Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray seriously considered signing with Florida when he was coming out of Tampa’s Plant High. One of the reasons he decided to go with the Bulldogs rather than the Gators was the style of offense.
Dan Mullen was quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator at Florida and was the mastermind behind the spread the Gators were running with quarterback Tim Tebow. But Murray chose Georgia’s pro-style offense.
“I couldn’t do that,” Murray said this week of running the spread. “That’s one of the reasons I came to Georgia. I didn’t want to get beat up. I’m not 250 [pounds] and can take a pounding.
“I’m more of a sit-back-in-the-pocket-and-try-not-to-get-sacked kind of guy. ... I probably wouldn’t fit in that offense at all.”
Not true, Mullen said.
Mullen, who recruited Murray for the Gators, has installed his spread as head coach at Mississippi State. And he insists his offense would have worked as well with the 6-foot-1, 211-pound Murray as it does with his current quarterback, 6-4, 240-pound Chris Relf.
“Through the years, we’ve made it work [with smaller quarterbacks],” Mullen said. “It worked pretty well with Alex Smith at Utah, and it worked well [enough] with Chris Leak to win a national championship at Florida. So you tweak certain things within your offense around the style of your quarterbacks.”
It happens to work very well with a big, strong, athletic quarterback. That’s what Mullen’s Bulldogs have in Relf.
Built similarly to Tebow, who won a Heisman Trophy and a national championship, Relf gives the Bulldogs the type of run-pass threat that makes Mullen’s spread really go.
The big senior rushed for 713 yards — second on the team to tailback Vick Ballard’s 968 — and passed for another 1,768 last season. Included in those totals were team highs of 109 yards rushing and 148 yards passing in State’s 24-12 win over Georgia in Starkville.
“Some people spread the field to throw it, and some people spread it to run it,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “If you say, ‘What’s the first thing they want to do?’ — it’s run the football. And when you have a big guy like Relf, he can run that thing.
“So they run the option. They run the quarterback run. They’re running all kinds of counters and powers. They’ve really got an outstanding run game.”
Mississippi State used that formula last season while recording nine wins, the most for the program in 11 years.
The Bulldogs are on the run again. Their 217.5-yard rushing average is third in the SEC behind Florida (259) and Alabama (230.8).
Thus far, however, they don’t have much to show for it. State burst out of the gate on offense this season, averaging 588 yards and 46.5 points in the first two games, against Memphis and Auburn. But its production has been less than half of that the past two weeks, averaging 266.5 yards and 16 points against LSU and Louisiana Tech. Mullen’s Bulldogs (2-2, 0-2) are looking to avoid an 0-3 SEC start.
“I think the one issue is, I’ll have to give credit to LSU,” said Mullen, who is starting two redshirt freshmen on the offensive line because of injuries. “They play pretty good defensive football and had a good plan for us. ... Otherwise, it’s the little things. When you turn on the film, it’s one error here or there. We’re not changing a lot because we’re not far off from where we want to be. We just have to be cleaner and execute better.”
About the Author
