Iowa State's goal: Spread out, poke along

You'd think a coach who runs a hurry-up, no-huddle offense wouldn't even have the word “patience” in his vocabulary.

Yet there was Iowa State offensive coordinator Tom Herman, the man who brought the spread to the Cyclones, using that term as he chatted with reporters this week while taking a break from watching tape.

He was asked if Iowa's bend-but-don't-break defensive philosophy, which tries to force opponents to chip away to get down the field, would try his patience when the two teams meet Saturday at ISU's Jack Trice Stadium.

Not really, he said.

“We're a patient offense by nature,” Herman said, a statement that seems at odds with a no-huddle offense.

Then he explained.

“We're very content with four yards. We celebrate it,” Herman said. “We'd love to have a 20-play drive that takes up nine minutes that only goes 60 yards. As long as we've got at least one more point than they do at the end of the day, we're fired up and we've done our job.”

What gets his dander up is sloppiness.

“If we don't execute well and we're not precise in the things we do, and we don't improve from last week, that will be what tries my patience,” he said.

Precise is another big word for Herman, a fresh-faced 34-year-old whose career has taken him from coaching wide receivers in Division III to running an offense in one of the nation's premier conferences.

When an offense sends out four or five wide receivers at a time and requires the quarterback to make quick reads, timing and precision are critical. The Cyclones had it at times in their season-opening, 34-17, victory over North Dakota State last week, not so much at other times.

“I thought we sputtered from time to time,” Herman said. “We've got to improve from last week and eliminate the mistakes we made. We won't be able to get away with some of the things we got away with last week for sure.”

Coach Paul Rhoads' hiring of Herman in January stirred the excitement of the Cyclone faithful once they learned about the big numbers his offense put up at Rice, which won 10 games last season and ranked in the nation's top 10 in passing, scoring and total offense.

Rhoads contacted Herman by phone and upon hanging up told his wife, Vickie, he'd found a keeper.

“This guy's sharp,” he told her. “He's energetic. He gets it. And that was something I was able to glean just from a phone conversation.”

That conversation never would have occurred if Herman, a 1997 graduate of California Lutheran, had followed his practical side instead of his passion. He worked in TV production before accepting, sight unseen, an assistant coaching job at Texas Lutheran in Seguin, a city of 26,000 just east of San Antonio.

Along the way, he became a member of the noted high-IQ society, Mensa, because his mother thought it would look good on his resume. That did not, however, do much for him financially as a coach.

“I packed everything I owned in my Honda Civic, hopped on I-10 and drove to coach Division III wide receivers for $5,000 a year,” he said. “I did get a meal plan with that, so that was a big bonus for me.”

Then came two years as a grad assistant at Texas, where Herman says he really started to learn the game under Greg Davis, the Longhorns' offensive coordinator.

“They were just coming off the Ricky Williams era and still were lining up in two-back,” he said. “I still, to this day, believe that offensive football starts in the I-formation and kind of goes from there.”

His offensive philosophy evolved further under veteran coach Ron Randleman at Sam Houston State and David Bailiff at Texas State. When Bailiff became the head coach at Rice, Herman followed him to Houston and there he met David Beaty, who coached wide receivers and introduced him to the spread's no-huddle component.

Now the Cyclones have the entire package.

“We've exposed the players to everything in the offense,” he said. “I got asked the question, how much of the playbook is in? I never know what that means. Our playbook is in. It's not like we have certain pages that we've masked out so the players can't read them.

“We've just chosen to emphasize certain things over other things. The basic fundamentals and tenets and philosophies of our offense will never change.”

What has changed is Herman's financial condition. Now married and with two children, he's making $250,000, a long way from those early days.

“There's been a lot of sacrifice, not only by me, but by my family for me to do this,” he said. “Hopefully, I'm paying them back - or will at some point. I think we're still paying our credit cards off from that time in Seguin.”

-- Chuck Schoffner, news correspondent