Spartan Football Coordinator Jay Johnson Talks New Look Spartans
East Lansing, MI— If you were unfamiliar when Mel Tucker announced his new offensive coordinator as Jay Johnson, don’t feel bad. Johnson had been a rising offensive name in the profession, and while unassuming and more reserved than many football coaches, his prowess was not unnoticed.
One SEC coach told me at the time, “Jay is a good guy and a great football coach. Mel did a super job getting him to Colorado and was smart to get him to the Big Ten to his roots. I won’t be shocked to see him as a head coach in that conference one day.”
That was very high praise. So I asked Johnson earlier today about how his side of the ball will look when the season opens for the Spartans.
He told me, “The thing that we want to do is be very multiple; multiple in how we do things from all different things in the tempos we play with, the personnel we play with, the formations we play with. So we’re trying to be very multiple. But at the same token, it all comes down you can do this and that, but at the end of the day, it’s got to be a high level of execution. In the brief time in person that I had with the guys, that was my really focal point of that because, at the end of the day, we’ve got to be able to do what we’re asking them to do and those things.”
He went on to add on the scheme, “But yeah, I’m looking to be very multiple. You know some people would say, ‘well, coach, do you want to be balanced?’ Well sure, everybody wants to be balanced, but at the end of the day, I think it’s important that you do what you need to win the game. And so, you know, this day and age you got to run it extremely well, and you have to throw it extremely well, and so we’re going to do both. In some games, we might lean a little bit more on the throw, and other games we might be a little more on the run, but open to being multiple and as balanced as we can and put some points on the board.”
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