courtesy of Alligator Army poster 75 South.

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Admittedly, when the news began to break, I texted a friend with a message that included the words "not exciting."� But I soon realized that this was largely because I was unfamiliar with Roper's body of work. I had spent my time researching Blake Anderson and Mike Norvell and Clay Helton and getting excited about those guys, but Roper's name had rarely appeared in connection with the job. The only instance I could find that predates December 23 was this Only Gators post.

Now that I've had a few days to learn about Roper, I like what I see.  A lot. There are numerous reasons for this - his resume, association with Cutcliffe, and comments yesterday about building an offense around a quarterback's strengths stick out. But I'll focus here on what I've actually seen his offenses do on the field. In the past few days, I've watched parts of three recent Duke games: FSU and North Carolina from 2013 and Clemson from 2012. This is by no means an exhaustive survey, but I saw enough consistency across these games to allow me to draw these general conclusions:

This is not a massively complex offense with dozens of blocking schemes, passing concepts, and personnel groupings. In fact, it's beautiful in its simplicity. Duke operated exclusively out of the shotgun and - with minimal exceptions - used just one personnel grouping: one running back, three receivers, and a hybrid tight end type. Most of the diversity that Duke achieved with its formations came from moving this tight end around. As shown below in my crude drawings, this player (whom I've labled "Y"�) would occasionally line up as a traditional "in-line"� tight end:

Or as an H-back:

Or flexed out from the line:

Or out wide:

Duke would occasionally have the running back line up alongside the quarterback in the traditional shotgun manner, but more often than not, he was aligned about two yards behind one of the quarterback's shoulders, as shown below:

From these alignments, Duke used mostly zone run blocking, with the inside zone being their most favored play. The Blue Devils made subtle adjustments to the way they blocked it, however. Sometimes they would have the H-back block the man directly in front of him, but other times he would come across the formation on a Wham Inside Zone.

On other occasions, the play would actually be a zone read, with the quarterback reading an unblocked defensive end. If this defensive end crashed the inside zone, Duke would bring the H-back around the formation like in the Wham but then have this player arc around to block the playside outside linebacker. Duke also used packaged plays, with an inside zone being combined with a bubble or rocket screen. The occasionally sprinkled in things like jet sweeps and the inverted veer, but these appeared to be add-ons, not staple plays.

It's more difficult to analyze the passing game because of broadcast camera angles, but I saw Duke run some stick and snag concepts in addition to things like four verticals and shallow crosses.

I didn't get a great look at the routes on any play actions, but I think most fans will be happy to know that the receivers seemed to be running routes that vertically stretched the field on these plays.

In short, nothing on this list is complicated but it all works well together, and it is conducive for the type of tempo that Duke ran (and that Florida presumably will run). Things like packaged plays and subtle adjustments to inside zone blocking are particularly attractive. On those plays, the offensive line can essentially do the same thing every time, with only the skill players and quarterback making changes. Though Pease dabbled in packaged plays, I generally think that type of simplicity was lacking in his tenure, and the line in particular was tasked with doing too many things. A more streamlined approach is exactly what I think Florida needs to turn things around.

Of course, Roper may do things differently at Florida based on personnel, and I suppose we'll now truly find out what degree freedom the head coach is willing to cede to his offensive coordinator. From past experience, I've learned not to make any "I'm confident this will work"� predictions. But what I have seen out of Roper is that he can design a simple yet highly effective offense that fits his players' strengths. That sounds pretty good to me.
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http://www.alligatorarmy.com/2013/12/26/5244950/kurt-roper-florida-gators-offensive-coordinator-official/in/4927483