Texas football makes colossal special assistant hire in Paul Chryst

The last few days have seen a number of different big-time special assistant hires that have surfaced this spring for Texas football and head coach Steve Sarkisian. We already discussed the additions of the longtime college defensive coach Payam Saadat and veteran NFL special teams coach/coordinator Joe DeCamillis to the staff as special assistants to the head coach.

The biggest of the three special assistant to the head coach hires of the offseason to date was reported by Anwar Richardson of Orangebloods in a tweet on the morning of May 28. Richardson tweeted that the former Wisconsin Badgers head coach Paul Chryst will be joining Texas’ staff “as an offensive analyst” ahead of the 2023 season.

Multiple other reports on May 28 confirm that Texas is hiring Chryst to the staff, including CBS Sports.

Chryst will reportedly hold the title of special assistant to the head coach, the same as the aforementioned Saadat and DeCamillis.

Texas football makes another brilliant special assistant hire in Paul Chryst

Chryst will be working with offensive line coach/offensive coordinator Kyle Flood to help with the ground game and blocking schemes. Meanwhile, Saadat will be working with the defense and DeCamillis will be assisting Jeff Banks on special teams.

After spending eight years as Wisconsin’s head coach, Chryst will be helping Texas establish its offensive identity in the trenches. His ground-and-pound style emphasizes setting the tone with big and physical humans along the offensive line for the inside zone run game.

Something that will sound familiar to Texas fans in regard to Chryst’s offensive philosophy is the emphasis on having “big humans” in the trenches to move bodies off the line of scrimmage. That aligns quite well with the philosophy that Flood has in terms of how he likes his personnel to look in the trenches.

Chryst also liked to make use of two-tight end sets and even fullbacks in the backfield to overwhelm opposing defenses. But there were multiple ways that he liked to scheme up and line up different personnel to get the best of opposing defenses up front.

Chryst has consistently churned out 1,000-yard rushers thanks to his back-friendly offensive system

While Chryst did like to utilize the inside zone to set the tone on the ground, he made use of multiple different blocking and run schemes to get the job done.

In the above video that sees Jonathan Taylor run for a big gain against Ohio State in the 2019 Big Ten Championship Game, Wisconsin pulls the center to the left through the B gap to establish a clear lane for the back. This was a well-executed gap-blocking scheme by each of Wisconsin’s three interior offensive linemen.

Of course, having a running back as talented as Taylor helps make that explosive run happen. But it was still impressive to see the size of the running lane that Wisconsin was able to generate with Ohio State actually having the numbers advantage in the box on this play pre-snap.

You can see Taylor in this video above against Iowa taking advantage of a lane on this inside zone run play that shifts the tight end to block inside while also being able to deceive the safety’s eyes with a nice quick move to the left.

And those two plays are just the beginning of the different ways that Chryst was able to effectively utilize different zone and gap-blocking schemes to open up lanes inside for Taylor, as well as other Badger rushers, to find room to run.

Chryst’s track record of producing 1,000-yard rushers at multiple stops over the last few decades of his journey as a college head coach and/or offensive coordinator is pretty impressive.

The first 1,000-yard rusher that Chryst coached up came in the second year of his first Division 1A coordinator job, with the Oregon State Beavers in the late 1990s. Oregon State running back scampered for 1,028 yards and 13 rushing scores as a freshman during the 1998 season.

And after spending roughly a half-decade as a tight ends coach in the NFL with the San Diego Chargers and then with Wisconsin in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Chryst was back to his ways of coaching up 1,000-yard rushers in college as an offensive coordinator. Chryst was hired back to Oregon State to be its offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2003 and 2004.

He coached up the second 1,000-yard rusher during his time as an OC at Oregon State in 2003, with star running back Steven Jackson exploding for more than 1,500 rushing yards and a whopping 19 rushing scores.

Upon his return to Wisconsin in 2005 (as the co-offensive coordinator and tight ends coach), Chryst started a nearly two-decade-long run of helping to produce 1,000-yard rushers in Madison.

Here’s a look at all the 1,000-yard rushers that Chryst coached up at Wisconsin (and at Pitt during his time as the Panthers’ head coach from 2012-2014).

• Brian Calhoun (2005): 1,636 rushing yards, 22 rushing TDs
• P.J. Hill (2006): 1,569 yards, 15 TDs
• P.J. Hill (2007): 1,212 yards, 14 TDs
• P.J. Hill (2008): 1,161 yards, 13 TDs
• John Clay (2009): 1,517 yards, 18 TDs
• John Clay (2010): 1,012 yards, 14 TDs
• James White (2010): 1,052 yards, 14 TDs
• Montee Ball (2011): 1,923 yards, 33 TDs
• Ray Graham (2012): 1,042 yards, 11 TDs
• James Conner (2014): 1,765 yards, 26 TDs
• Corey Clement (2016): 1,375 yards, 15 TDs
• Jonathan Taylor (2017): 1,977 yards, 13 TDs
• Jonathan Taylor (2018): 2,194 yards, 16 TDs
• Jonathan Taylor (2019): 2,003 yards, 21 TDs
• Braelon Allen (2021): 1,268 yards, 12 TDs

It’s also worth noting that Chryst has coached up multiple Heisman finalists and a half-dozen players that finished in the top 10 of the Heisman voting in the last few decades, most of which were running backs.

The point I’m trying to prove here is that it wasn’t just a few talented backs that Chryst happened to coach up that led to him producing so many 1,000-yard rushers since the late 1990s at Oregon State, Pitt, and Wisconsin.

Chryst should be able to bring some of these schemes and blocking stunts to help Texas gameplan on offense for the upcoming season. But he can also have an impact on Texas’ usage and blocking ability of the tight ends and the vision of all these young and talented running backs.

Rushers such as redshirt sophomore Jonathon Brooks, true freshman CJ Baxter Jr., and sophomore Jaydon Blue should also benefit greatly from having some of Chryst’s blocking schemes incorporated into Texas’ offensive playbook.

I can’t help but think that Chryst is almost as big of a hire among the special assistants for the Longhorns as the former TCU head coach Gary Patterson was for Sark last offseason. And the combination of adding Chryst, DeCamillis, and Saadat for each side of the ball means that Sark and the Longhorns are leaving no stone unturned in terms of these special assistant hires this offseason.