Houston Football: Will Dana Holgorsen make Year 2 leap?

Will experience across the board help Houston offense?

It wasn’t as though Houston completely tanked offensively in 2019 under Dana Holgorsen and offensive co-coordinators Marquel Blackwell and Brandon Jones.

While the Cougars gained fewer than 400 yards per game, they still put an average of nearly 31 points per game on the scoreboard. That they did so even with all of the turmoil surrounding the program is a testament to the work done by Holgorsen and his staff.

Even so, something had to give. Blackwell has been demoted to running backs coach, the position he held under Holgorsen at West Virginia, and Shannon Dawson has been elevated to co-coordinator status with Jones. Fundamentally, the offense needs a veteran offensive line returning four of its five starters to get better at protecting the quarterback after ranking 114th in the FBS in sacks allowed in 2019.

The team benefits from the return of pretty much its entire receiving corps from 2019, along with running backs Kyle Porter and Mulbah Car. There is no shortage of talent for Holgorsen and his offensive staff to work with this season in Houston.

Focusing on quarterback Clayton Tune

The critical cog in the machinery of the Houston offense is undoubtedly Clayton Tune, the quarterback who took over the starting role when D’Eriq King opted to sit out the rest of the season in mid-September. Starting seven games as a sophomore, Tune completed nearly 60 percent of his passes and threw for more than 1,500 yards.

The biggest issue was turnovers — Tune threw nine interceptions on 179 passing attempts, averaging a pickoff more than twice as frequently as King’s interception rate from the first four games of the year. Even with the need to make smarter decisions, Tune still proved more efficient overall in Holgorsen’s system, connecting on 6.5 percent more of his passing attempts than King in a year where the veteran’s numbers plummeted under the new coach.

Tune is not nearly as physically gifted as his predecessor under center for the Cougars, but the new Houston starter better fits what Holgorsen wants from his quarterbacks. If he can improve his completion rate by three to five percent and cut his interception rate in half, Tune could quickly evolve into one of the most statistically dominant passers in the AAC under this staff.