Georgia Southern and The Citadel share a lot of similarities in how they run their triple-option sets out of the shotgun. The Statesboro Herald takes a look at the evolution of the offense as the two schools get set to meet Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.
Current Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson installed the offense while he was leading GSU to two national championships in the late '90s and early 2000s, even if the shotgun wasn't a part of the arsenal yet. Current Citadel offensive coordinator Bob Bodine and GSU offensive coordinator Brent Davis coached together under Johnson and again with each other at VMI, where they started to use the shotgun in the triple option.
They credit watching Wofford rack up the wins with the shotgun for adding it to their playbooks:
"For us? Frankly, it was watching Wofford give everybody in our conference fits," said GSU head coach Jeff Monken, who was formerly Johnson’s assistant at GSU, Navy and Georgia Tech. "When they started out, they were running the option just like we did. They have added a lot of shotgun stuff and been very successful doing it, and we could just see the problems people were having, so we added formations."
Georgia State topped The Citadel 14-12 last season.
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