October 15, 2009

Tom Dienhart
Rivals.com College Football Senior Writer

Rutgers coach Greg Schiano couldn't believe it. Cincinnati was moving up and down the field on his team in the season opener.

It wasn't just the yards that Cincinnati was piling up that impressed him; it was the speed with which the Bearcats scored their 47 points.

"We didn't do a good job of countering anything that day," said Schiano, whose team had almost a four-minute edge in time of possession but was outscored 47-15 and outgained 564-293. "Really, the key is you need to get lined up and give your guys a chance to play. And I don't think we did a good job of that."

No one has slowed Cincinnati and its dynamic offensive package, which Bearcats coaches call the "warp-speed offense." It's a scheme that Bearcats coach Brian Kelly installed in an attempt to get an edge. It's not only about scoring, but also scoring fast.

"I think it definitely puts pressure on defenses," Schiano said. "You have to get your call in faster, your kids have to get lined up. I think it's very effective."

The numbers tell the story. The Bearcats rank No. 3 in the nation in scoring (42 points per game) and No. 11 in total offense (468.2 yards per game) despite ranking last in the nation in time of possession (23:47). Cincinnati's average scoring drive takes 6.8 plays and lasts a mere 2:25.

The offense is a big reason the Bearcats are 5-0 as they enter an important Big East showdown at South Florida on Thursday night.

"It's a very good team," USF coach Jim Leavitt said. "Very explosive. Their quarterback, [Tony] Pike, has just done a great job. [He] doesn't make many mistakes; he makes all the right decisions, all the throws. He's just been playing great football, doing all the right things."

Doing all the right things has made Pike a legit Heisman Trophy contender as the guy pushing the buttons for this go-go-go offense, which was inspired by Jeff Genyk, Eastern Michigan's coach from 2004-08.

"There are a lot of coaches who have helped me kind of establish what I want to do offensively," Kelly said. "And a lot of it has been trial and error, as well. That is how I have developed my philosophy."

Eastern Michigan's last two games of 2008 created a buzz in the coaching community and caught the eye of Kelly, who had been coach at Central Michigan (2004-06) and played against Genyk and EMU when he was with the Chippewas.

In Eastern Michigan's 55-52 loss at Temple, the Eagles ran 95 plays and racked up 552 yards. But that was a mere warm-up for the regular-season finale against Central Michigan, when EMU ran an incredible 105 plays and gained 616 yards in shocking Central Michigan 56-52. Eagles quarterback Andy Schmitt broke the NCAA single-game completions record by going 58-of-80 for 516 yards, with five touchdowns and an interception.

"[Michigan coach] Rich [Rodriguez] called and wondered how we did that," said Genyk, who was told the week leading up to the CMU game that he would be fired. "Brian was curious, too. Many wondered how we ran so many plays."

The answer: The warp-speed package.

Kelly and Genyk met in the offseason to discuss ideas and have continued to talk during the season, sharing information and analyzing the UC attack.

"I always have admired Jeff," Kelly said. "They were doing things in the no-huddle that were untested. They had little change in personnel [between plays] and they were snapping the ball quickly. No one had [gone at that pace] for an entire game."

Cincinnati's offense is trying for that pace this season. In their most recent game, the Bearcats had the ball for just 19:09 but still rolled to a 37-13 victory over Miami University. In a victory over Fresno State earlier in the year, Cincinnati had possession for just 16:18, yet won 28-20.

"Because the average team runs 68-70 plays a game, the idea of the warp-speed package is you are going to try to get 90-100 plays in," said Genyk, who expects to be back in coaching next season. "That's 25-30 plays more than the average. Knowing that, you have to be OK with some ugly-looking plays - bad completions, bad incompletions.

"You also convince your team that once you cross the other team's 45-yard line, you always are going to go for it on fourth down if it's fourth-and-medium or -short. You build in that mentality among the players that, if we get there, coach is going to go for it and we will get an extra down."

While Genyk developed the warp-speed package while he was coach at Eastern Michigan, the seeds for the offense were planted when Genyk was an assistant at Northwestern in the late 1990s under Randy Walker.

The Wildcats were looking for an offense that would allow them to spread the field and run. In 2000, Genyk, then-offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson (who's now at Oklahoma) and a few other Wildcats assistants met with Rodriguez, at the time Clemson's offensive coordinator, to learn how he ran out of the spread.

In 1999, Northwestern ranked 110th in the nation in scoring. The next season, the Wildcats ranked ninth. In 2001, Mike Dunbar was hired as Northwestern's tight ends coach and brought with him a Dennis Erickson-style passing system. The light bulb went off for Genyk: He needed to mesh Wilson's running scheme with Dunbar's passing scheme. Genyk sprinkled in some other concepts dealing with personnel groupings and a fast pace, and the warp-speed attack was born.

"I wanted to run it to the point where it would be like the Joe Tiller/Drew Brees passing offense at Purdue - except we were going to do it as fast as possible," Genyk said. "That is the best way to explain it to a layman."

Some keys to successfully running the warp-speed attack:

There need to be built-in hot reads. On one side of the formation, it may look like a sophisticated route, with a chance for the quarterback to throw deep or an intermediate route. On the other side are built-in hot reads in case of a blitz.

There doesn't need to be a wide variance in formations. In order to run the offense as fast as possible, you should line up in a similar formation each time so you don't have to use time making personnel and formation changes.

You need a go-to receiver. You want a big, physical guy who can wall off defenders. When it doubt, tell your quarterback to go to him.

Players must hustle to the line. In an ideal world, the ball should be snapped with 26-28 seconds left on the play clock. That makes it more difficult for defenses to call sophisticated blitzes and call in signals.

You must have a savvy quarterback. You need a quarterback who has experience, command of the offense and is able to quickly make the correct reads and deliver accurate passes.

All of that is clicking for Cincinnati as it heads into the toughest part of its season.

Tom Dienhart is the national senior writer for Rivals.com. He can be reached at dienhart@yahoo-inc.com.