Kerwin Bell trusted no one to run his offense other than his son, new Pitt offensive coordinator Kade
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Kerwin Bell learned and sharpened his system of offensive football by backing up Dan Marino and Jim Harbaugh in the NFL, coaching under Steve Spurrier and throwing for nearly 20,000 yards as a quarterback in the Canadian Football League.
That system didn’t just help him win a national championship as head coach at Valdosta State in 2018. It’s one of the tent poles that supports his standing as one of the top offensive minds in the FCS.
There is only one other man walking a college football sideline whom Bell trusts to call plays within that system.
That man — Kerwin’s son, Kade — is now offensive coordinator at Pitt.
“I never thought I’d turn it over to anybody,” said Kerwin Bell, now the head coach at Western Carolina, where his son has been OC the past three seasons. “But I had a lot of faith that he knew what he was doing.
“People say, ‘It was your son.’ But it didn’t matter who it was. He had the same thought process as me. I’ve always been a very aggressive coach. I’ve always been a guy who really attacks opponents from start to finish. I never knew anybody who would coach like that.”
Until his son started coaching.
Student of the game
Whether the younger Bell can lead a Power 5 offense successfully will be a storyline for future days. But it’s clear Pat Narduzzi has entrusted Pitt’s offense with a coach who has devoted most of the 30 years of his life to figuring out the fastest, most efficient way to move a football from Point A to Point B.
As a quarterback at two Florida high schools, Fleming Island and Providence, Bell designed plays he would execute in games.
“He loved the mental part of the game,” his father said.
Later, in the spring of his redshirt freshman season at Jacksonville University, he called plays in the huddle. Always with the blessing of his dad, who was head coach, OC and quarterback coach there at the time.
“I never thought I’d turn (it) over because the system was mine,” said Kerwin Bell, who learned it as a graduate assistant under Spurrier at Florida in 1990. “It was from the NFL. We were doing really good things. I was never trusting anybody to play-call for me and take that out of my hands.”
But the younger Bell started displaying an acumen for offensive football when he threw for 9,613 yards and accounted for 93 touchdowns as a four-year starting quarterback at Jacksonville from 2011-2015.
After graduation, Bell became a 23-year-old graduate assistant under his dad at Valdosta (Ga.) State.
“When he became a GA, he started showing me we think a lot alike,” Kerwin Bell said. “We’re both aggressive. He sets things up like I would. Around the second year, I started letting him get up in the box, help me with the play-calling. He would call first and second down. I’d call third and red zones throughout the game.”
By midseason 2018, Kade was Valdosta’s chief play-caller, helping lead the Blazers to a 14-0 record and the NCAA Division II national championship while quarterback Rogan Wells became a two-time runner-up for the Harlon Hill Trophy (the D-II version of the Heisman).
Valdosta set a D-II record for points (728) and led the nation in touchdown passes (50), points per game (52), yards per play (7.9) and per rush (7.2). Wells threw for 3,078 yards and 38 touchdowns.
At Western Carolina this season, Bell’s offense led the Southern Conference in eight offensive categories.
The pro spread offense
Through a handful of job changes, father and son have maintained trust in what they call the pro spread offense.
“I brought the system from the Indianapolis Colts,” said Kerwin Bell, who played quarterback at Florida and was SEC Player of the Year in 1984. “(Kade) played in it at Jacksonville University. It has a lot of pro concepts as far as the passing game, but a lot of spread concepts are mixed with that as far as getting your best receivers the ball in space. Screens, the run game, everything is out of the (shotgun formation).”
Kerwin Bell said he likes to allow quarterbacks with sharp minds to call their own plays. He did it for seven years in the CFL. His son did it at Jacksonville. When Wells transferred to Western Carolina in 2021, Bell gave him the same freedom.
“That helps a quarterback,” Kerwin Bell said. “Once you get to a certain age and we feel like you have a really good handle, we open it up a little bit more as far as giving them opportunities to do some things.”
Efficiency matters
Kerwin Bell said quarterbacks who run his system don’t need unique size or speed.
“Kade didn’t have a great arm,” he said. “I’ve always told Kade this: ‘People get enamored with these 6-4, 220-, 230-, 240- pound guys. Five stars. They have great cannon arms. They can throw it 70 yards.
“The problem is a lot of those guys don’t have the intangibles and the consistency to go out there and be that efficient quarterback to help you win games. The first priority is not size. The first priority is they better be efficient. They better be like an all-star point guard where they can distribute the ball, and they can cancel out their reads. They can get it to the open guy.”
Bell said if there were 70 plays in a game, Wells made the right decision on 68 of them. “If you have a guy who’s that efficient, you’re going to score a lot of points,” he said.
“I’m all about efficiency, have a great feel for the game, avoiding sacks. If he’s 6-6 to go along with it, by God, we have an all-star. If he’s only 6-1, that’s who we’re going to go play because that’s going to give us the best chance to go be spectacular on offense. The athletic ability is never going to outweigh the guy who’s efficient and has great accuracy.
“We say play fast, score faster. We want to create explosive plays, but we want to do it at a very efficient level where we try to take advantage of the whole field, 53⅓ yards horizontally and stretch you vertically.”
Bell said he knows the type of players his son will want to recruit to Pitt.
“There are certain players we love within that system,” he said. “You have a lot of (coaches) who run around this country and go get 6-3 receivers who run 4.7s that they want to throw jump balls to. They can’t get in and out of routes. They have stiff hips. But they look pretty.
“That’s not our system. We want a guy, he may be only 6-foot tall, but we want a guy who can be explosive athletically, get in and out of routes with his hips, dropping his hips, getting open.”
It was inevitable
Other than Kade Bell getting to know Pitt wide receivers coach Tiquan Underwood on the recruiting trail, the Bells did not have a relationship with Narduzzi before the hiring process. But the father heartily approves of his son’s career path.
“I hate him leaving me. We’ve had some good years coaching together,” Bell said.
Then, he paused and added, “I knew it was going to happen sooner or later.”