Cincinnati Football: Darin Hinshaw Calls UC Offense “Not Very Good” Prior To His And Eddie Gran’s Arrival

Former Cincinnati Bearcats offensive coordinator Eddie Gran and quarterbacks coach Darin Hinshaw are starting to get their accustomed to their new gigs in Kentucky but took little time making some pretty wild statements about their former school.

"“We’ve got our roles,” Hinshaw said. “Eddie calls it, I give him all the information. We work it together. We gameplan together, we’ve done it and we won at Cincinnati at a place that statistically was not very good on offense either. They hadn’t scored a tremendous amount of points. Their passing yardage I believe was 90th in the country. We immediately changed that and slowly made it go up and up and up in the passing and in the running, then turned around total offense.”"

I have the utmost respect for Darin Hinshaw but what in the Sam Hill is he talking about? Now, it’s understandable that he wouldn’t know UC’s exact stats off the top of his head while fielding questions from the media but was he in a coma when Brian Kelly and Butch Jones were here?

It’s not like like Gran and Hinshaw came in and magically turned UConn into Baylor. There was already a very well established culture of high flying offenses when they were hired three years ago. The Bearcats have consistently found themselves in the top 50 in total and scoring offense since 2008. The same goes for their rushing and passing attacks, with them only dropping out of the top 50 when a different offensive mindset came to down, like Jones’ emphasis on the ground game in 2011 and 2012.

Cincinnati did boast the most total and passing yards in the last seven years under their watchful eye. But the Bearcats’ best rushing attack in recent history came in 2012, Butch Jones’ last year. You know, when the coaches knew how to leverage their best asset at running back to carry them to victory. Additionally, UC’s best scoring offense came in 2009, Brian Kelly’s last ride. Oh, and during those seasons UC won more than seven games.

Plus, keep in mind that Kelly and Jones were putting up comparable numbers against the likes of West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Rutgers, and Syracuse. If they were facing a SMU or Tulsa caliber defense on a weekly basis, you’d bet they’d blow Gran and Hinshaw out of the water.

There was also an uptick in production in the passing game and total offensive yardage from the Jones to the Tuberville staff. But another main reason why Cincinnati didn’t put up video game like numbers under the prior regime was because they didn’t need to. Under Jones, the Bearcats ranked 14th, 20th, and 68th (the 2010 season) in points allowed per game. Hence the emphasis on the ground game, never needing to constantly air it out.

Conversely, since Tuberville arrived, the Bearcats rarely cracked the top three-quarters of team rankings in total defense and routinely engaged in shootouts to win games.

Finally, if they were such savants offensively, why didn’t Cincinnati put up more points? If the Bearcats ranked in the top 25 in the country in yardage, you’d think they’d have a top 25 scoring offense as well. Not so. UC never finished higher than 31st in this category, the only year where they boasted a positive turnover margin.

The bottom line is that Eddie Gran and Darin Hinshaw were above average coaches who basically ensured Cincinnati didn’t fall off a cliff offensively. No matter how much they talk up their accolades to their current employers and fans, they weren’t God’s gift to UC’s offense? That’d be Brian Kelly, folks. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different.