Watson out as 'Horns Playcaller

“You have to set aside your friendships and do what’s best for the program.”

After scoring just one touchdown in the last three games and fielding the worst offense in the FBS to start the 2015 season, Charlie Strong relieved longtime friend and Texas co-offensive coordinator Shawn Watson of his play-calling responsibilities on Wednesday. Jay Norvell, wide receivers coach, will assume play-calling responsibilities for the Longhorns.

“Jay Norvell will take over the play-calling duties. Shawn will concentrate on the quarterbacks” Strong said.

“We have young quarterbacks that need to get developed. He will take care of the quarterbacks.”

While Watson will coach quarterbacks, Joe Wickline will focus exclusively on the offensive line.

“We have two offensive linemen that are starting and we need to get better there.”

Shawn Watson was met with similar results when he was asked to transform Nebraska’s offense in 2009. Except in Lincoln he ended up losing his job.

Charlie Strong asked Watson to transform a West Coast, pro-style offense back to a spread offense, which the Longhorns ran under Mack Brown prior to 2010. He was given the entire spring, summer and beginning of fall to yield results, except the end product was eight three-and-outs in twelve possessions vs Notre Dame.

“It’s about productivity,” Strong said. “We have to get better.”

Now all eyes are on receivers coach Jay Norvell.

Norvell has prior experience as a coordinator during his time with Oklahoma, where he shared offensive coordinator responsibilities with former Oklahoma quarterback Josh Heupel. Norvell was also the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at UCLA in 2007.

He brings a significant amount of experience as a play-caller in working with up-tempo offenses, particularly the ones that Stoops’ successful Oklahoma teams ran for years. However, a parallel to Jay Norvell’s play calling responsibilities is Joe Wickline’s play calling responsibilities for the Longhorns the past two seasons. The last time Jay Norvell actually did the play calling was for UCLA in 2007. At that time the Bruins ranked 89th in total offense & averaged around 334 yards/game. He was fired from that job as well.

The promotion of Norvell is another step in Charlie Strong’s quest to implement a functioning spread offense on the field for the Longhorns. Strong has made it well know that he wants a spread offense, which he feels will appeal to high school recruits whose programs are already running the spread.

“We know we need to open it up some…98 percent of Texas high schools use some version of spread.”

The change from pro-style to a true spread will help Texas in recruiting, but is Norvell the right guy for the job?

Texas fans should expect improvement on offense, but it won’t happen overnight and the results could be marginal. Norvell was fired from Oklahoma after a disastrous 2014 season in which the Sooners went 8-5 after bolstering a preseason top 5 ranking. The Sooners’ 2014 season culminated in an embarrassing 40-6 rout by Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl in which they failed to score a touchdown in the contest.

What’s in the immediate future for the offense?

Because three days is not enough time to fully implement a revamped offense, fans should expect a vanilla playbook for Rice on Saturday. Looking back at Norvell’s offense while at Oklahoma, it featured heavy doses of quarterback zone reads, swing passes, triple options (hand off, take it, or throw down field to TE across the middle or WR on a comeback) and quick throws. His preference for allowing the quarterback to be mobile in the pocket is obvious. From this we can infer that Jerrod Heard will likely be Jay Norvell’s starting quarterback against the Owls.

With Shawn Watson focusing on the quarterbacks and Joe Wickline focusing on the offensive line, the ball is solely in Jay Norvell’s court to improve the offense.

If Norvell fails to get the job done, Strong will be forced to take more drastic measures.