The inside look at Mike Bobo’s offense from a player who ran it
One of the things Hutson Mason remembers was the trust from Mike Bobo.
Bobo trusted his quarterbacks to make key reads and change plays when needed. Mason trusted Bobo to build an offense not just from the 10,000-foot view a coach has on game day.
“I value a lot of what he said because I knew he had played the position before,” Mason said. “That’s not to say that guys who haven’t played quarterback haven’t been great offensive minds before.
“But I think he has the ability to relate and understand. He’s not just some guy with a bird’s eye view when he’s watching film who’s never been in there before and has never stood in the pocket.”
That might come down to something small like adjusting when Mason couldn’t get a clean passing lane around a 6-foot-7 right tackle.
That offensive mind is coming to South Carolina, and Mason, who played at Georgia and started his final season on campus, called it a home run hire. The school will officially approve his contract on Tuesday.
Mason described Bobo’s schemes as pro-style in spirit, but with a range of looks that have adapted for the spread age. He’ll still play a fullback, but that player will often work at tight end. They’ll go three-receiver, one-tight end often, as is the current standard style.
This isn’t an Air Raid scheme, but it’s also not the old-school I-formation base he ran at Georgia either.
Bobo is still a run-to-set-up-the-pass guy.
“I remember him always telling me his favorite play in football is the single-back power play,” Mason said.
“As a play-caller, he just understands ball. He’s been doing it a while and he’s a great schemer.”
Mason described the offense as built around inside zone and power concepts in the run game. USC has used both across the past four years, relying more on inside zone.
Describing Bobo’s pass game was a little trickier, because of the sprawling nature of pass schemes. It has some West Coast elements and is often built around one- or two-high safety reads. If there’s one safety in the middle of the field, they’ll have a concept to beat that on one side, and the other side has a concept to attack a split safety look (former OC Bryan McClendon, who worked under Bobo, did some of this as well).
Mason also mentioned his offenses getting a lot of mileage out of working out routes and double post concepts.
But more than the base concepts, what stood out was how the offense was put on the shoulders of the quarterback.
“He’s also still pretty complicated in the verbiage and the sophistication,” Mason said. “I would say on every run play, most of the time, it’s not a scenario where you just call a run play and run it into any and every look. Predominantly the run plays that he calls have two runs attached, sometimes more.”
It gives the offense the luxury of making sure the defense won’t be right.
Bobo’s offenses didn’t usually go at blur speed, but they didn’t huddle, which allowed them to dictate personnel and tempo when needed. It means more complexity than some stripped down current spreads but allowed more diversity to attack defenses in different ways.
“I think he understands how tough it is to score points in the SEC and what schemes and what works,” Mason said, praising his versatility.
Bobo will also be charged with taking on the development of sophomore quarterback Ryan Hilinski. In Year 1, the Californian threw for 2,357 yards, 11 touchdowns and five interceptions.
Mason was a late recruit when he joined the Bulldogs. The team had brought in Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger the year prior and the staff didn’t plan to add a passer, at least until it became clear that whoever lost the competition was likely to transfer.
Mason, the state’s Gatorade Player of the Year his senior season, waited his turn behind Murray. He started as a senior, throwing 21 touchdowns and four interceptions, handing off to a trio of future NFL backs
That offense finished eighth in the country in points per game (more than 41) and seventh in yards per play.
Mason remembered the system being one of the main selling points for the offense when he was being recruited, and the value of it became clear after his time in Athens was done. He went into meetings with NFL teams and was asked to teach back his offense. And he never felt uncomfortable with the task, even when Washington’s Jay Gruden sat down, handed him a clicker and told him to explain what was on film.
“I felt like I was as prepared as anybody in the country to get on a chalkboard or a whiteboard and talk football,” Mason said. “Yes, they put a lot on your plate as a quarterback. And it can be mentally overwhelming for the first year as a freshman. But once you get it, once it clicks, you know it really pays off.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 4:42 PM with the headline "The inside look at Mike Bobo’s offense from a player who ran it."
