigan closely, said by phone.
“He managed the game well as an offensive coordinator, took his strengths and matched them up against other team’s weaknesses. They scored a lot of points with no real threats at wide receiver, a lot of second and third receivers once Bell went out. I thought he did a remarkable job.”
In his one year as co-offensive coordinator at Alabama, Gattis and the Crimson Tide offensive staff ran a spread with run/pass options, but also with heavy reliance on an elite-level running game.
Cristobal reportedly told recruits that UM will continue to run a spread offense next season.
But this won’t be an exact copy of Rhett Lashlee’s offense, not by any means. Expect more of a power run game element than we saw with Lashlee.
In fact, Cristobal emphasized last week: “We’re going to be balanced. Miami is really good when we do both things really well. You would wish to be 50-50 down the middle but there are some games you have to throw 75 percent and some games you have to run 75 percent… We will establish the line of scrimmage.”
▪ And don’t expect UM to play at the same breakneck speed that was a mark of Lashlee’s offense. Last season, Miami was 118th in time of possession, holding the ball five minutes less than its opponents. Michigan was 24th, holding the ball two minutes more than its opponents. Perhaps UM’s defense would be more effective if it isn’t on the field as much.
▪ This is also notable about Gaddis, who played safety at Wake Forest: Per Pro Football Focus and The Athletic, Michigan last season averaged the fewest plays that lost yardage per game (2.8 per 100 possessions) and also led the country in most 50-plus yard plays.
In 2020, Gattis said: “We’re an explosive-play driven offense. We want to put stress on the defense. You look at offensive football in today’s age that leads to success, winning football is turnover margin and explosive plays. Usually the team that outgains the other in explosive play is the team that wins the game.”
That’s exactly what this offense should be with Tyler Van Dyke at the controls; he was a big-play machine in his two months as a starter, with 24 completions that traveled at least 20 air yards.
“Gattis hasn’t had a quarterback like he’s had at Miami,” Sterling said. “He’s going to adapt and use his weapons. It’s a home run hire.”
With Michigan so reliant on the run last season (179 more runs than passes), Gattis uses two tight-end sets more than Lashlee did. Last season, Michigan used two tight ends 44.4 percent of the time.
If he follows that formula here, that would mean pairings of Will Mallory with Elijah Arroyo or Jaleel Skinner, jewels of the past two recruiting classes.
Tight ends “allow us to do everything that we want to do,” Gattis told reporters last season. “They allow us to be the physical, downhill run-game team. We ask those guys to go out and catch passes but also protect for passes. They’re really the Swiss army knife to get us going.”
Michigan running backs touched the ball on 56 percent of the Wolverines’ offensive plays last season, compared with 36 percent for Miami. But that doesn’t mean Gattis favors the run game over the pass game. He will assuredly take full advantage of Van Dyke’s gifts.
“His best two games of the year were Ohio State and Iowa,” Sterling said. “He exposed those two teams and ran a couple trick plays.”
Rivals national recruiting analyst Mike Farrell said: “Gattis led this team to more than 35 points per game in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year and without a marquee quarterback. He will be a great fit with the talent Miami will recruit under Mario Cristobal.”
▪ Gattis, speaking moments after he received the Broyles Awards in December, said: “I stand before you because Jim Harbaugh took a risk three years ago. He hired a longtime wide receiver coach that was a co-offensive coordinator at the time and he gave me my first opportunity for the first time to be an offensive coordinator, one of the very few offensive coordinators in college football. It’s an honor. It’s hard to get not [emotional] because of the journey that we’ve been on.”
▪ In Steele, 63. the Hurricanes are getting a defensive coordinator whose units have ranked in the top 30 in points allowed in eight of his 11 years as a defensive coordinator at FBS schools.
Only once in those 11 years has his defense finished in the bottom half of the 130-team FBS in that category.
Here’s how Steele’s defenses ranked during his years as a coordinator in points permitted per game:
Alabama in 2007: 27th at 22
Alabama in 2008: 7th at 24.3 (Steele’s title was defensive head coach, not coordinator this season).
Clemson in 2009: 24th at 20.4
Clemson in 2010: 13th at 18.8
Clemson in 2011: 81st at 29.3
LSU in 2015: 41st at 24.3
Auburn in 2016: 7th at 17.1
Auburn in 2017: 11th at 18.5
Auburn in 2018: 14th at 19.2
Auburn in 2019: 17th at 19.5
Auburn in 2020: 38th at 24.7
Here’s how Manny Diaz’s defenses ranked in his six seasons at Miami, the first three as defensive coordinator and past three as head coach:
Miami in 2016: 12th at 18.5
Miami in 2017: 28th at 21.0
Miami in 2018: 18th at 19.5
Miami in 2019: 23rd at 20.2
Miami in 2020: 51st at 27.0
Miami in 2021: 85th at 28.4
Steele had accepted the Maryland defensive coordinator job a week before changing his mind and taking the UM job instead.
▪ If Steele can get his players to tackle the way they did at Auburn, Miami’s defense will take a big jump.
Auburn was top five in the country in tackling metrics three times in Steele’s five years at Auburn, per PFF. Miami was among the nation’s worst tackling teams the past two years.
▪ Don’t expect Steele to blitz as much as Diaz did.
Steele’s Auburn defense blitzed 30.8 percent of the time in 2019 and 31.7 percent in 2020, per PFF.
Under Diaz, UM in the past three seasons blitzed 36.5, 35 and then 42.6 percent last season.
So UM will need to generate pass rush with more four-man rushes. And that puts the onus on linemen Jahfari Harvey, Chantz Williams and freshmen Cyrus Moss and Nyjalik Kelly to get heat on the quarterback.
▪ One warning with Steele: If Auburn parts ways with coach Bryan Harsin — which is under consideration — there’s speculation that the school might pursue Steele to replace him, which could leave Cristobal again searching for a defensive coordinator.
This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 4:16 PM.
