Texas Football: Offense won't change 'guts' or 'bones' under new OC Mike Yurcich

The Longhorns will keep many of the same concepts and terminology going forward with their new coordinator

Texas will have a new man calling the plays in 2020, but don't expect a complete offensive overhaul for the Longhorns going into next season. 

"We didn't want to change a whole bunch from a bone structure from a, from a gut standpoint, systematic standpoint," new offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich said. "Because it's a lot easier for one guy to have to learn something than to ask 60 other guys to learn a new language."

Head coach Tom Herman explained that the offensive product will still be a collaboration of several members of the staff. 

When you hire a new coordinator (on) either side of the ball or special teams, they don't just come in and dump a binder down on the front of a desk and say this is my offense," Herman said. "What, what you do is you work together and you find commonalities."

Yurcich spent last season working at Ohio State under Ryan Day. Day, like Herman runs a version of the offense Urban Meyer brought to Columbus when he came out of retirement to coach the Buckeyes. The shared offensive philosophy was a big part of the reason Yurcich was hired, but none of this means the new coordinator and quarterbacks coach isn't going to put his own stamp on things. 

"Every year it's going to morph and it's going to change and it's going to develop as they have here each year Texas," Yurcich said. "And that's what you have to do because your personnel changes. So you have to adapt your system to your personnel, but we will tweak and we will, we will add and delete."

Herman says Yurcich has already watched every play from last season and his input can already be felt in the direction the team is headed on offense with a new, more advanced tempo snap count that will allow Texas to play faster. 

"They (the defense) want(s) to see what (formation) you're in," Yurcich "They want to see you line up They want to signal over to their safety, they want to tell the mike backer exactly where it is they see, where tailbacks lined up. What's the guard-center split on the backside. And they want to call that out. And then they want to call their defense. So what you want to do is you want to try to eliminate that communication. So the faster you go, the more you eliminate that."

I think when you bring somebody in you definitely want a fresh set of eyes, new ideas," Herman said. 

Yurcich also seems to be open to new personel packages. At times the Longhorns seemed married to the one tight end, one running back formation over the past few seasons even when injuries seemed to take away the best option at tight end. 

"I don't care if it's 11 (one tight end and one running back) personnel, 12 (two tight ends and one running back) personnel, 22 personnel (two tight ends and two running backs), whatever it takes to move the football and that may differ from week to week, depending on who you're playing," Yurcich said.