After a brief stint with the Southeastern Fire, Jeff Lebby left for a better opportunity at a more established program that was in the midst of a really dynamic and exciting run.
The UCF Knights, shortly after Scott Frost left for the Nebraska Cornhuskers, were being led by Josh Heupel who was seemingly seeking new ways to invigorate his offense and keep folks on their heels.
Enter Jeff Lebby and his system.
This is part of a project of tracking the entirety of Jeff Lebby’s offenses (prior to his stop in Starkville, for now at least). So, here you go. This is just one slice of the project.
UCF had a three-headed monster in its receiving corps
Jeff Lebby’s second job after Baylor united him with one of the more intriguing then-G5 programs around.
Lebby spent 2018 helping UCF as the Knights’ quarterbacks coach. And then, in 2019, he jumped into the offensive coordinator role, which gave him more of a chance to make the offense his own. And while I think it would be fun to dissect what happened in 2018 for UCF, let’s focus on 2019 for this project (which is centered around Lebby’s offenses from his time as an OC and a head coach).
In 2019, the Knights (unsurprisingly) had a really thrilling offense. And they managed to throw the ball around quite a bit. If you’re comparing this offense to what Lebby had at Southeastern, they produced points in radically different ways.
And that’s okay!
UCF threw the ball a lot. And they scored a ton of points. Unlike the Southeastern Fire offense from 2017, UCF had several legitimately terrifying receiving threats. Gabriel Davis led the way with 72 catches for 1241 yards and 12 touchdowns. Generally speaking, it’s pretty good if you’re averaging over 100 yards a game.
2019 UCF Knights stats: Wide receivers
| Player | Rec | Yds | Avg | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gabriel Davis | 72 | 1241 | 17.2 | 12 |
| Tre Nixon | 49 | 830 | 16.9 | 7 |
| Marlon Williams | 51 | 717 | 14.1 | 6 |
| Jacob Harris | 19 | 448 | 23.6 | 1 |
| Ryan O’Keefe | 7 | 74 | 10.6 | 0 |
| Amari Johnson | 2 | 67 | 33.5 | 1 |
| Alex Harris | 4 | 44 | 11.0 | 1 |
| Ke’Von Ahmad | 1 | 15 | 15.0 | 0 |
| Jarrad Baker | 1 | 10 | 10.0 | 0 |
But not too far behind him was Tre Nixon and Marlon Williams, who had 100 combined receptions for 1547 yards and 13 touchdowns. They really did well to compliment what Davis was doing and provided UCF with more than just one option to torch opposing secondaries.
That’s an ideal sort of situation for a receiving corps.
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