For the third time in the last four seasons, Duke football will begin its season with a new offensive coordinator, and this time, the change is sure to be fast-paced amid important additions to the NCAA rulebook.
Jonathan Brewer, who previously served as SMU’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in the 2023 season, joins a Duke offense that is nearly unrecognizable from last year.
Regardless of the offense’s volatility, Brewer looks to boost the Blue Devils’ hopes in 2024 with his form of play-calling: the tempo offense. This aggressive style revolves around the play clock. In this offense, plays are often run almost immediately after the clock begins, skipping the huddle and running straight up to the line of scrimmage. Not only does the tempo offense force a quick defensive response, it also disorients and even exhausts opposing defenses.
As SMU’s offensive coordinator last season, he led a unit that ranked eighth nationally in points per game, while Mustang quarterback Preston Stone averaged 15.5 yards per completion. In the 2023 season, SMU averaged 24.4 seconds per play, the 30th-fastest in NCAA Division I football. However, despite the success of his offenses, Brewer has been humble about his pedigree.
“It’s not the ‘Brewer offense,’ it’s the ‘Duke offense,’” he said in an Aug. 5 media availability.
As an expert on tempo, Brewer describes this type of offense as highly effective. He notes how the tempo offense is less focused on individual plays and more concerned with being adaptable to any defensive scheme. Additionally, he describes tempo as a condenser for the offense and complicator for the defense.
“We’re super simplistic in what we do [on offense] and how we train our guys, but we present complicated formations for the defense at a fast rate,” Brewer said in an interview with The Chronicle. “Typically, what that does is simplifies the defense. When you’re playing fast, the defense probably only has about three calls they go to.”
Brewer also emphasized the importance of executing the tempo offense. This much was apparent during Duke’s Blue and White game in the spring, where Brewer’s fast-paced offense earned some success but ultimately couldn’t prevail against the Blue Devils’ defense.
“The trick is getting it going… you have to be really good at getting positive yards on first and second down,” Brewer said. “You have to be good at converting on third down [and] using tempo after that. What [the Duke offense] has to do is make them pay for when they gamble and come after us. We have to be able to execute and take advantage of that.”
Of course, the tempo offense is not impenetrable. Counters exist for the defense, such as exacting a high degree of physicality on run plays. Brewer noted how defenses can recover from tempo by slowly substituting their players onto the field.
“What I’ve seen out of defenses in the last five years of college football is that they’ve done a really good job of eliminating [explosive plays] and keeping everything in front of them,” Brewer said. “Your quarterback has to be able to just take things that are there.”
Brewer discusses the construction of his offense with a “from-the-ground-up” approach, with complex formations masking basic concepts. When his tactics are used successfully, the result mystifies defenses while the offense is no worse for wear.
“We have traditional sets where receivers aren’t presenting something funky or complicated for the defense,” he said. “It’s kind of the base of the offense. It starts there, and from there it goes [to] the world of stacks, bunches, motions … all the weird, complicated things for a defense to have to decipher.”
The use of pre-snap motion to confuse defenses is widely known in the football world; for example, the San Francisco 49ers of the NFL utilized motion in 76.4% of their plays during the 2023 season. It is a simple yet sometimes highly effective system: When receivers run around before the ball is snapped by the center, defensive backs cannot anticipate their routes as easily.
Touching the ‘hot stove’
Brewer coached for SMU at a time where the program saw quality pass-catchers such as Kylen Granson, James Proche and most notably Rashee Rice, who earned a first-team All-AAC nod in 2022 after a 1,300-yard campaign.
At Duke, Brewer’s top wideout will be graduate student Jordan Moore, who Brewer referred to as a “special player” at an Aug. 5 media availability. Moore was perhaps Duke’s best position player during the 2023 season, hauling in 62 catches for 835 yards and eight touchdowns, all team highs. He will look to gain even more production as the Blue Devils and Brewer will push the ball down the field.
“I think the scheme is a lot more simple,” Moore said at ACC Media Day. “It’s easy to come in and learn it so we can play as fast as possible.”
Brewer spoke highly of redshirt sophomore quarterback Maalik Murphy, who was named the Blue Devils’ starting signal-caller Aug. 19. Murphy previously played at Texas under head coach Steve Sarkisian, who, like Brewer, uses pre-snap motion and several basic concepts like the run-pass option to disrupt defenses. While he did not start as a Longhorn, it appears that the Inglewood, Calif., native has earned his starting job through his adaptation to the Blue Devils and Brewer’s offense.
“What I saw at the end of our last scrimmage is a guy that is on his way to mastery of what we do on offense,” Brewer said. “You see him make mistakes, and then he corrects those mistakes. We use the ‘hot stove’ adage in the quarterback room… it’s okay to touch the hot stove, but you got to learn, ‘okay, I’m not going to do that again.’”
Brewer also pointed out the adjustments that Murphy, who played in seven games for Texas in 2023, has undergone since transferring to Duke.
“[Duke has] a different type of offense than he had at Texas, [which involved] play-action, max-protect … we have versions of that, but we also have a little bit of an Air Raid mentality which gives the quarterback a lot of options,” Brewer said. “[Murphy’s] got to be able to progress and read things and get through things fast. What you saw from [Murphy] when he got here this spring is somebody who hadn’t been exposed to that kind of open passing game.”
“I’m thankful to be in an offense that moves this fast and plays at the tempo we do,” Murphy said in an Aug. 21 media availability. “The coach we have calling the plays is going to be special.”
Murphy earned the starting quarterback role over fellow redshirt sophomore Henry Belin IV and sophomore Grayson Loftis, both of whom started in Leonard’s absence last season. Brewer noted that regardless of his own plans, Duke’s offensive gameplan will be constructed around its quarterback.
“We do what our quarterback likes to do,” Brewer said. “When [Murphy] was named the starter, we said that he’s the guy to lead our team and lead our offense that is geared toward him. It would be the same if [Loftis] or [Belin] were in there; everything would gear towards what they do well.”
Alongside Brewer’s new tactics, the game as a whole has received important modifications since last season ended in January. The offseason introduced several new rule changes to college football, one which allows players and coaches to communicate between a headset and a player’s helmet.
“It’s almost a new world,” Brewer said of the rule change. “Instead of just looking at a signal or a play being run in off the sideline or off a wristband, [the quarterback] can hear me and I can have little reminders for him in that world.”
Brewer noted that the rule change would not allow quarterbacks to completely rely on the headset, noting how sideline-to-player communication is shut off with 15 seconds remaining on the play clock.
“All I’m doing is just giving [the quarterback] an idea,” Brewer said. “We program our quarterbacks throughout the week [so that] it’s easy for me to translate. They can see the same thing that I’m seeing [from the box].”
“Games will be helpful, because you can only do so much [against] the things you see every day from your defense,” Murphy said. “It’s a different feeling when you’re playing against an actual opponent … on the game field in Wallace Wade.”
In addition to the new helmet communication rule, college football added automatic two-minute timeouts at the end of each half. Like the former, this rule is an analog of the NFL’s current rule and will present new opportunities for college offenses. Brewer noted how the two-minute warning has added new scenarios for the Duke offense to address.
“Essentially, you could go into the game in the last three minutes [with] four timeouts,” he said. “It’s changed all the end-of-game scenarios we’ve had to practice, not only in the spring and summer, but in the fall too. [We] just mimic these kinds of scenarios coming up, like ‘hey, what would we do in a four-minute drive here?’”
When Duke football begins its season Aug. 30 against Elon, Brewer’s offense will be tasked with turning its practiced schemes into scoring. While the Blue Devils have lost a large chunk of their skilled offensive players, the Duke faithful can hope that the new coordinator’s expertise and pedigree will counteract lost talent. With a big-arm quarterback in Murphy captaining the ship, one thing is for sure — the Brewer offense, Duke offense or whatever people call it will have its fair share of thrills in 2024.
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