ASU football’s Billy Napier honors late father with new offensive wrinkle

Sparky. Patriot. Ram.

With each week, first-year Arizona State offensive coordinator Billy Napier is finding new nuggets – and inspiration – to throw into the Sun Devil playbook.

There’s the “Sparky” formation, introduced into ASU’s playbook under former offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey last season and continued this season with Napier tweaking it to his liking, which mimics the “Wildcat” direct snap formation employed by a myriad of successful offenses in recent football history and popularized by Tony Sparano’s Miami Dolphins in 2008. ASU’s 13-7 upset win over No. 5 Washington saw the introduction of the “Patriot” formation, which saw offset tight ends blocking for a receiver in short-yardage situation and was inspired by an offseason trip with the New England Patriots.

Napier brought out a new formation in Saturday’s 30-10 win over Utah. Well, new to the Sun Devils, that is. The “Ram” formation, as he called it Wednesday, was something years in the making. The formation, which brings six or even seven offensive linemen with a fullback in a jumbo package in short-yardage situations, was something Napier had seen for years and worked on with his father, Bill.

Bill, a longtime high school football coach in Georgia, would put on games with his son to break out formations. Among the pair’s favorites were Tom Osborne’s Nebraska teams, which used the power run of Ahman Green and the athleticism of quarterback Scott Frost to run effectively.

“He’s an old wishbone, old Nebraska-style offense type of deal,” Napier said of his father. “I still remember the days of him with a VHS in the TV recording Nebraska with Scott Frost and all that. It’s his system, and we certainly would talk about that all the time.”

Napier, who lost his father earlier this month at the end of a three-year battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), has tossed a subtle nod to his father and his impact on him as a coach.

“I think probably what I learned from dad would be just how to go about your business, how to be just observant,” Napier said. “Remembering things that he would say to you. When you’re young, when you’re growing up, you make mistakes. I think more probably about character, integrity, how to live life, what type of man that he would want me to be. The football part, that’s its own element.”

Napier put the coaching traits and actual football diagramming into one in this new element of the Sun Devils offense, which used the formation twice – both successfully – in short-yardage situations in Saturday’s victory over Utah. While the offense and run game in particular showed promise against the Utes – Senior running backs Demario Richard and Kalen Ballage ran for 93 and 75 yards, respectively – the “Ram” provided a measure to force the run game into effectiveness.

“We’ve got a lot of guys that have got unique talent,” Napier said. “We’re a little bit short at tight end right now, so using extra offensive linemen in those situations is key. We’re fortunate to have some other [offensive linemen] that are capable of doing a lot of different things.”

The Sun Devils initially broke it out up 9-0 with 11:02 left in the second quarter at their own 31-yard line. Facing a third-and-2, ASU put seven linemen at the line of scrimmage, with a pair of other linemen serving as fullbacks in front of Richard and junior quarterback Manny Wilkins under center. Arizona State ran a simple power run to the right, with Richard needing just one cut to gain five yards and get the first down.

Up 16-3 and facing a third-and-1 with 9:21 left in the third, ASU ran the play again without huddling and this time with Ballage in the backfield. The Sun Devils again ran power right, with Ballage needing one cut to gain two yards and get to the marker as the Utes couldn’t match the pure mass that ASU presented.

The namesake of the “Ram” formation stems from one of Napier’s previous coaching stints. In 2012 – sandwiched between a pair of stops at Alabama – Napier served as the assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach at Colorado State under head coach Jim McElwain. Napier used it there, and Mike Bobo – the current head coach at Colorado State whose father was close with Bill Napier – still runs the formation to this day.

“Obviously my dad and his dad are good friends, and they ran that play at Georgia and you see them run that play at Colorado State,” Napier said. “It’s a good, complementary short-yardage package that we had from the past. It worked out well for us.”

“The key to the drill is adapting to your personnel, really figuring out what your identity could be. Certainly in short-yardage, sometimes you need to put big people out there to be able to do that.”