When Tim DeRuyter took over the Fresno State football program for the 2012 season, he installed a fast-paced, no-huddle offense.
It turned the Bulldogs into a high-scoring machine, and perfectly fit the talents of quarterback Derek Carr. Over his final two seasons at Fresno State, Carr threw for more than 9,000 yards, had 798 completions and 87 touchdown passes against just 15 interceptions.
DeRuyter couldn’t say enough good things about Carr.
“He’s like a coach on the field,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2013, months before the Oakland Raiders made him their second-round draft pick. “He studies tape unlike any player I’ve ever been around. He just exudes class and character. … He’s just everything you’d want in the leader of your team.”
Now Carr is excited about the prospect of returning to a similar no-huddle offense in 2015 under new Raiders offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave.
Musgrave, the quarterbacks coach for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2014 under head coach Chip Kelly – a proponent of a wide-open, fast-paced attack – has said he will incorporate the no-huddle and other elements of Kelly’s offense into the Raiders scheme.
“My last two years at Fresno State were 100 percent no-huddle, and I love it,” Carr recently told Bill Williamson of ESPN.com. “I’m very comfortable in it. They are building this offense around me, and I’m really excited about it. I lit up when they told me.”
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Carr said the fast pace and the no-huddle will require better conditioning on the offensive side and plenty of reps and practice this offseason and in summer training camp. But he said it’s an approach that can work.
“We want to play fast,” Carr told Williamson. “We want to put pressure on the defense. We want to go 100 miles per hour and cause confusion for the defense. It can be a lot of fun.”
