Ah, Stranko, now that's a lousy cheese-filled headline for you: Van Halen reference hopelessly dating us, bad play on the team's name...it's all there, ami.
The Sun Devils have taken the component approach to hiring their new offensive coordinator. Figuring they already have the ability to pass the daylights out of the ball, they went and found a guy from one of the run-happiest OCs systems in the NCAA: Roy Wittke, the offensive coordinator quarterbacks coach at Arkansas the last three years, a guy whose team ran some 62% of the time during this time in Fayetteville.
Koetter says he wants new perspective in his offense, and he's got it. Giggling at the thought of the Pac-10 looking for offensive wisdom in the SEC tickles the imagination enough, but Wittke trying to find the next Matt Jones in Arizona and reinstalling the "run right up the middle on 1st and 2nd downs, and let your 6-6, 4.4-running freak of a qb make something up on 3rd down" offense" would be even better.
Dirk, what you need is a 6-6 freak who runs like an angry giraffe. With low Wonderlic scores, too.
We've got no illusions about ASU's offense actually changing significantly--Koetter will still be the grand architect behind one of the top three passing attacks in the nation--but Wittke may raise the run/pass ratio by a few percentage points. What he doesn't need to touch is the passing game: Arkansas was 108th in the nation last year, which matched against ASU's 2005 pass defense would have made for a pretty even game.