Offensive innovation leads Saint Stephen’s back to SSAC championship

The pre-practice routine at Moore Athletic Complex at Turner Fields is virtually the same each day before Saint Stephen’s officially takes the field.

Fred Billy stands near midfield with one of his running backs immediately to his left or right, two others standing in the slot and a sparse line in front of him.

Usually this fall, Cord Graham surveys the action. The running backs coach is in his first year with the program, so his wrinkles are the newest additions to a Falcons offense that is once again among the best in the Sunshine State Athletic Conference.

Billy is in his third year leading Saint Stephen’s now-experienced offense and a different group of voices have imparted bits and pieces of wisdom each year. Head coach Tod Creneti, a former quarterback, provided the foundation for the offense during Billy’s freshman year. Offensive coordinator Greg Williford added wrinkles last year. Now Graham, a former Manatee assistant coach, has added another dimension.

“I don’t think of them as Manatee coaches. I think of them as guys who have coached football in a lot places,” Creneti said. “They, like any new coach that we bring in, bring things to the table that we didn’t do before, think about before.”

The echoes of Joe Kinnan’s offense still resonate throughout Manatee County and the entire Tampa Bay Area. Of course, South Florida has adopted elements with Kinnan as an offensive consultant and the Hurricanes still implement the jet system with former Canes quarterback John Booth now at the helm.

Across Manatee Avenue, the Hurricanes have had at least a small part in developing another burgeoning power. The Falcons will play for the first state championship in program history Saturday at 7 p.m. against Vero Beach St. Edwards in Oviedo and pieces of Saint Stephen’s offense will mirror what the Canes did during Kinnan’s final years in Bradenton.

“I definitely see what they did in our offense,” Billy said. “If you go back and watch film of Manatee from 2010-2013 you could definitely see a lot of fake jet, pop passes in our offense, which they used to run, and those are teams that were top-ranked in the nation. Why not adopt that?”

Billy was only in fourth grade during the fall of 2009, when Brion Carnes quarterbacked the Canes to the state championship. Billy typically spent his Friday nights at Joe Kinnan Field Hawkins Stadium, watching Carnes and Manatee steamroll opponents with an offense that averaged nearly 34 points per game.

Five years later, Billy took the reins at Saint Stephen’s as a freshman and a year after that he had a chance to learn from Carnes. The quarterback, who went on to play at Northern Iowa, took over as the Falcons’ quarterbacks coach, while Saint Stephen’s adopted more of a triple-option season last fall.

In each of Billy’s three seasons running the Falcon offense — which has coincided with the best three-year stretch in school history — the unit has evolved. During his freshman season, he was “spoon fed,” he said. Nothing was ever more complicated than a read option, limiting the young signalcaller to one decision per play. The next year, Williford brought some of his triple option background to place more upon Billy, and Saint Stephen’s reached the Florida Bowl for the first time.

“The offense is so dynamic,” Billy said. “Everybody’s contributing and the offense is just cranking it out.”

The basis of Saint Stephen’s offense still hinges on Billy and Brown, who have run for 2,351 yards while averaging 10.4 yards per carry. The offense begins, however, before the snap with running backs Jordan Murrell and Demetrius Davis lined up in the slot. The Falcons’ jet-inspired system sends one of the two in motion past Billy and Brown on virtually every play. Sometimes the quarterback will hand the ball off to the sweeping back. Other times he’ll tuck it himself or hand it to Brown.

It’s the same sort of stuff Billy remembered watching at Hawkins Stadium with Billy playing the role of Carnes, Brown filling running back Mike Blakely’s spot, and Murrell and Davis standing in for wide receiver Ace Sanders.

And it’s what Billy sees anytime he watches USF, with its dual-threat quarterback and star running back from Sarasota shouldering the load for a potent offense coached by a former Hurricane quarterback. Even if the Falcons never explicitly sought out this influence, it’s found a way to help Saint Stephen’s back to the brink of a title.

“The concepts that we are using are some of the standards that are used in a lot of different places,” Creneti said, “but we’re thrilled to have that influence on our staff.”

This story was originally published November 19, 2016 at 12:41 AM with the headline "Offensive innovation leads Saint Stephen’s back to SSAC championship."