Iowa Wesleyan Making Strides as Air Raid Offense Returns for First Time in Over 30 Years
There's a banner that hangs outside of the Iowa Wesleyan football locker room with Mike Leach and Hal Mumme at the forefront of it that reads "Birthplace of the Air Raid Offense."
It's symbolic of what was built here and what many are hoping will thrive here again.
Roger Kerfoot, now a sports management professor at Iowa Wesleyan, was a defensive back at Eureka College in Illinois back in 1990 shortly after the Air Raid first came into existence.
"We were watching film one Sunday night on (Iowa) Wesleyan, and my coach told us that they throw it all over the place," Kerfoot said. "When you're playing defensive back, that sounds like good news. You want teams to throw so you can get more action, and back in that time period, teams ran the ball more so we were excited to go up against a team that threw it. I remember watching the film though and thinking about how it was something we hadn't seen. A lot of crossing routes, a lot of stuff with the quarterback back in the shotgun."
We thought we had a pretty good shot just going into the game. The trouble on gameday was the no-huddle that they ran... the concepts were just unlike anything we had ever gone up against."
Kerfoot and his Eureka team lost that game 33-28.
"At the time, we didn't know the impact that style of ball was going to have on college and pro football... the crossing routes, the really wide offensive line splits, you look at it and you think that you can get stunts and blitzes through those."
"You couldn't."
Leach and Mumme revolutionized the game of football at this small campus that is the oldest coeducational college west of the Mississippi River, making IWU a program that garnered national attention before they departed from the program after the 1991 season.
Now, the Air Raid has returned to IWU for the first time in roughly 30 years, and former players who once saw the field under Mumme have become the play-callers themselves.
MD Daniels and Kiefer Price, who serve as the head coach and the offensive coordinator, respectively, say they feel a sense of pressure to bring IWU back to what it once was, but Price calls it a "good sense of pressure."
Price has a bookshelf in his office that holds a number of Air Raid books, including "The Perfect Pass" by SC Gwynne and "Swing Your Sword" by Mike Leach.
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"I feel really honored to be able to do it," Price said. "I feel like I have a huge responsibility to bring this place back to where Hal got it -- that's the most success Iowa Wesleyan has ever had, is with Hal and Mike. This is where the Air Raid started and where it came to national prominence."
Price says he has a lot of trust in the recruiters on staff at IWU, and has already seen an improvement in talent in the short time he and the other coaches around him have been there. The offense was dismal when they got there -- Price says the team before him had averaged about six points per game and had hardly any passing yards per game. It's kind of odd to think about -- an offense that is as stagnant as stagnant gets in the place where one of the most high-power offensive schemes was born.
IWU had a limited season last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit shortly after Price, Daniels and the rest of the staff arrived. But even in that small period of time, a step forward was taken.
The Tigers averaged roughly 24 points per game with multiple games with over 300 passing yards. The program is still working through some growing pains as a very young team that's had to switch to an entirely new scheme, but you get the sense that things are on their way to clicking, and IWU is averaging about 20 points per game this year.
Outside of the numbers, another thing that has improved is the buy-in rate.
"You see a steady rise," Price said. "It takes people to be fully committed to the Air Raid for it to work. You know, you can't be half in -- it won't work that way. But, yeah, I would say the things I'm most proud of is just a general improvement of the offense and the excitement of the guys."
It didn't take long for there to be a sense of positive energy and a spark of hope when the new staff arrived. In its first game of the 2020 season, IWU scored on its first drive.
"You know, we're up at halftime and the guys are like, coach, I can't remember the last time we scored on our first drive" Price said. "Offensively we felt like we had a chance, you know. So to be able to give these players hope, like, OK, this is the answer. The Air Raid is the answer to eventually get us where we want to be offensively."
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Another thing that's gotten players excited about the scheme is just how much everyone plays an essential role.
The Air Raid produces running backs with a high rate of versatility that are prepared to play an all-purpose role that is in high demand at the NFL level, every receiver gets a chance to touch the ball and quarterbacks get a chance to show off their passing ability and grow immensely from both a mental and leadership perspective.
"Who wouldn't want to play in this offense?," Price said. "It's an explosive, spread the ball around scheme. And we always say everybody eats. Everybody gets it on game day. It's not one or two guys that are the man."
IWU wide receivers coach Jake Sears describes the Air Raid as a "stress free scheme" that's simplicity and effectiveness pays dividends for both the players and the coaches.
"There's a lot of opportunity here," Sears said. "Receivers can come in and compete from Day 1. We rotate a lot and we're going to play eight receivers as opposed to most schools that play three or four. Looking at the scheme, the stats speak for themselves -- we complete more passes than anybody else in the NAIA, which is something a receiver obviously likes to hear."
The primary goal of IWU is to build a brand and help players become successful in a scheme set up perfectly to do just that.
"We want to get our brand out there as much as possible," Daniels said. "A lot of people know about the Air Raid, but they don't know about Mt. Pleasant. So when you start putting together the connections to people like Mike Leach to Dana Holgerson building, start telling guys those names, they start making the connection. They see that this is where it all started. A lot of people want the opportunity to play in this style of offense."
Daniels describes the team's recent recruiting efforts as "through the roof," and it's easy to see why this is a place a player would want to take his career to the next level at.
"We're building our culture," Daniels said. "The thing I sell more than anything is who I am as a person and that I absolutely believe in our players. And anybody on this campus will tell you that 'MD, he's a player's coach' because I am for the players. I will give them the shirt off my back if that's all I had. And the players respect that and they play even harder."
