Should Jason Beck have been in the running for the offensive coordinator job at UVA? His mentor, Robert Anae, was, from what I understand, among those who thought so.
Beck, a former BYU QB who served as quarterbacks coach under Anae on Bronco Mendenhall’s staffs at BYU and at Virginia, ended up following Anae to Syracuse, where the two have flipped the script for what had been a floundering offense under Dino Babers, who entered the season on the hottest of hot seats, and now has ‘Cuse unbeaten and in the Top 25.
After Mendenhall made his stunning announcement that he was stepping down in December, Anae initially stayed on at UVA to coach the offense through the team’s preparations for the Fenway Bowl, then decided after AD Carla Williams announced the hire of Tony Elliott to serve as the next head coach at Virginia to move on.
Anae was not interested in trying to stay on with an offensive-minded head coach, but he thought Beck would get a shot at the job, and it was Beck to whom Mendenhall assigned the play-calling duties for the bowl game.
A COVID issue ended up canceling the game, and a few days later, Anae was on his way to Syracuse, with Beck at his side.
Beck, again, from what I have come to know about what transpired, didn’t get the time of day from Elliott, who ultimately went with Des Kitchings for the offensive coordinator job.
Until his hire at UVA, Kitchings had had two previous stints as an offensive coordinator, the final five games of the 2010 season as the interim OC at Vanderbilt, and one season at NC State, in 2019, on the staff of Dave Doeren, who decided not to retain him after the Pack stumbled to a 4-8 finish, with the offense ranking 11th in the ACC.
State followed up that 4-8 finish in 2019 with an 8-4 record in 2020, a 9-3 record in 2021, and the Pack is out to a 5-1 start in 2022.
It was an interesting choice to go with Kitchings given what was lacking there in the track record, and while Beck has no track record at this stage in his coaching career in terms of serving as a coordinator and play-caller, the situation at UVA was tailor-made for him to get out to a good start, with Brennan Armstrong, top wideouts Dontayvion Wicks and Keytaon Thompson and a veteran offensive line set to return.
The linemen who left – Bobby Haskins to USC, Olu Oluwatimi to Michigan, Ryan Swoboda to Central Florida, Joe Bissinger to SMU – all moved on from Virginia after Anae and Beck did.
Oh, and tight end Jelani Woods, now catching TD passes in the NFL with the Indianapolis Colts, would have also stayed on, again, yeah, from what I’ve come to know.
Imagine that.
The way things turned out, Beck ended up with Anae at Syracuse, which has the ACC’s fourth-best offense (38.4 points per game, 441.6 yards per game) this season, after ranking 10th in points (24.9) and 11th in total offense (366.5 yards per game) a year ago, and has QB Garrett Shrader completing 70.9 percent of his passes (last year: 52.9 percent) with a 176.2 passer rating (last year: 113.7).
And at Virginia, Kitchings has flipped what was the ACC’s best offense (515.8 yards per game) that scored 34.9 points per game into the 11th-best (356.8 yards per game) and is scoring 17.8 points per game.
And Armstrong, who last year completed 65.2 percent of his passes, averaged 404.5 yards per game, passed for 31 TDs and had a 156.4 passer rating, is completing 55.0 percent of his passes, is averaging 227.2 passing yards per game, has passing TDs and a 110.4 passer rating.
No wonder Elliott is tired of all the talk about last year.
He has to know that he made the wrong call there.
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Chris Graham
