Texas Football: Impact of Scott Linehan-LSU staff hire

The Texas football program will be facing a very tenured offensive coach when they take on the LSU Tigers this fall, after the hire of Scott Linehan.

One of the bigger pieces of news that shook the college football landscape, especially around the Texas football program and the Big 12, was the jump that former Baylor Bears head coach Matt Rhule took to the NFL. Rhule made that elusive jump from the college football coaching ranks to the NFL to take the HC vacancy with the Carolina Panthers.

In effect, Baylor was left without a head coach and they would end up drawing from the LSU Tigers coaching staff to fill that void. Baylor wound up hiring former LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda to fill Rhule’s shoes and become their next head coach.

Another piece of the LSU coaching staff that was lost was the Broyles Award winner as the nation’s top assistant from the 2019 season, passing game coordinator Joe Brady. Rhule took Brady with him to the NFL to become an assistant on the Panthers coaching staff. Brady took his offensive coaching talents back to the NFL, where he once made his name more known under head coach Sean Payton with the New Orleans Saints.

However, since LSU takes on the Texas Longhorns football program early in the 2020 regular season, all of their shifts on the staff under head coach Ed Orgeron are worth following for fans on the Forty Acres. That makes the hiring of former Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator Scott Linehan to fill the shoes of the departed Brady that much more important.

Linehan was out of a job before the Cowboys parted ways with former head coach Jason Garrett. They replaced Garrett with the former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy. LSU took advantage of the Cowboys parting ways with Garrett and Linehan, to hire one of them to be their next passing game coordinator.

The Cowboys let go of Linehan after the 2018 season. He was without work during the 2019 season, as the Cowboys actually had a rather efficient offense with quarterback Dak Prescott and star running back Ezekiel Elliot behind center.

On eight different occasions, Linehand was either the offensive coordinator or head coach of an offense that ranked among the top 11 teams in the NFL in yardage differential. He also had offenses that ranked in the top six in total yards in the NFL on eight occasions. Seven times Linehan had a top nine passing offense in the NFL in terms of yardage. And three different times he had a top five passing offense in terms of net yards per attempt.

The last work of art that Linehan produced in college was a top 15 scoring offense back in 2000 as the offensive coordinator with the Louisville Cardinals. He was the offensive coordinator with the Louisville program from 1999-2001. Prior to that, he held various assistant coaching positions in college football with the Washington Huskies, UNLV Rebels, and his alma mater Idaho Vandals.

Texas didn’t have any past ties in the college football realm to Linehan. But that will all change when the two teams meet at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge on Sep. 12. Linehan will bring his balanced and complex offensive scheme to Baton Rouge. His play calling usually emphasizes getting the ball to his top skill position playmakers very frequently, so watch out for a very heavy dose of Ja’Marr Chase and Terrace Marshall this fall against Texas.