ORLANDO, Fla. – Whether he feels it or not, new UCF Knights quarterback Brandon Wimbush is under significant pressure. Not only does he become a de facto leader of a team that has won the last two American Athletic Conference championships and has appeared in back-to-back New Year’s Six bowls, but he has also become the face of one of the fastest, most potent offenses in the nation.
It’s not that second-year Head Coach Josh Heupel isn’t confident in his transfer from Notre Dame University, but his one-year experience at the helm for the Knights has shown him that the pace at UCF is almost unlike anywhere else in college football — well, at the very least, Heupel sees it as faster than anything Wimbush has managed in three seasons with the Fighting Irish.
“I expect him to play championship-caliber football [in Week 1],” Heupel said at his weekly press conference on Aug. 24. “He’s got great command of what we’re doing… To operate extremely efficiently at the quarterback position with the tempo that we play at, which is probably a little bit higher tempo than he was accustomed to as far as his experience at Notre Dame.”
To an extent, Heupel is correct. The UCF offense is only one of four teams in the last two seasons to have placed in the top 10 in scoring offense: first in 2017 (48.2 points per game) and sixth in 2018 (43.2 ppg). UCF has also finished the last two seasons fifth in yards per game; Notre Dame was 27th and 32nd in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
It isn’t untrue to say UCF and Notre Dame are comparable in pace, however. In 2017, the Irish recorded 70.2 plays per game; UCF snapped it 71.1 times. A season later, Notre Dame notched 73.4 plays compared to the Knights’ 75.8 plays.
The ball is ultimately in Wimbush’s court — or, in this case, his side of the line of scrimmage. He proved to be a formidable dual-threat player while in South Bend, Indiana. In 2017, Wimbush helped Notre Dame to a 10-3 season that ended with a Citrus Bowl win over the LSU Tigers and a top-15 ranking. He combined for 2,674 total yards and 30 touchdowns.
Wimbush played a smaller role in 2018, as he helped the Fighting Irish to an eventual 2018 College Football Playoff Semifinals loss to Clemson University. That season, Wimbush played six games and totaled 975 yards and five touchdowns.
The fifth-year, graduate transfer said he slightly disagreed with Heupel’s preseason assessment of his acclimation to UCF’s offense but was still quick to recognize UCF’s recent success.
“[The offense] is a lot faster, and I think these guys — they’ve played at such a high speed and high tempo for the past couple of years that really no one else has played at in the country,” Wimbush said at a presser on Aug. 24. “And it shows with their numbers and the points that they’ve put up.”
At the very least, Wimbush has garnered confidence from his starting left tackle, redshirt sophomore Samuel Jackson.
“He’s a very mature competitor,” Jackson said after practice on Aug. 25. “Especially when coaches are wanting us to push the tempo, he’s right there on us. He’s telling us, you know, ‘We gotta go; we gotta go.’ He’s really adapted to this offense, and I expect [that] to happen more in the game. You know, if something happens, he’s gonna be like, ‘Alright, guys. Next play.’ He doesn’t dwell on things.”
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Senior center Jordan Johnson recalled a very specific moment when he knew the team would be alright if No. 3 ultimately became No. 1.
“A particular moment,” Johnson pondered at the podium on Aug. 24. “I would have to say during one of the scrimmages because, in scrimmages, like, the defensive line think they’re so hot because they, like, two-hand touch the quarterback, and they think that they beat us.
“Our coaches don’t like to blow it dead immediately because they want everyone else to keep playing, and [Wimbush] literally, like, got sacked ‘cause somebody tagged him and then just flung the ball down field — like, he flicked it, and it went like 40, 50 yards off of just, like, a quick toss. So, I was truly amazed when I seen that. I was like, ‘We gonna be alright if he’s the starting quarterback.”
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Florida A&M University will be the No. 17 Knights’ first obstacle of the 2019 season. Kickoff is set for Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at Spectrum Stadium.
For more on the Knights, as they prepare the opening of the 2019 campaign, follow Victor Tan on Twitter at @NDR_VictorTan.
To contact Victor, you can email him at vtan@newdayreview.com, or you can tweet at him.
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