Inside Lincoln Riley's Air Raid offense, known for constant evolution and misdirection
The ideas that would one day inspire a football revolution had been rattling around in Hal Mumme's head for a few years before he finally had the chance to use them. It was 1986, and Mumme had just lost his job as Texas El Paso's offensive coordinator. With nowhere to turn at the college level, Mumme retreated to the ranks of Texas high school football, where he inherited a struggling program with just a handful of wins during the previous decade.
Out of that desperation, the Air Raid's roots first took hold in the central Texas soil, where three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust was long the offensive doctrine of choice. Mumme didn't have that luxury at Copperas Cove High. The school's best athletes weren't even trying out for the football team.
"I needed an edge," Mumme recalled, "or else this wasn't going to work."
So he strung wild ideas together into a fledgling philosophy, drawing primarily on intel he gathered years before on long car trips to Provo, Utah. Brigham Young coach LaVell Edwards and his staff had often welcomed the UTEP coordinator to pick their brains. During those sessions, Mumme grew enamored with Edwards' offense, which soared to the 1984 national title with a high-flying pass attack that spread three or four receivers across the field.
Such radical innovation was out of the question at UTEP, where head coach Bill Yung preferred the classic I-Formation. But at Copperas Cove, Mumme was in control. He told prospective players he'd employ a similar wide-open approach to BYU, but "on steroids." They might throw the ball 75%
