Wisconsin Football Hires Phil Longo as Offensive Coordinator
Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell has found his new offensive coordinator. North Carolina's Phil Longo will lead UW's offense next season.
Madison, Wis. - UW Athletic Director Chris McIntosh made the splash hiring of the CFB offseason when he convinced Luke Fickell to leave Cincinnati and become the head coach of the Wisconsin football program.
That hiring left most around Badger nation wondering what kind of offense he planned on running in Madison. On Wednesday afternoon, we may finally have our answer because Bruce Feldman of The Athletic is reporting that coach Fickell made a splash of his own by hiring Phil Longo as UW's next offensive coordinator.
This past season, Wisconsin's offense ranked No. 78 in the country in scoring and No. 91 in total yardage, making a complete and utter overhaul of UW's offense borderline non-negotiable.
Who is Phil Longo?
Phil Longo comes to UW from Chapel Hills after spending the past four seasons as UNC's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under legendary head coach Mack Brown. Before that, he served as the Ole Miss OC for two seasons after finding tremendous success at FCS Sam Houston State.
Unlike former OC Bobby Engram, Longo has a long track record of production and success playcalling at every coaching stop. North Carolina finished top-3 in the ACC in yards per play in each of the past four seasons.
He's also done a terrific job developing quarterbacks at UNC. Longo worked with Sam Howell, who was selected in the fifth round of last season's NFL draft. In 2022, coach Longo played a role in redshirt freshman Drake Maye's breakout season, where he passed for the third-most yards and fifth-most touchdowns in the FBS - vaulting him onto the NFL's radar.
What will he bring to Wisconsin football?
Now, brace yourselves, Wisconsin Badgers traditionalists...because he runs a very different system than we've been accustomed to watching.
Longo, who became enamored with Mike Leach's teachings at a coaching clinic many years ago, is a practitioner of the air-raid offense. Before you spit out your morning coffee - there is a twist.
Yes, it's an air raid offense, but it's combined with a...wait for it...power running game. In the words of UNC head coach Mack Brown, "He's [Longo] taken what they did with the Oklahoma system with Lincoln Riley, and he's combined [it with] the power running game."
Longo's playbook famously consists of 30 or fewer plays, where the offense can run multiple different looks based on the defensive alignment. His offensive goal is to remain simplistic while providing the illusion of complexity.
Another unique component of his system, in my opinion, is that he doesn't ask his quarterbacks to read defenders. Instead, the focus is on the "looks" of the offensive set. It's a progression concept where he wants his signal caller to trust their eyes and focus more on his receivers.
After watching some of coach Longo's youtube videos outlining his offense, I feel comfortable saying we'll see some zone-read, RPOs, spread concepts, and myriad other designed QB runs. He runs each of these different looks from similar formations - making opposing defenses account for every possibility.