Scorching the Defense

Blinn College\'s high powered offense continues to set records
by: Patrick Finley
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>Scott Maxfield is confident, maybe even a little cocky. Running his no-huddle spread offense at Blinn College, he deserves to be. After leading the nation with 558.7 yards per game at the junior college level last season, you get the impression that Maxfield’s Buccaneers can move the ball at will. In fact, he’ll come close to telling you that himself.

“It doesn’t matter to us what we see,” said Maxfield, the head coach and offensive coordinator. “If people want to play zone, we’ll drive the football. If they want to play man, we have an opportunity to see big plays.”

“We’ve seen few people blitzing lately. That’s because they know we can beat the blitz. You have to have confidence. If you don’t, you can’t beat pressure defense.”

In lighting up the scoreboard in a way few do, Maxfield and the Buccaneers have turned out Division I-A players, destroyed record books and even caught a little heat for what coaches think is running up the score.

In the process, Maxfield’s changing the way some people in Brenham, Texas – as well as around the junior college circuit – look at college football.

HOW IT CAME TO BE

Maxfield is rooted in passing. He graduated in 1982 from Louisiana Tech, where he was a center and guard for one of the few schools that ran a wide-open offense back then.

“I figured out pretty quick that it was easier to drive-block than pass block,” he said.

That planted the seed. But Maxfield’s immediate future was in defense, not offense. After being a student assistant with the Bulldogs and a graduate assistant at Ole Miss, he coached defense for five years at Northwestern State in Natchitoches, La. While scheming for the next opponent, Maxfield made note of what offenses he found difficult to defense and which were easy.

“I hated the spread attack,” he said. “I liked to play against the two-back offense, because there’s only so much you can do out of that.”

“When I went over to offense, I tried to do the things that I hated to prepare for.”

Nowadays, Maxfield admires pass-first coaches like Mike Leach at Texas Tech, Urban Meyer at Utah and Bobby Petrino at Louisville. He classifies his offense as controlled passing, to which Blinn athletic director Kevin Steele agrees.

“There’s risk, but it’s a calculated risk,” Steele said. “He studies things so well and knows his offense so well. He’s so well-prepared that I don’t think to him it’s a risk.

“To him, a pass is just as safe as a handoff.”

THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE

Maxfield began running his scheme, which he dubbed the “Scorched Earth Offense,” in 1997. It was a combination of all those ideas he had as a defensive coordinator, the scheme he ran in college and other ideas he picked up along the way.

The basis of it is simple – he looks to throw first and run second. The pass seems to set up the run. In 2003, running back Derrick Ross finished third in the nation with 1,487 yards on 181 carries. Both were school records, surprising considering Blinn’s former reputation as a ball-control school.

“We just burn up that turf,” Maxfield said.

Everywhere he’s been with the offense, he’s said similar results. As the offensive coordinator at Northwest Mississippi Community College in 2000, his offense was ranked No. 1 in passing with 415.7 yards per game and No. 1 in total yards – for the second straight year – with 520.7 yards per game.

From there, Maxfield took over as head coach at Pearl River Community College in Mississippi. In his one year there, the offense was first nationally in total offense with 460.5 yards per game and first nationally in passing with 315.8 yards per game.

At Blinn, the records kept falling. In his first year, 2002, his offense broke the Southwest Junior College Football Conference record with 417 yards per game. He also set a school record with 1,945 passing yards.

Last season, the Buccaneers had their first winning season since 1999, making the playoffs for the first time in four years. The Blinn offense averaged a whopping 52.8 points per game, the best in country. It once again led the nation in total offense with 558 yards and passing offense with 344.

“Our kids get excited about looking at the stats,” he said. “That’s one of the ways we motivate. We challenge our kids to have the best stats. We want to have the best offense. We want to accomplish those goals week-by-week and year-by-year. We want to be the best.

“It’s neat to see that you’re having success. The bottom line is winning football games. We’re not going to pad our stats and lose. We like to set records.”

His boss likes it, too. Steele came to Blinn in August, but has already embraced the no-huddle offense.

“People will come to watch winners, no matter what offense you run,” he said. “But it is a lot more fun when they know people are going to score and that there’s going to be long plays.”

It also makes for long games, some going four hours long.

“Concessions does well,” Steele said.

RECRUITING HOOK

At Blinn, the lure of playing in his offense has helped Maxfield lure some of the best skill position players in the state. The success of his outgoing players has helped, too. Last year’s starting quarterback, Dane King, is now the signal-caller at Baylor. Another player from last year’s team is a tight end for the Bears, and others have gone on to play at schools such as Syracuse.

“You need to do with what you have, personnel-wise,” Maxfield said. “Recruiting in the state of Texas, we can get the best quarterback and the best wide receivers because they want to come to an offense that will throw the football.”

Because he coaches at a junior college, Maxfield realizes that players want to play for him so they can move up to the next level after two years. Because of that, he does something few junior college coaches do – he uses a complicated system.

Most JuCos run very basic schemes, figuring that they only have their players for three or four semesters and need them to learn on the fly.

“I feel that if you challenge the kids to learn it and that if you explain it well, then you could do whatever you want,” he said. “Kids enjoy playing football, so they’ll spend the
time and effort learning it. We get a lot of things done.

“We put a lot of pressure on our quarterbacks. We run multiple sets, but it’s a no-huddle. We teach as much offense as four-year schools do.”

That helps Blinn’s players get recruited by Division I-A schools.
“There’s no question about that,” he said. “Offensively, recruiters are going to know they can run pass routes and read coverages on the fly.

“Our players are coached up in the pass game to do what anybody does. That’s one of our recruiting pitches is that if you’re prepared you’re going to be able to play at the next level.”

But Blinn’s players have to keep their grades up to stay attractive to larger schools, too.

“That’s part of the deal,” Maxfield said. “You’ve got to develop your players physically and develop them academically. As a coach, that’s the biggest challenge we face – to get them to focus on academics. A lot of these kids have 18 years of bad habits built up.”

A SPREAD TREND

Maxfield said he estimates that 40 percent of the high schools in Texas now run some sort of spread offense. He sees that benefiting his program in the future, because many prep players – namely quarterbacks – will be more familiar with the basic tenets of the spread offense.

He also said that the spread offense makes football more fun for high school players, which is good for the game because it might bring more kids out to play.

“A lot of people in Texas are spreading the field and throwing the football,” he said. “It makes it a lot more fun for the kids to play. The practices aren’t monotonous.

“It also attracts more kids to football, kids who might just play basketball. It’s a lot more fun not to have to block.”

Maxfield’s practices might also be more fun than your typical practice. Of the hour-and-a-half spent on the field, Blinn spends an hour and 10 minutes passing the ball. The other 20 minutes are devoted to running.

Because that’s the offense they run, Maxfield said he’s taken some heat for throwing the ball when his team is ahead in the fourth quarter. He shrugs it off.

“Our philosophy is that we’re going to run our offense,” he said. “I can’t tell a guy he can’t score or catch a pass. We’re not trying to embarrass anybody.”

A GREAT PROBLEM

As is the case at many smaller colleges, the danger in being too successful is that the head coach will receive interest from larger schools. And as long as Maxfield’s teams keep putting up gaudy offensive numbers, you can bet the play-calling savant will have other schools knocking on his door soon.

“That’s a great problem to have, I think,” Steele said. “I feel like a large part of my job is to make sure that student-athletes are successful in what they’re trying to do and what they’re supposed to do, and to help coaches achieve personal goals.”
If those goals involve leaving, that’s something Steele can accept because of how a coach has bettered the school by simply being successful.

“If that’s making the program so nice that they leave, that’s fine,” he said. “If it’s making the program so nice that they never want to leave, that’s great.”

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