Special thanks to Jamey Vinnick of CougFan.com for joining me on the Quack 12 podcast to discuss Washington State’s roster. LISTEN HERE
The major project in replacing last year’s playcaller Eric Morris with this year’s OC Arbuckle wasn’t switching systems, as they both come from the same Texas Tech (by way of Western Kentucky and a couple Texas FCS schools) branch of the Air Raid coaching tree marrying Mike Leach’s passing pattern to various run schemes which also produced Kliff Kingsbury and Zach Kittley.
This is Arbuckle’s first year as a Power-5 playcaller and second overall – he was a QC coach and analyst as recently as 2021, under Kittley at WKU – and when previewing the Cougars this Summer I suspected he’d employ a similar route tree, run-pass balance, and down & distance situational plan, and just cross his fingers for competent execution of that system to raise their efficiency and explosiveness rates.