Jim Chaney’s offenses from 2013-18

The following was originally published in the 2019 edition of our Gameday on Rocky Top preseason college football magazine.

When last we left Jim Chaney in 2012, his offense was flirting with Tennessee’s record book. The Vols scored at least 35 points and gained at least 450 yards eight times in a dozen games. But they also allowed at least 35 points and 450 yards six times, leading to a 5-7 campaign and the end for Derek Dooley’s staff.

Chaney would not be out of work long, joining Bret Bielema’s new staff at Arkansas. Over the next six years Chaney’s offenses regularly improved at each of his three stops, eventually becoming some of the best units in America when infused with Georgia’s elite talent. The talent pool isn’t quite as deep in Knoxville [heading into the 2019 season], but there are lessons to learn from each of Chaney’s seasons between his two tours at Neyland Stadium.

2013 Arkansas

Chaney and Bielema inherited one of college football’s biggest cultural shifts in Fayetteville. After Bobby Petrino guided the Razorbacks to an 11-2 finish in 2011, he infamously lost his job in April 2012. John L. Smith served as a one-year interim and went 4-8, then Bielema arrived from Wisconsin. The Razorbacks started 3-0 but then lost their last nine games. Close losses to Rutgers (28-24) and Texas A&M (45-33) in September gave way to the kind of October one often inherits when following a successful coach who was unceremoniously fired: 30-10 at Florida, 52-7 at home to South Carolina, 52-0 at Alabama.

Chaney’s offense made small but significant strides in November. After gaining less than 300 yards in those three October losses, the Razorbacks gained between 339-389 yards in four close losses down the stretch. Arkansas fell to eventual SEC Champion Auburn and Ole Miss, then to Mississippi State by 7 and No. 14 LSU by 4. As is often the case in Year 1, progress didn’t show up in the win column, but things were moving in the right direction.

2014 Arkansas

A mark of a great coach is agile leadership. Two years after Tyler Bray led a passing attack of more than 315 yards per game, Chaney’s 2014 Arkansas squad ran for 218 yards per game. After a loss to No. 6 Auburn and a win over Nicholls State, the Hogs ran wild on Texas Tech. They threw the ball only 12 times and ran it 68 times, and they scored 49 points.

In the middle of the schedule Arkansas courted heartbreak, starting with a 35-28 overtime loss to No. 6 Texas A&M. Against No. 7 Alabama, Brandon Allen passed for 246 yards as the Tide stuffed the run, but three turnovers and a missed extra point doomed them in a 14-13 loss. Against No. 10 Georgia the following week, Arkansas scored 32 points but gave up 45. Two weeks later, No. 1 Mississippi State escaped 17-10 after the Hogs had a 10-0 lead.

The breakthrough came in November with a 17-0 win over LSU, the first conference victory under Bielema. Then No. 8 Ole Miss fell, 30-0. Missouri then became the sixth Top 20 team to beat Arkansas in 2014 in a 21-14 contest. But the Hogs dominated Texas 31-7 in postseason play.

The production from running backs Jonathan Williams and Alex Collins was both impressive and impressively similar. Williams carried it 211 times for 1,190 yards and 12 touchdowns. Collins carried it 204 times for 1,100 yards and 12 touchdowns. And Brandon Allen did his part with 20 touchdown passes to only 5 interceptions. With every loss to a Top 20 foe and meaningful wins over Ole Miss and Texas, Arkansas was clearly moving in the right direction.

2015 Pittsburgh

But with Pat Narduzzi in at Pitt, Chaney made the move to the ACC. The Panthers were 6-7 the year before, and Chaney helped bring in Nathan Peterman as a graduate transfer after Josh Dobbs solidified his role as the starter at Tennessee in the second half of 2014. Peterman’s start against Florida in 2013 was one of the roughest performances any Tennessee quarterback has ever endured: 4-of-11 for 5 yards and a pair of interceptions, and swiftly replaced by Justin Worley. No one who saw Peterman play at Tennessee believed he would ever make it as a starter in a power conference.

But Peterman came in off the bench against an eventual Rose Bowl-bound Iowa team, and went 20-of-29 for 219 yards with 2 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. The Hawkeyes won 27-24, but Pitt seized momentum. After a bye week, the Panthers won four one-possession games in a row. They then came up short to eventual Top 15 teams from North Carolina and Notre Dame, but rolled past Duke and Louisville with 400+ yards in both games.
Peterman finished the year completing 61.5% of his passes at 7.3 yards per attempt. He followed that up with 9.3 yards per attempt in 2016, leading to an NFL opportunity.

2016 Georgia

On the move again, Chaney joined Kirby Smart’s initial staff in Athens. Working with true freshman Jacob Eason at quarterback, the Dawgs stormed out of the gates, earning a 33-24 win over No. 22 North Carolina with 474 yards and 6.58 yards per play. Two weeks later they escaped at Missouri 28-27 with 409 yards of offense.

The Dawgs fell hard to Ole Miss 45-14, then had plenty of opportunities to beat Tennessee, as you might recall, before Josh Dobbs and Jauan Jennings ruined all that fun. At South Carolina the following week, Chaney went back to the Arkansas playbook. While Eason went 5-of-17 for 29 yards, the Dawgs ran the ball 50 times for 326 yards in a 28-14 win.

The Bulldogs then racked up the passing yards but lost a game to Vanderbilt and got completely shut down by Florida in Jacksonville. But as was the case in the first year at Arkansas (and his first play-calling year at Tennessee in 2010), things quickly improved in November. Georgia ran for 215 yards and passed for 245 in a win over Kentucky, then beat Auburn 13-7. The Dawgs put up 402 yards but fell to Georgia Tech 28-27 in the regular season finale, but bounced back to beat TCU 31-23 in the Liberty Bowl.
Eason finished his freshman campaign completing 55.1% of his passes with a 16-to-8 touchdown/interception ratio. Nick Chubb ran for 1,130 yards and Sony Michel added 830. All these pieces would return in 2017, plus a big addition at quarterback.

2017 Georgia

Eason was injured in the first game of 2017, a 31-10 victory over Appalachian State. Enter Jake Fromm, another freshman in the Athens spotlight. But thanks to Chubb and Michel, Fromm only needed to manage the game well. And that he did. After a gritty win at Notre Dame, Georgia’s offense was unleashed on the SEC.

Against Mississippi State, the Dawgs ran for 203 yards while Fromm went deep: 9-of-12 for 201 yards in a 31-3 Georgia win. The following week they signaled the beginning of the end for Butch Jones, gashing the Vols for 294 yards on the ground in a 41-0 blowout. It got even better at Vanderbilt, with 423 rushing yards plus 126 through the air. And they were just getting warmed up.

Against Missouri, they had 370 yards on the ground, 326 through the air, and 9.04 yards per play in a 53-28 win. Then, in the Cocktail Party, they were equally impressive in a different way. Fromm needed only seven passes to collect 101 yards and Michel only six carries to get 137 on the ground. The Dawgs put a ridiculous 9.36 yards per play on Florida’s defense in a 42-7 win.

The Dawgs made the playoff by avenging an earlier loss to Auburn, and the semifinal game against Oklahoma was one for the ages. Sony Michel ran 11 times for 181 yards, Nick Chubb 14 for 145. And Fromm was sharp, going 20-of-29 for 210 yards and a pair of touchdowns, and the Bulldogs won in double overtime to get to the title game.

They would find overtime again versus Alabama and Jeremy Pruitt, but also the other side of heartbreak, as the Tide famously switched to Tua Tagovailoa at quarterback and won it on a walk-off touchdown in the extra period. But the 4.74 yards per play Chaney’s offense put on Pruitt’s defense were the second-most any SEC team gained on Alabama that year. The Dawgs gained at least 6.5 yards per play in nine other games. Nick Chubb finished the year with 1,345 yards and 15 touchdowns, Sony Michel with 1,227 yards and 16 touchdowns.

2018 Georgia

No Chubb and Michel, no problem: D’Andre Swift and Elijah Holyfield filled in quite nicely. The Dawgs ripped off at least 40 points and at least 445 yards in each of their first four games. LSU picked up a big win in Baton Rouge, but Georgia beat Florida 36-17 and Kentucky 34-17 to wrap up the SEC East, then put 516 yards on Auburn in a 27-10 win. Against UMass, Georgia picked up 701 yards at 11.3 yards per play. In the rematch with Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, Fromm was spectacular – 25-of-39 for 301 yards and three touchdowns – while the Dawgs ran for another 153 yards.
It was another sensational year for the offense: Fromm completed 67.3% of his passes at 9.0 yards per attempt along with 30 touchdowns to just 6 interceptions. And the Swift/Holyfield combo joined Williams and Collins from Arkansas and Chubb and Michel the season before as thousand-yard rushers.