Has the Veer & Shoot Spread Further Than We Thought?

A history and progression of the Briles system we remember at Baylor

[A repost with minor changes since first published at the beginning of 2023]

First of all, the phrase "Veer & Shoot" may not be the best name for the offensive system that originated with Art Briles and his time at Houston and Baylor, but it's the term most connected to the offense and avoids giving full credit to one individual when it was really the culmination of years of evolution. We'll get to that evolution later, but for now, I want to talk about his coaching tree that began at Stephenville High School.

We'll begin in the late 90s, before Art left the high school ranks for college football. He was the Head Coach at Stephenville from 1988 through 1999 and won 4 state titles including the 4A/D2 title in 1998 and 1999. At Stephenville he worked with coaches Philip Montgomery, who coached QBs and RBs, and Randy Clements, who spent time as the OC, OL Coach, and Power Lifting.

In 2000 Mike Leach got his first head coaching job at Texas Tech in Lubbock and began building his staff. He selected Art Briles as his RB Coach and he remained in that position for 3 seasons. After that 2002 season Briles was hired by the University of Houston to try and rebuild a football program that had gone 8-26 in the previous 3 years under HC Dana Dimel including an 0-11 campaign in 2001. To build his staff he brought in the aforementioned Montgomery and Clements to coach QB/RB and OL, respectively, while bringing in true freshman QB Kevin Kolb who he knew from Stephenville HS.

These core 3 coaches stayed together through the 5 years that Briles coached Houston, and in that time there were some other coaches of note who got their start.

In 2004, Graduate Assistant Beau Trahan came to the program from the University of Texas where he had a similar role under Mack Brown. After the season Trahan moved on to a higher position at Dickinson HS, but that wasn't the last we'll hear from him.

2005 saw two notable individuals join the staff, Matt Mattox (who had been an offensive lineman at Houston through the 2003 season) as a Strength & Conditioning assistant and Sterlin Gilbert, a former Division 2 quarterback at Angelo State, as a Graduate Assistant. Like Beau Trahan, Gilbert would take this season of experience to take a promotion at the highschool level, as Mattox took his GA position in 2006 before doing the same and becoming an Offensive Coordinator at the Texas highschool level.

All of this attention peaked in 2007 and he was hired by Baylor before Houston's bowl game in late 2007 to hopefully resurrect a program that hadn't seen a bowl game appearance in 13 years and was often thought of as one of the worst programs in Division 1-A.

And so the Briles Inner Circle packed their bags for Waco.

Art was once again joined by Philip Montgomery and Randy Clements who kept their previous positions, as well as his son, Kendal Briles, who took a position as Offensive Recruiting Coordinator and Inside WR Coach.

He also added veteran college football coach Dino Babers to handle Wide Receivers and Special Teams, brought back Beau Trahan primarily as a recruiting coordinator, and Jeff Lebby as Offensive Quality Control.

Lebby was a young coach who came from 5 seasons as a Student Assistant with Bob Stoops at Oklahoma and a year at Victoria Memorial HS coaching OL and TE. In 2008 Lebby was only 24, 2 years younger than Kendal, and would become an integral part of the Baylor staff.

The 2008 season was also the last as a rostered player for Baylor student Andrew Sowder. In 2009 he joined the coaching staff as a Student Assistant for 2 years before moving on to West Texas A&M in 2011 after graduating.

To get his Baylor program of the ground, Art Briles managed to recruit the extremely talented Robert Griffin III out of Copperas Cove HS. He was as 6'3 track star with an arm that could deliver the ball to any part of the field. His first year was a difficult 4-8 campaign, followed by another 4-8 season as he suffered an ACL injury in their third game and missed the rest of the season.

Baylor finally turned the corner in 2010 as Griffin matured and Briles began to build the program he wanted. They had refined their system and got off to a 7-2 start before losing their final 4 games. But the Bears had gone to a bowl game for the first time since 1994 and everything was trending up.

The program was stable and improving in 2011 as the offensive production exploded to 587 yards/game and 45 points/game. Griffin won the Heisman and the offense accumulated 67 points and 777 yards in their bowl game against Washington. The Art Briles Baylor Bears had arrived as a serious force. But with success comes attention, and the first casualty was WR coach Dino Babers, who left Baylor to become the Head Coach for FCS Eastern Illinois, quarterbacked by future NFL star Jimmy Garoppolo.

This would be the first systemic fork of the Veer & Shoot, and Babers needed to build a staff.

He inherited Mike Lynch, who moved from WR Coach to RB Coach, and reconnected with Andrew Sowder as WR Coach. Sean Lewis was added from Akron as he was promoted from GA to coach inside WRs and TEs. Sterlin Gilbert was brought back to the college ranks to coach QBs and act as OC. In Babers 2nd season at Eastern Illinois he also added Matt Mattox as OL coach and another connection to Briles' Houston staff.

After 2 successful seasons at Eastern Illinois, Babers was hired to take over the football program of Bowling Green. He brought his entire core staff with him; Lynch, Sowder, Lewis, Gilbert, and Mattox all retained their previous roles for this 2014 season.

Returning to the situation at Baylor, at the end of the 2014 regular season, long time Briles assistant Philip Montgomery was hired by Tulsa as their Head Coach. He left before the bowl game and Kendal Briles took over playcalling duties and Montgomery's position. Jeff Lebby was also promoted to having a larger role in the offense with Pass Game Coordinator, RB Coach and Offensive Recruiting Coordinator duties.

At Tulsa in 2015, Montgomery also brought in Matt Mattox and Sterlin Gilbert from Babers' Bowling Green staff. That 2015 Bowling Green team reached new heights on offense with 42 points and 545 yards per game. At this point Babers' teams had developed a history of being more pass oriented than Briles', in terms of play volume.

One future connection began in 2015 as well, with coach Joe Jon Finley joining the Baylor staff as Offensive Quality Control for a season before moving on to be Missouri's TEs Coach in 2016.

The 2015 postseason would result in the fracturing of Art Briles' plans at Baylor and his desire to keep his offense as close to his vest as possible.

I don't know enough about what happened to speak in absolutes, but the short version is that the school of Baylor, and specifically the football program, was accused of protecting students, primarily football players, from any sort of legal or scholastic punishment stemming from accusations of physical and/or sexual assault against female students. Art was fired while Kendal, Randy Clements, and Jeff Lebby remained for one more season at Baylor.

Beau Trahan would move on from his Highschool Recruiting role at Baylor of 8 years to be QB Coach at Tulsa with Montgomery where he remained through the 2022 season. He has moved on to become head coach at Tyler Legacy HS.

Back to the Babers situation: after the 2015 season he switched jobs again, becoming the Head Coach at Syracuse. He brought Mike Lynch with him as well as Sean Lewis. Mike Lynch has changed roles a few times but is currently still a position coach under Babers at Syracuse. Unfortunately, Syracuse has only gotten to a bowl game twice in 7 years and their coaching staff has very little relation to the Veer & Shoot at this time.

Sean Lewis left Syracuse after 2017 to become the Head Coach at Kent State where he brought in Andrew Sowder to be his Offensive Coordinator, QB Coach, and TE Coach. Sean Lewis left Kent State this offseason to join Coach Prime (Deion Sanders) at Colorado as OC and QB Coach. This led to Sowder taking a position at Minnesota as TE coach.

Going back to 2016, Matt Mattox, Sterlin Gilbert, and Andrew Sowder reconnected on Charlie Strong's Texas staff in his final season there as head coach. This was the best Texas offense of Strong's 3 seasons and included a 2000 yard rusher in D'Onta Foreman, but there were large scale changes after that season which led to Mattox and Gilbert following Strong to South Florida while Sowder spent a season at San Jose State.

That 2016 Texas staff also included Jeff Traylor, Will Stein, and Justin Burke. When Traylor became HC at UTSA in 2020 he would build his offense staff around Stein, Burke, and added Matt Mattox. After 2022 Will Stein left to be the OC and QB Coach at Oregon and Mattox left to be the OL coach at Purdue under OC/QB Coach Graham Harrell.

The tendrils of the Veer & Shoot were spreading quickly now. One key connection in 2016 was Josh Heupel coming to Missouri as Offensive Coordinator and QB Coach where he met Joe Jon Finley and was able to pick his brain of what Finley had learned in his previous season at Baylor.

That situation at Baylor wasn't healthy or sustainable, and after 2016 it was time for the rest of the Briles regime to move on to other things.

One interesting move was Jeff Lebby and Randy Clements moving to NAIA level Southeastern for the 2017 season where they led an offense to 55 points and 557 yards per game. I have to imagine they were effectively black-balled out of the NCAA for 2017 but that sort of success will make some people forget and they were back at the FBS level in 2018.

The newest fork of the Veer & Shoot occurred in 2017 down at Florida Atlantic.

Lane Kiffin had once again found himself a head coaching job after 3 successful season as the OC at Alabama and he was naturally quite curious of what made the Briles offense tick. He had adopted some elements at Alabama off of watching tape, but he chose to bring in Kendal Briles to be his Assistant Head Coach, Offensive Coordinator, and QB Coach.

That season at FAU started slowly and ended hot, but Briles moved on, taking the same position at Houston where he had played under his father more than a decade earlier. It was at Houston where Kendal reunited with Randy Clements. After that 2018 season in Houston, Kendal and Clements moved on to Florida State under HC Willie Taggart but the improvements that season weren't enough and Taggart was fired and the Briles experience at Florida State was over.

While Kendal had drifted between Houston and Florida State, Jeff Lebby joined Josh Heupel's staff at Central Florida as their offense continued to operate at a high level taking over for Scott Frost, scoring over 40 pts/game in 2017 and continuing that rate through the 3 seasons of Josh Heupel.

With the loss of Jeff Lebby going into the 2020 season, Josh Heupel added former Iowa State assistant Alex Golesh as co-Offensive Coordinator and TE Coach and brought him along to Tennessee for 2021 and 2022 before Golesh was hired as Head Coach at South Florida.

Curiously, this will be the 3rd time in the past decade South Florida has tapped into the Veer & Shoot tree at the university. Previously they had employed Matt Mattox and Sterlin Gilbert in 2017 & 2018 and then Charlie Weis Jr in 2020 & 2021, who came from Lane Kiffin's FAU staff in 2018 & 2019 before rejoining Kiffin at Ole Miss in 2022. Weis was also an Offensive Assistant under Kiffin at Alabama in 2015 & 2016. This is probably closer to Kiffin's own offense, but he has definitely integrated elements from working with Kendal Briles.

2020 was a big year for realigning some of the coaches I've already discussed. With the hiring of Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss, he built his staff around many former Baylor coaches including Jeff Lebby, Randy Clements, and Joe Jon Finley. In 2021 Clements (North Texas) and Finley (Oklahoma) moved on and were replaced by Jake Thornton and John David Baker, respectively.

In 2022 Jeff Lebby left Kiffin's staff to become the Offensive Coordinator at Oklahoma under Brent Venables and was reunited with Joe Jon Finley as well as inheriting OL Coach Bill Bedenbaugh, who was a GA under Mike Leach at Texas Tech at the same time that Art Briles was the RB Coach.

As for Kendal Briles? In 2020 he was hired as the Offensive Coordinator at Arkansas under Sam Pittman and they've seen year over year improvements through his 3 seasons so far.

Philip Montgomery was let go from his Head Coach position at Tulsa after the 2022 season and caught on as the Offensive Coordinator at Auburn under Hugh Freeze. He added OL Coach Jake Thornton from Lane Kiffin's Ole Miss staff.

Sterlin Gilbert reconnected with Dino Babers in 2020 and 2021 at Syracuse but was not retained after that season and has not coached since as far as I can find information.

As the dust settles for 2023, we can expect to see Veer & Shoot derived schemes at TCU, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Auburn, Colorado and South Florida, with influences from the tree possibly showing up at UTSA, Oregon, Purdue, and Minnesota.

There may be other teams I don't know about, but the point of all this is that although there are direct descendants of the Briles coaching staff at Baylor, the massive success that these systems have had have caused many coaches to adopt at least some concepts reverse engineered off film.

It's important to note that while the Air Raid generally relies on passing volume and short & quick concepts to replace the run game, the Veer & Shoot wants to be a running offense by volume and uses formations and vertical passing concepts to create space for the run game.

I think the scheme has reached a point where the concepts are simply an archetype of passing in college football. There are likely certain elements to how things should be taught or executed that are unique to the coaching tree, but it would not be terribly arduous to create a facsimile playbook to run an offense that looks like the Baylor of 2013 or 2014 at a glance.

I find it very interesting to dig into the coaching staffs of successful teams and see the interconnection over time. Some of this may be nepotism, but also human nature of wanting to work with people you're familiar with and trust.

And for those who want to get into coaching, humility is your friend. Don't be afraid to take a GA position at the JUCO or NAIA level to get your foot in the door. It's possible you may meet someone on the staff who has connections with a Division 1 program that may have an open GA position for the next season.

Oh, and as for the Offensive Coordinator for Syracuse last season? Veteran college football coach Robert Anae, who was the OL Coach for Mike Leach at Texas Tech on the same staff as Art Briles.