Much of the intrigue surrounding coach Jim McElwain’s hire at Florida is offensive in nature.

I don’t mean that McElwain has said anything disparaging about Gators or The Swamp. Rather, McElwain built his brand as a coach by getting production and results on offense, first as a national championship-winning offensive coordinator at Alabama and then in a three-year turnaround project as head coach at Colorado State.

Florida, home to all sorts of talented prep quarterbacks, receivers and running backs, hasn’t fielded an exciting offense since Tim Tebow’s final college season in 2010. Coach Will Muschamp’s flavor of football was a decided failure on offense, and it’s McElwain’s job to fix it.

In the recent to intermediate past, coaches Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer have leveraged Heisman Trophy-level play at quarterback to win SEC and national championships. That’s the standard by which McElwain will be judged.

But is it fair to expect McElwain to produce a quarterback like Danny Wuerffel or Tim Tebow during his tenure in Gainesville, Fla.? And what can we expect from Florida’s quarterbacks under the guidance of the new coach, given McElwain’s history?

We’ve detailed the main statistics for every major starting quarterback that McElwain has tutored as an offensive coordinator or head coach below. First, here are some observations and conclusions based on McElwain’s history with quarterbacks.

  • The longer he coaches them, the better. This is true of any college coach-quarterback combination. (OK, Muschamp and Jeff Driskel may be an exception.) But McElwain has coached two starting quarterbacks for multiple seasons as a coordinator or head coach — Greg McElroy and Garrett Grayson. McElroy, not considered an NFL-caliber talent when he arrived in Tuscaloosa, made huge strides with accuracy, leadership, decision-making and reading defenses and became a seventh-round pick, clawing his way to a brief career as an NFL backup. Grayson fared even better, throwing for more than 4,000 yards as a senior and rifling up draft boards to become a third-round pick. Especially if Will Grier wins the job — and Grier is a much better fit for the McElwain system — the Gators can expect some outstanding quarterback play by 2017.
  • Expect whomever starts for Florida to take care of the football. McElwain-coached quarterbacks have thrown for double-digit interceptions in just two seasons — Andrew Walter in ’06 and Garrett Grayson in ’13. Walter was a second-year backup who played only due to poor performances and injuries to Aaron Brooks. In his final three seasons at Alabama, quarterbacks Greg McElroy and AJ McCarron threw for a combined 14 interceptions.
  • McElwain is not a magician. The ’06 Raiders offense was one of the worst ever in the NFL, a big reason why Oakland finished the season 2-14. Players like John Parker Wilson and Conner Smith were limited entities (even though Wilson hung around as a third-team NFL quarterback for a while), and looked like it within McElwain’s offense. McElroy and McCarron (as a freshman) were game managers, and played like it. It’s tough to make cheesecake out of a bucket of mud, and that’s not what McElwain’s history suggests he’ll do. McElwain is best at understanding a player’s skill set, playing to his strengths and avoiding his weaknesses.
  • Expect plenty of short, high-percentage throws. One would suspect this would be the case no matter who was directing Florida’s offense in 2015, given the inexperience at offensive line. But McElwain-coached quarterbacks rarely have dipped below a 60 percent completion rate in college, despite hovering near 8.0 yards per attempt. Some of it has to do with the skill set of the quarterbacks he’s coached previously, but McElwain prefers short, often safe timing routes that involve precision and anticipation rather than risk/reward heaves deep downfield. This won’t be the Fun-‘N’-Gun.

EXAMINING JIM MCELWAIN-COACHED QBS

Year Team Quarterback Key Numbers
2006 Oakland Raiders Andrew Walter 3 TDs, 13 INTs, 53.3% comp. rate, 6.1 ypa
2006 Oakland Raiders Aaron Brooks 3 TDs, 8 INTs, 57.3% comp. rate, 5.8 ypa
2007 Fresno State Tom Brandstater 15 TDs, 5 INTs, 62.6% comp. rate, 7.9 ypa
2008 Alabama John Parker Wilson 10 TDs, 8 INTs, 57.9% comp. rate, 6.5 ypa
2009 Alabama Greg McElroy 17 TDs, 4 INTs, 60.9% comp. rate, 7.7 ypa
2010 Alabama Greg McElroy 20 TDs, 5 INTs, 70.9% comp. rate, 9.5 ypa
2011 Alabama AJ McCarron 16 TDs, 5 INTs, 66.8% comp. rate, 8.0 ypa
2012 Colorado State Garrett Grayson 7 TDs, 3 INTs, 56.5% comp. rate, 6.9 ypa
2012 Colorado State Conner Smith 6 TDs, 6 INTs, 63.5% comp. rate, 8.1 ypa
2013 Colorado State Garrett Grayson 23 TDs, 11 INTs, 62.1% comp. rate, 7.7 ypa
2014 Colorado State Garrett Grayson 32 TDs, 7 INTs, 64.3% comp. rate, 9.5 ypa

 

A final note is that McElwain the offensive coordinator, and even McElwain the head coach, has done an excellent job of identifying his top skill-position players and finding ways to feed them the football.

At Colorado State, running back Kapri Bibbs become one of four players in the history of college football with 30 rushing touchdowns in a single season. Receiver Rashard Higgins caught 96 passes for 1,750 yards and 17 touchdowns, losing out to Alabama’s Amari Cooper for the Biletnikoff Award. McElwain helped running back Mark Ingram win a Heisman Trophy in 2009.

What that means for Florida’s ’15 season remains to be seen. Demarcus Robinson is one of the most talented receivers in the SEC. Players like Kelvin Taylor, Jake McGee and Brandon Powell have potential, and if McElwain can carve out a trio of effective skill players, the Gators may not need much more to be effective.

Florida’s offensive line may be its biggest limitation on offense in ’15, but the team may be closer than it seems in terms of talent and production at the skill positions.

Don’t expect a Jim Harbaugh-like turnaround at Florida under McElwain, but within a few seasons he should be able to compile the talent and skill progression to return the offense to the upper registers of the SEC.