Speltz Knows Titan Playbook, Including Updates, Revisions

Take your pick. One back or two, I-formation or split backs, emphasis on a short, quick passing game or on a drop-back passing game. Pick your offense, and call it what you will. Dan Speltz is prepared to direct it.

Unless it’s the wishbone. In that case, pick a new quarterback. Speltz’s arm is his strong point, not this mobility.

Speltz has yet to begin his second season as Cal State Fullerton’s quarterback, but already he is on his third offensive system.

He learned one system in the spring of 1988 under offensive coordinator Jerry Brown, but Brown took a job as an assistant with the Minnesota Vikings before preseason practice started. He learned another under Brown’s replacement, Mike Heimerdinger, and with some adjustments, stuck with it through last season. Then Heimerdinger left for Rice University, and Speltz had his third coordinator in a year, Bill Wentworth, who coached the Titan defensive backs last season.

Speltz walks around with a library of offenses in his head, each with its own language. Even if by chance some aspects of an offense remain, it seems as if every coach uses a different nomenclature.

Another quarterback might find all the changes exasperating. But Speltz, who says he would like to coach at the community college or four-year level, has a different attitude.

“I look at this as a positive experience,” he said. “The more people you’ve worked with, the more knowledge you get. You can kind of pick and choose the things you like.”

So far, he has sampled a two-back, mostly I-formation offense under Brown, Heimerdinger’s emphasis on drop-back passing and powering the ball up the middle, and now Wentworth’s one-back, short passing game influenced by the offenses Miami Coach Dennis Erickson ran at Wyoming and Washington State.

Speltz has proved deft at adjusting to the changes. Because he has an interest in coaching and studying the game, Wentworth said, he works to understand the offense, more than simply learning by rote.

“He’s really a good decision maker,” Wentworth said. “He rarely makes a bad decision. He keeps us out of trouble.”

Fullerton Coach Gene Murphy understands the chore Speltz has faced.

“It’s difficult,” Murphy said. “You have to conform to the system. And that’s just a very minuscule part of it. You also have to conform to the personality of the person (coaching).”

In Brown, Speltz was working with a quiet teacher who had been Murphy’s offensive coordinator for years. Then came Heimerdinger, an intense coach and something of a shouter who was more used to the atmosphere at Florida, where he had coached the year before.

And now Wentworth, a young coach in his first year as an offensive coordinator whose style is more akin to Brown’s, but who other assistants claim is given to calling a lot of early meetings.

Speltz figures to start this season on a much better note than last year, when he endured one of your more miserable debuts.

He came to Fullerton after being named a first-time Grid-Wire All-American at El Camino College, where he passed for 2,342 yards and helped El Camino to an 11-0 season.

But in the Titans’ first game last season against Southwestern Louisiana on a rain-soaked field in Lafayette, La., Speltz struggled with the most basic of a quarterback’s duties--taking the snap. The Titans fumbled the wet ball six times on the snap, losing four.

“Don’t talk about that!” Speltz said. He can laugh about it now, but he couldn’t then.

“That was an eye-opening experience.”

But by the end of the season, with the help of some adjustments in the offensive game plan, Speltz was at his best. He passed for more than 200 yards in each of the last three games, including 325 yards in a 58-13 victory over San Jose State. He finished the season with 1,924 yards--the third-best passing season in Fullerton history.

Speltz has his favorite receiver back, Rocky Palamara, who also was with him at El Camino. And he has two able running backs in Mike Pringle and Tim Byrnes. Of course, as always seems the case, there are substantial worries elsewhere--on the offensive line and on defense, where only three starters return.

But the Titans have confidence in Speltz, at least--the result of what Murphy calls Speltz’s “emotional stability,” his ability to adjust, his maturity, his intelligence.

“He’s not that smart,” Murphy said. “He wants to be a coach.”

Titan Notes

Fullerton’s first scrimmage is scheduled for Saturday at 3 p.m. . . . Chip Grant, the Titans’ 5-foot-5 backup tailback, has a torn hamstring and is expected to be out six to 12 weeks. Santa Monica College transfer Deon Thomas becomes the backup to Mike Pringle. . . . Projected starting receiver Tony Dill also has a hamstring injury and is expected to be out another week. . . . Nose guard Gary Thornton has a sprained right ankle and is expected to be for out a week to 10 days.