The UNLV football team hired former Arkansas DC Barry Odom as their new head coach, setting up a pivotal hire on the offensive side of the ball. The most important hire is always the offensive coordinator when your head coach and your background is defense. Enter, Bobby Petrino.
“Barry Odom is a talented coach who has always been highly respected and I really look forward to working with him at UNLV,” Petrino said in a news release. “I’m excited to be part of the new direction of the Rebels and compete for championships. We had a great three years at Missouri State but I thought this was the time in my career to step away from the head role and get back into a coordinator position to focus on moving the ball and scoring points and helping win games in Las Vegas.”
Petrino served as the head coach for the past three seasons at Missouri State in the MVCF. While there, Petrino helped lead Missouri State to two FCS playoff appearances. He went 36-26 in five seasons at Louisville from 2014-2018, most notably developing Lamar Jackson into a Heisman-winning quarterback in 2016, but was fired after a 2-8 start to the 2018 campaign.
Prior to joining Lousiville, Petrino was the head coach at Arkansas and compiled a 34-17 record with two major bowl appearances. Petrino crashed his motorcycle just outside of the city on April 1. Petrino initially lied to the school about the details of the incident. However, it was later found in the police report that he was with a former Arkansas volleyball player Petrino had just hired as a student-athlete development coordinator for the football team. He admitted to having an extra-marital affair with her and was fired by then-athletic director Jeff Long on April 10th.
The former Arkansas head coach also briefly spent time in the NFL in the 2007 season, going 3-10 with the Atlanta Falcons before leaving the team to take the Arkansas job. Now the coach has a new life as the offensive coordinator with UNLV.
Petrino’s offense is known for piling up points and highlighting the quarterback. Five times Petrino’s offenses finished among the top five in the nation. He’s been equally as successful with traditional drop-back quarterbacks and mobile QBs.
Petrino likes to run the power spread offense, which relies on quick passes, sprint-out passes, play-action, and screens. Depending on your personnel, you can also run in the power-spread offense.
Quarterback Ryan Mallet had an outstanding season at Arkansas under Petrino. In 2009, he passed for 3,624 yards, threw 30 touchdown passes, and had seven interceptions. The following season, Mallet passed for 3,869 yards, 32 touchdowns, and 12 picks before being selected in the 3rd round by the New England Patriots in the NFL Draft.
Then there’s Lamar Jackson, who played for Petrino at Louisville. He won the Heisman Trophy in 2016 when he threw for 3543 yards, 30 touchdowns, and nine interceptions while also rushing for 1,571 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Petrino can work with different types of quarterbacks, which should bode well for the Rebels’ offense. Coach Petrino’s hire has generated a fair amount of buzz around a UNLV football program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2013.
-LaMarr Fields
Twitter: @raiderway83
Photo: RebelAt. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.