Advantages Of A No-Huddle, Up-Tempo Offense

For over a hundred years, the game of football has been played by players, while the game has been coached by.....coaches. Through the decades and over the many seasons that football has been around, certain coaches have been able to make innovations to the game and their certain team, to achieve more wins and higher success.

Bill Walsh created the West Coast offense that helped his 49ers win four Super Bowls in the 1980’s. Mike Leach made the air-raid offense into a system that has helped previously unknown programs reach the national stage.

Then we have the no-huddle offense, which came to life in the 1980’s under Bengals coach, the late Sam Wyche, and also by the Bills with quarterback Jim Kelly. As the years went on, we saw it at Oregon with Chip Kelly, and now it’s even making its way back to the NFL.

The no-huddle has been around the game of football for over 30 years, and now, new Hurricanes OC Rhett Lashlee is bringing it to the University of Miami.

With Lashlee’s no-huddle and up-tempo type of offensive attack, we’re about to see our Canes move like we’ve never seen before.

So let’s talk about this, what are some of the advantages of this no-huddle offense, and how will it help the Hurricanes?

Well the first thing, is that the no-huddle allows the offense to control the pace of the game, and you’re always keeping the defense on their toes. In 2019, Lashlee’s SMU offense averaged 80 plays ran per game, while Miami was running more towards 67 plays per game. And it’s been proven in college football, that the more plays an offense runs, the more points they score. SMU averaged 41.8 points per game, while Miami was at 25.7 PPG.

But it’s not even the points per game. SMU was also averaging over six yards per play in 2019, nearly 500 yards of total offense per game.

When you’re running that many plays, at that fast of a rate, you can take advantage of the defense not being able to adjust at the line of scrimmage, and thus you can create more mismatches. Watch this play from SMU this past year, where they do a simple run to convert on 3rd and 1, and then they hurry back up to the line, and Shane Buechele has a wide open receiver for a long touchdown.

Going along with that, when running the no-huddle offense, you’re going to not just confuse the defense, but the defense is going to be fatigued quick. When the offense is hurrying up to the line each play, it allows almost no time for the defense to make substitutions. One of the reasons why this sort of system fits the Hurricanes, if Miami is running 80 plays per game in the South Florida sun in September and October, that defense is going to have problems.

And just a little side note to go along with that, this up-tempo will benefit the Miami offensive line too, when the big DL can’t catch their breath and rush the quarterback.

The no-huddle also benefits the quarterback, as he is then able to gain a few more seconds and scan the defense at the line of scrimmage, and also communicate with his coaches on the sideline. It also allows for a more efficient quarterback.

It also helps with the crispness of the entire offense. In college football, you can only practice for so long, but studies have shown that teams who run the no-huddle offense, increase the number of plays ran at practice by as much as 33%.

There are obviously more advantages we can talk about, but you get the point. The no-huddle offense that Lashlee is bringing to Miami is going to result in more explosive plays, more points, and hopefully more wins for the Canes.