With all the assistant coaches coming and going on Kansas University’s football staff, one new aide has been lost in the shuffle Terry Allen.
Allen, the Jayhawks’ fifth-year head coach, has added the title of offensive coordinator to his business card, a role he also held his first two seasons at KU.
Allen replaces former KU aide Bill Salmon as the offensive coordinator. Salmon was stripped of the title during the offseason before bolting for Northern Iowa last week.
“We’re pretty much sticking to the same stuff, same concepts,” sophomore quarterback Zach Dyer said after Tuesday’s spring practice at Anschutz Pavilion. “Most of our offense is the same, so it’s really not hard to learn. We’re calling it a little something different, trying to integrate it to make it a little easier to understand and kinda make more sense, especially to the newer people.”
Among the new assistants are wide receivers coach Clarence James and offensive line coach Sam Pittman. The Jayhawks also promoted former KU player and graduate assistant Clint Bowen to a full-time position coaching the tight ends and special teams.
Allen still needs to find a running backs coach to replace Salmon, the role currently being held by administrative assistant Rob Bolks.
Whether the coaching changes will lead to an overhaul for the offense remains to be seen.
“We have some plays that we did last year and we can run some different things than we did last year,” senior wide receiver Harrison Hill said. “I’m not sure if he (Allen) just developed all that or if some of the new coaches came in with the schemes, but it’s different than it was last year.
“Hopefully it will make our offense run a lot more smoother and consistently.”
One of the noticeable changes this spring has been what Allen called an “NFL teamwork” approach to practicing. Basically, it’s more scrimmaging with defensive players swarming to the ball carrier with live hitting just short of tackling.
Allen estimated KU had been able to run more plays because of the strategy.
“We’re getting better,” Allen said. “I think we probably had our best practice of the spring today, on both sides of the ball. I thought we really ran around and were sharp. We were way ahead on a number of plays as far as the different segments out there. We’re getting better offensively.”
Something else the Jayhawks have been working on is moving the pocket and utilizing an option attack, thanks to an abundance of mobile QBs in Dyer and red-shirt freshmen Mario Kinsey and Kevin Long.
“We’re really not throwing in too many twists right now,” Dyer said. “We’re only halfway through spring ball, so it’s not like we have our full offense in yet. Pretty much up to this point it’s our basics with a few other things we want to run quite a bit. But also spring ball is a little more experimentation time.”
KU also has been running a ton of plays using four wide receivers.
“We’d like to be able to do that a little bit more,” Allen said. “If you look at our personnel, it’s a natural for us.”
When Allen first came to KU, he was billed as an offensive-oriented, air-it-out coach. KU has been anything but in recent years.
That could change this season with Allen returning to the offensive coordinator’s post and KU returning three starters at wideout.
“If this isn’t the year, then I don’t know when it is,” Hill said, “because we have the best receivers, I feel, in the Big 12 and the most experienced receivers. That’s our No. 1 position on our team, so if this isn’t the year I don’t know when the year would ever be.”
