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by Bill Connelly
Herman was Paul Rhoades' coordinator, attempting to figure out how an outmanned offense could move. Six years later, following an apprenticeship with the Urban Meyer machine at Ohio State, he is preparing for his first season as a head coach.
Week-to-week preparation was mostly the same in Ames and Columbus, but "you didn't have to worry about personnel matchups near as much at Ohio State.
"I think the situation dictates, but when you have a talent discrepancy, you know you're probably not going to drive the field on 10-play drives. You know you're going to have to manufacture big plays."
In Lincoln, his offense scored its lone touchdown on a 47-yard pass from Tiller to Jake Williams. The connection created 46 percent of ISU's passing yards.
Herman's rise from Cal Lutheran receiver to head coach was nothing if not organic: tiny school graduate assistant, big-school G.A., small-school position coach. Small-school offensive coordinator, mid-major O.C., power-conference O.C., power-power O.C. Following his graduation cum laude from CLU, he looked nearby.
"I wanted to be a Division I G.A., but I didn't know anybody. I was a Division III kid whose dad wasn't a coach."
His opportunity took him 1,400 miles southeast, from Thousand Oaks to Seguin, Texas. CLU defensive coordinator Bryan Marmion became Texas Lutheran's head coach and offered to bring him along.
"They hadn't had football there in 12 years. He offered me $5,000 and a cafeteria card for one meal a day, so I packed up my Honda Civic and went, sight unseen."
After a year, Herman landed a bigger gig while getting a master's degree in education.
"I learned football from [then-offensive coordinator] Greg Davis at the University of Texas," he says. "That was back in the I-formation days, and they were handing the ball to Ricky Williams 35 times a game in iso and power. That's what I believed in."
After two years, Herman landed his first full-time gig at age 26: receivers and special teams coach at Sam Houston State. Ron Randleman, while ending a nearly 25-year stretch as SHSU's head coach, introduced a variable into Herman's belief system.
"There, I had some experience with a shotgun spread offense."
That changed everything.
"You've gotta run the football. Have to, have to, have to. We're just going to do it from the shotgun, from spread formations. We're basically a two-back run team that just happens to run from the shotgun. We gain an extra advantage with the QB."
Herman spent four years at SHSU, with his stay punctuated by an 11-3 season and a trip to the I-AA semifinals. Those Bearkats were pass-heavy -- they averaged over 350 yards through the air -- but Herman was meshing his Ricky Williams beliefs with a shotgun scheme.
In 2005, Texas State head coach David Bailiff brought Herman to San Marcos as coordinator. He found his quarterback template in Houston transfer Barrick Nealy, who threw for 2,875 yards and rushed for 1,057, manufacturing 34 touchdowns and leading the Bobcats to a I-AA semifinal.
"Once we got to TSU, and I inherited Nealy in 2005, we jumped all in with the shotgun spread."
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Herman spent three seasons at Iowa State before Meyer put a new band together. One of the best identifiers of talent in the country, the two-time national title-winner liked what he saw in the ISU coordinator.
Meyer had long been enamored with a power-spread approach, employing dual-threat quarterbacks from Bowling Green (Josh Harris) to Utah (Alex Smith) to Florida (Tim Tebow). Herman was smart and charismatic, and Meyer took him under his significant wing.
"We got surprised a lot at Ohio State. I don't know if it's because we were really good and people felt like they had to do something different. At Iowa State, not a lot. What you saw on film is what you got."
Herman's play-calling came together throughout his stops, brick by brick. As other coaches will tell you, he believes Saturday comes down to who, not what.
"I think if you're down, or if you're in a tight game, a lot of it is what players need to touch the ball and how we get it to them. You think about players and not plays."
Football isn't Tecmo Bowl, where there's a perfect defensive call for whatever the offense runs. Herman's offense intends to have built-in answers for whatever the defense tries.
"Offensive coaches will sometimes say, 'They had a better call than you,'" something Penn State defensive coordinator Bob Shoop tries to exploit. "We don't subscribe to that. Every call we make has answers built in. Some are better than others, but we've got answers. We never go into a game, draw a play, or run any play that we're crossing our fingers about, hoping the defense doesn't make this other call. "You're going to be prepared for most of what the opponent does. And the opponent only impacts so much of the game plan anyway.
"You're going to do what you do, if you're any good. You're not going to invent stuff.
"Monday is a time to say, 'Okay, who are they? What is their personality? What do they believe in? Big blitz team? Cover-4? Man to man?'"
And then they dial in.
"When they play base defense in this formation, we like plays X, Y, and Z.' We'll all agree on that. 'Now, are X, Y, and Z still good if they blitz? And if no, then what is our answer? Are we gonna throw a bubble screen? What happens if they're not in their base defense? Check out of it? Run it? Throw hot?' Et cetera."
The biggest change since becoming a head coach is that he's not just in charge of the offense. He's had to determine what a Herman defense should be.
"I want great teachers [on defense]. We've got to be great tacklers. I wanted a very sound base defense. I wanted to base out of a 3-4, because I knew it was always a big challenge for me game-planning against teams that were really good out of that. But I wanted to have a guy who knew how to pressure people and knew the strengths and weaknesses of different blitzes. I've gotta tell you, I think I hit a home run in getting Todd Orlando."
A former coordinator at UConn and FIU, Orlando spent the last two seasons maintaining one of the nation's best mid-major defenses -- probably the best mid-major 3-4 -- at Utah State. An Ohio State Lite offense merged with a Utah State-style defense can win games at TDECU Stadium.
When Meyer announced his hire of Herman in 2012, he said, "I wanted to have a guy that’s going to not have an ego, has a good understanding of our offense and be extremely intelligent to learn what we do and adapt it to what he does."
"I had never met Urban before he hired me," says Herman, "but he's the strongest influence I've had. Just the last three years, the things we were able to accomplish there. From a game-planning standpoint, I didn't change much, but from Urban I learned how to be a head coach.
"I've had an unbelievable string of luck. Greg Davis, Ron Randleman, David Bailiff, Paul Rhoades, Urban Meyer. I would be remiss if I didn't mention all of them as influences."
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