A college or university gets very few opportunities to change the course of their football program. Selecting a new head coach is one of those times. If a new head coach can build a brand that will…
1) Recruit great players
2) Raise money for facility updates
then the turnaround of a program can begin.
Kansas needs a turnaround. Since 2021 they have never had more than three wins in a season.
Kansas is at this critical moment with its football program and trying to select a new coach. We have seen the many names being tossed around as finalists for this position. But there is one person that could make a real change in Kansas and that person is Coach Monken from Army. Here are four reasons why.
Reason #1: Coach Monken has shown he is a winner, who can turn-around a program.
This is the most important reason to choose a coach among all others. Just like the situation Kansas is in, he took over an Army program in 2014 that had only won a maximum of three wins over the previous three seasons. As with any coach it takes a couple of years to get the recruits in that fit your system, and after seasons with 4 and 2 wins Army had a break-out season in 2016 with 8 wins and a bowl win. This shows he can turn-around a program. Since that 2016 season, his team has stayed strong with seasons of 10, 11, 5 and 9 wins with three more bowl appearances and two wins. Coach Monken is a proven winner and program rebuilder.
Reason #2: Coach Monken can leverage the strong option community with the Kansas High Schools.
As part of this rebuilding, recruiting is king. You simply cannot win consistently without great recruiting. The phrase that “It is about the Jimmies and the Joes, not the Xs and Os”, is such a reality in football. An important subset of recruiting is that you have to win the recruiting battles in your own back yard. I could see Coach Monken being able to come in and to engage with local high school option coaches in Kansas. The students and coaches in Kansas already know about the success of the Flexbone from seeing their local NAIA Bethel Threshers in North Newton Kansas having some great seasons. I know that the Minnesota Gopher coach PJ Fleck was just speaking to the Minnesota High School coaches last week because college coaches know that the high school coaches influence the decisions of the best athletes that come out of a given state. Coach Monken can win the local recruiting game as he already has a head start in Kansas with the already existing option community!
Coach Monken will also have the inside path to any national recruit that would fit into his Flexbone option offense. The Flexbone offense requires special athletes that do not necessarily fit into the pass first offenses of most colleges today. Here are some examples…
- The B Back (Fullbacks) that thrive in the Flexbone do not have a focal presence in these pass first offenses and are looking for a home.
- The quarterback who is extremely fast and shifty but does not necessarily have the best pocket presence would choose to look at a place like Kansas under Coach Monken. There are quarterbacks who love to use their feet and this offense allows them to do that first, instead of only doing it when scrambling to create a play.
- The lineman who thrive in the triple option offense are not the same lineman who thrive in the drop-back and inside zone type offenses. They need better feet so they can quickly block and cut at the second and third levels. Coach Monken at Kansas who have his pick of the litter across the country for this type of lineman. Why would a lineman want to come to Kansas? Ask a high school offensive lineman if he would like to fire of the ball and attack the defense instead of backing up and reacting to oncoming blitzes all game. Option football is a fun mentality for lineman.
Reason #3: The Flexbone option that Coach Monken would bring to Kansas is built to attack the weaknesses of the defenses and the offenses of the Big 12.
The defenses of the Big 12 are built to stop the ‘pass first’ offenses that dominate the conference. The players on defense are getting smaller and quicker every year with safeties moving to linebacker and linebackers playing on the line. This leaves less space on the roster for the type of physical and thick run stoppers needed to stop the option attack. Even today when we watch the teams like Army and Navy get into goal line or 3rd/4th and short situations the defensive lineman across from them do not have much of a chance to stop the offensive line and big fullback from imposing their will. Think of what an offensive line could do at Kansas with the recruiting power of a Power 5 school!
This concept extends into the secondary also. The corners and safeties being recruited into the Big 12 are not being recruited to be the most physical tacklers who attack the ball downhill. These corners who were recruited to be extremely quick to cover a quick wide receiver would most likely have a big, physical blocker in front of them from Coach Monken who will probably win the blocking battle that will occur for most of the game.
Why would I mention Coach Monken’s offense attacking the ‘Offenses’ in this Reason #3? That is because the Kansas defense under Coach Monken would spend much less time on the field. They would have fewer plays to defend against these up-tempo offenses. They would be more rested when the fourth quarter came around. They would see the opposing offenses get frustrated and start to press when they have not been on the field for many minutes after a long Kansas offensive drive.
The surest way to stay in the game and to give yourself a chance to win is to shorter the game. Once Kansas because a dominant team again, they can then choose to lengthen the game by hurrying up their offense.
Reason #4: Coach Monken would bring a Flexbone offense that adapts to the times and his personnel.
There was a time when the Flexbone offense would consist of about five plays: 1) Zone Dive 2) Triple Option 3) Midline 4) Rocket Toss 5) Counters. This might also be as far as you can get in some high school programs and that is just fine, because there is plenty there already.
But that day no longer exists in college football and to call the Flexbone an offense of 4 yards and a ‘cloud of dust’ does not understand the ‘Flex’ibility of this offense. That phrase refers a time of Tight T / Full back wedge / C gap power plays / Double Tight End offenses that do not put up the proper amount of yards and explosive plays to compete at the college level. That phrase does not apply to the teams like Army and Navy who routinely play toe to toe with college powerhouses like Oklahoma, Michigan and Notre Dame.
Sure Army runs those 5 base plays that I outlined above, but they run so much more than that. Give Coach Monken credit for that adaptation over time! They run trap, trap option, multiple counters, belly, belly option, Midline Double, Midline Triple and QB double option just to name a FEW.
They have tons of different play actions off of these various plays that will strike for explosive plays when the defense is overcommitting to defend the run. The most effective pass play in all levels of football is the play-action, and there is no offense more explosive at play-action than the one that Coach Monken runs.
They have formations that are going to make the defense be on their toes every time they come to the line with TEs, no TEs, Unbalanced Lines and Wide Receivers lining up who are covered. There is a reason why defenses that play a Flexbone / Triple Option team start preparing for them in Spring Ball because there is so much to rep against.
Finally, Coach Monken is going to be able to do even more in this offense with the type of players he will be able to recruit. Once he gets those recruits in the door, he is also going to get more time with these players as he will not have the time limitations that he has had to adhere to at Army. With this extra time with his players, he is going to be able to extend this offense even further while keeping it simple for his team. All of this will lead to more speed and explosiveness at all positions to break what are already good plays into explosive plays.
With this offense Coach Monken is going to be able to control what defenses do, and then take advantage of those defensive adjustments, as there are always advantages depending on the defense. To illustrate, let me give you one simple example of how a Flexbone team can completely control a defensive secondary to setup an explosive play.
If you have watched the Army/Navy games over the past years you almost always see a 5×2 defense with a nose and two safeties. It is a balanced defense against a balanced offense. You can play the secondary in multiple ways but a typical way is to play man and that can allow your safeties to be very aggressive in the run game since they are covering the slot/A backs anyway. But this defensive structure will always give your wide receivers a 1 on 1 with no deep help that other offenses just cannot typically force upon a defense. Let’s draw this up for you.
The black lines are the offensive routes and the blue lines are where the defenders will go. The safeties have the A/Slot backs in man to man so they will be running to the flat. The corner to the left can be occupied by any number of routes, but here I drew up a simple flat/curl concept as a 2nd read in case the deep route is covered. But the first look in this play is the wide receiver to the right running a Post/Flag choice route against that corner with the whole field to work with. You can almost never force this type of 1 on 1 coverage against a defender who has to cover the whole field, but with how the Flexbone forces a secondary to become such strong run supporters, this is where big play action plays start to show up!
In conclusion, Coach Monken has the history of being a winner in so many ways and would be a great hire. He has rebuilt programs and would know exactly what to do upon arriving at Kansas. He will bring an offense to the Big 12 that the defenses in that conference are not built to stop, and that same offense will slow down and frustrate the opposing offenses. If the Kansas administration will give him a chance they will not be disappointed.
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