UMass football: Offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery settling in to new role with Minutemen

UMass football offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery directs players during a Minutemen summer practice at McGuirk Alumni Stadium in Amherst. Montgomery is in his first season as OC with UMass.

UMass football offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery directs players during a Minutemen summer practice at McGuirk Alumni Stadium in Amherst. Montgomery is in his first season as OC with UMass. PHOTO BY MASSACHUSETTS ATHLETICS/CHRIS TUCCI

By GARRETT COTE

Staff Writer

Published: 08-07-2024 7:41 PM

AMHERST — Wednesday marked the fifth practice of the summer for the UMass football team, and also stood as practice No. 5 for new offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery – who stepped in to fill Steve Casula’s role after Casula took a tight end coaching position at Michigan.

Montgomery said he’s been settling into Amherst just fine, his longtime relationships with head coach Don Brown and defensive coordinator Keith Dudzinski smoothing the transition. And with starting quarterback Taisun Phommachanh entering his second season as the Minutemen’s QB1, landing a coordinator to help continue progressing him was a necessity. 

Phommachanh missed the spring rehabbing his knee injury, so this summer is the first chance he and Montgomery – a former quarterback at North Carolina State – have had the chance to work directly in a live setting.

So far, so good.

“The main thing for me right now is coach Montgomery, just getting on the same page with him and having a feel for his offense and creating that chemistry,” Phommachanh said. “That starts with the OC for our unit. It’s been good just to see his philosophy on things and see how he kind of operates and his mindset. It’s been good… He played quarterback, so he sees and understands what I see out there, what I feel out there. He’ll come to me, ask me what I saw and we go from there. He breaks it down for me easily.”

Montgomery thinks just as highly of Phommachanh as Phommachanh does of him. Now, the first-year coordinator is seeking to find how to best utilize his quarterback to make UMass’ offense as dangerous as possible.

“The thing that I’ve tried to do is realize that, not going through spring, he’s gonna be a little rusty getting started,” Montgomery said. “He did sit and watch the offense in the spring, but he didn’t get to execute it. I knew he wasn’t gonna be himself coming out day one. But he’s obviously a smart kid that’s confident. Even though he’s coming off the injury, he does give you the ability to run the ball at the quarterback position. He’s effective in the passing game. For me, the next 20 practices or so, I’ve gotta figure out what he does best and build the offense around him.”

While Montgomery plans to complicate things for opposing defenses, his overall game plan is quite simple: get the football in the hands of his weapons.

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He likes to run multiple styles of offense, mixing tempos, formations and personnel to keep the defense guessing. Everything will be run out of the no-huddle, but it doesn’t mean UMass can’t slow it down at the same time. Expect Montgomery to find unique ways to involve Anthony Simpson, Sterling Galban and the rest of the Minutemen home-run hitters.

“We’re trying to get our best players involved, you know, with our skill guys,” Montgomery said. “We gotta make sure, game-in and game-out, that we’re getting our best players the ball… We’ve gotta come out of camp and say, ‘OK, these are the guys that we’ve gotta get the ball to. These are the guys who are the playmakers.’ And in the close games, those are the guys that make the difference.”

Any coach would be lying if they came out and said their team looked flawless through one week of practice, so it’s not a surprise to Montgomery that early on there are a few holes to address on the offensive side of the ball.

One pressing issue has been the situation in the running back room. Kay’Ron Lynch-Adams and Greg Desrosiers Jr. are no longer with the team, and no other ball carrier rushed for over 100 yards outside of those two in 2023. Jalen John has emerged as the top candidate to take over but other steady contributors are needed. The starting 11 looks strong when going live against the defense through five sessions, however the question marks begin to pop up the deeper into the depth chart Montgomery digs.

“At times [UMass] ran the ball pretty good last year,” Montgomery said. “The games they won and were competitive in, they ran the football. Now, we lost our two top running backs, so we had to fill those needs… I think [offensive line coach Alex Miller] feels better about the offensive line and the starting five. So there is some run-game issues that we’ve gotta continue to improve on and build the offense… [Right now we need to find] the depth. I think if we had to go out right now, we’d probably have our starting lineup, but who is our seventh and eighth linemen, who’s our fifth and sixth receivers, what’s our pecking order at running back. We’ve gotta keep developing consistency.”

More from Montgomery...

UMass’ OC said he trusts his players to make the right reads and strike with intelligence and intention, he doesn’t need them to check over to the sideline in the middle of a drive if the Minutemen are in a groove.

“We’re putting everybody in a situation to be successful,” he said. “We’re gonna be attacking. We’re not gonna do a lot of ‘Check with me’s’ at the line of scrimmage. We’re gonna call our play and we’re gonna attack and play with confidence.”

Montgomery also wants to put an emphasis on – to no surprise – ball security. Every football coach on the planet preaches it throughout practice, and he hopes to cut down UMass’ 17 turnovers lost and help improve on the minus-1 turnover differential in 2023.

“The biggest thing we stress is taking care of the football,” Montgomery said. “We have got to cut down on turnovers. Nobody has ever gone through a season with no turnovers, it’s impossible. But if we can minimize the turnovers, that’ll give us a chance to win.”