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2 years ago

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12:33 PM ET

Before we knew Mike Leach was a first-ballot hall of fame interview, before the sideline dissertations about marriage or candy or anything in the world, really, there was Mike Leach, the football genius.

Leach, who died Monday night at 61, likely would scoff at that notion, that anyone needed to be a genius to do something like coach football. But all the off-field quirkiness aside, his introduction to major college football at Oklahoma, followed by a trailblazing tenure at Texas Tech, spawned a revolution in the sport.

When former Sooners head coach Bob Stoops arrived in Norman in 1999, he brought Leach, who had been Hal Mumme’s offensive coordinator at Kentucky and had frustrated Stoops, Florida’s defensive coordinator at a place that wasn’t supposed to challenge the SEC’s best teams. It marked a seismic shift at Oklahoma, but the results were immediate, with a national championship in 2000 a year after Leach departed for Lubbock.

Two decades later, Leach’s air show dominates the sport at every level. It began at Oklahoma but soon conquered the state of Texas and the Big 12. It became a staple of high schools all over the country, and now NFL superstar Patrick Mahomes, a child of the Air Raid at Texas Tech, is running the same offense as an NFL MVP in Kansas City.

“Mike had a bigger impact on football, whether pro football, high school football or college football, than anybody in my generation,” said TCU coach Sonny Dykes, a former Leach assistant at Kentucky and Texas Tech. “He just changed the way people approach the game.”

It’s easy to forget, after all these years of mind-bending points on the scoreboard and record-setting performances, just how stark the transformation has been. In 1998, Oklahoma was held to 17 or fewer points in six of its 11 games. The Sooners ranked fifth-to-last nationally in passing, with nine touchdown passes to 16 interceptions in 1998. Among Big 12 teams, only Texas and Kansas State ranked in the top 50 in the country in passing. In 1999, with an unheralded transfer quarterback — Josh Heupel, from Snow College in Ephraim, Utah — running a wide-open passing attack where Barry Switzer’s Wishbone teams used to run up and down the field, there was a healthy dose of skepticism.

“There was a period of time where the two most wanted guys in the state of Oklahoma were me and Josh Heupel,” Leach told ESPN in 2017. “Me for suggesting that you could throw the ball at Oklahoma and in the Big 12. And Josh Heupel for having the temerity to play quarterback and not be able to run faster than 5 flat.”

But Stoops committed to Leach’s offense and the Big 12 was put on notice. A new era was ushered into college football.

“Mike Leach’s offense presented problems that we had never had to address,” said former Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum, a legendary defensive mind who produced some of the greatest defenses of the 1980s and 1990s and all but broke the run ‘n’ shoot offense, another pass-happy scheme. “I thought we were pretty good on defense. And he made us scratch our heads, and me scratch my head, more than any coach I’ve ever faced. I had a great admiration for him.”

Leach not only produced record-setting quarterbacks; he forced competition to keep up with him. By 2008, the Big 12 had five of the 10 highest-scoring offenses in college football. And Leach drew the curiosity of people who were interested in a new way of thinking in college football.

Like a walk-on quarterback from Muleshoe, Texas, about 70 miles from Lubbock, named Lincoln Riley.

“They kind of captured the attention of everybody,” he said. “That’s why I went to Texas Tech. I loved what they were doing and I wanted to find some way to get a chance to be a part of it.”

Mumme, the creator of the Air Raid, will be the first to tell you that while he may have designed it and spread the word when he was at Kentucky, Leach became its champion in Lubbock. While rewriting record books, Leach also threw open the doors.

In the early 2000s, coaches made pilgrimages to Texas Tech, where they couldn’t believe the simplicity of the offense. What they found, instead, was a commitment to repetition and details and a fearless determination to do what you do. And Leach would tell anyone anything.

“A lot of coaches keep secrets, “Dykes said. “Mike felt like part of his job as a coach was to teach. He taught a lot of people the offense. I think he felt like it was good for the game of football.”

And the more the merrier for Leach, who loved to meet interesting people from all backgrounds. He took pride in the popularity of his philosophy, once dismissed as a gimmick.

“I’ve never been to a place where you had more coaches around constantly,” Lincoln Riley said. “So many people. You think just Texas high school coaches. No, I’m talking professional coaches, I’m talking college coaches, high school coaches from all over the country. Every single year we had somebody come from abroad. There was a group from Japan that came every year, groups from England that came over I mean, you name it.”

And like at Oklahoma, the Air Raid took flight at places that previously weren’t exactly known for their fondness for the forward pass.

“When Kliff Kingsbury was the head coach at Texas Tech, he once told us that he thought that 75% of the high schools in Texas ran our offense,” Mumme said.

Leach earned the respect of some of the legends of the game along the way.

“Mike Leach has won everywhere he’s been,” Barry Switzer, a huge Leach fan, told ESPN last year. “He won at Texas Tech, at Washington State, has taken Mississippi State to bowl games. Everywhere he goes, he wins.”

Leach never won a conference title, but always coached at historical have-nots in the Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC. He never got a shot at one of the sport’s powers, either, because people thought his unorthodox style wouldn’t work on the big stage, or because of his mouth and his tendency to say whatever he felt.

“Like all innovators in sports, he finds himself in an uncertain social position,” “Moneyball” author Michael Lewis wrote in a New York Times magazine profile. “He has committed a faux pas: he has suggested by his methods that there is more going on out there on the (unlevel) field of play than his competitors realize, which reflects badly on them.”

But his tenure at each place was rarely matched in history.

Before Leach’s arrival, Texas Tech had been to the Cotton Bowl, historically a desired destination for Texas schools, just twice — in 1939 and 1995. Under Leach, they went twice in nine seasons, in 2006 and 2009. They have not been back since his departure in 2010. He’s the only coach in 103 years to win 11 games at Washington State.

Fittingly, Leach’s last win, Mississippi State’s 24-22 triumph over Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl, was the Bulldogs’ seventh win over a team ranked in the AP poll while the Bulldogs were unranked under Leach in the past three seasons. No other school has more than four unranked vs. ranked wins in that span.

“He gave us all confidence that we could be ourselves and we didn’t have to emulate Lou Holtz,” Dykes said. “That was probably the biggest lesson that I learned, that you can see the world differently and still be a successful college football coach.”

As a result, a group of coaches who grew up watching Leach’s stubborn insistence on spreading the field have forced schools like Alabama to bend to them, not the other way around. Nick Saban famously said, “Is this what we want football to be?” about no-huddle offenses, and a generation responded in the affirmative. Now, Saban and contemporaries like Bill Belichick are running the same wide-open concepts.

“It all boils down to creativity and most importantly, courage,” Riley said. “It’s hard to go against the status quo, especially in a game like football where there’s such a rigid way of doing it. He broke through and found another way, which a lot of people have tried. He’s one of the very few that has done it successfully.”

His next wave of protégés has gotten the opportunities he never had and seized them. Leach’s influence has rarely been felt as strongly as it has this year. Dykes crashed the College Football Playoff in Year 1 at TCU, a year after a 5-7 season. Riley took over a 4-8 USC team, went 11-2 and coached his third Heisman Trophy winner in six years in Caleb Williams. The runner-up, Max Duggan, played for Riley’s brother, Garrett, who works for Dykes and is another former Tech quarterback. Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker, who finished fifth, played for Heupel, the guy who jump-started everything for Leach in Norman.

“Look at the people that were fortunate enough to work for him,” Dykes said. “They’ve all had a tremendous amount of success. Mike’s way of teaching empowered young people. That’s one thing he did better than anybody. He wasn’t afraid to take a 22-year-old kid and give him a bunch of power if he believed in him.”

Those former assistants took that to heart too, and ushered in a new wave of coaches who have nontraditional backgrounds, because Leach, a former lawyer who played rugby at BYU, didn’t care. Dykes was a college baseball player. Baylor coach Dave Aranda was a philosophy major who didn’t play college football. Dana Holgorsen played for Mumme and Leach at Iowa Wesleyan, which just happened to be in Holgorsen’s hometown of Mount Pleasant, Iowa.

And Riley, the walk-on, has ascended to the bluest of blue bloods in the sport, going 66-12 at Oklahoma and USC.

“He didn’t really care where people came from or pedigree or or anything like that,” Riley said. “It’s always been about, are you smart? Are you interesting enough that he’s going to learn something from you or enjoy conversation? That was one of his greatest gifts. He was such a great evaluator of coaches. You see his hand prints on everything around college football right now.”

Mumme’s offense and Leach’s personality together changed football forever. Mumme, who said Leach was like a brother to him, remembers how remarkable it is that the two ended up together. Mumme had two applicants for the Iowa Wesleyan offensive line coaching job. One was Leach, who had graduated from Pepperdine law school but decided to go into coaching, so Mumme said he got the job kind of by default.

“He could have gone to L.A. and sat there and drank two martinis for lunch and made $200,000 a year,” Mumme said. “But instead he came to work for me and made 12 grand.”

The end result was one of the most influential careers in football history. And by the way, he made sure the show was worth the price of admission too, which Leach always felt was the point of sports.

“Mike has made football more fun for people than they deserved,” Mumme said. “If you watched Mike Leach, you had fun watching.”

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Panthers one game away from another Cup Final: Grades, biggest takeaways from Game 3

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5 hours ago

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May 25, 2025

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Panthers one game away from another Cup Final: Grades, biggest takeaways from Game 3

  • Multiple Contributors

May 24, 2025, 11:15 PM ET

One team is a win away from advancing to a third straight Stanley Cup Final. The other is about to once again come up short in a conference final. As drastic as that sounds, that is the reality facing the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes following the Panthers’ 6-2 win Saturday in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals.

The defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers opened the series by scoring five goals in each of the first two games and exposing the Hurricanes in a way that hadn’t been done by another team this postseason. On Saturday, it appeared that the Canes may have found a solution as they entered the third period tied at 1-1 … before the Panthers exploded for five straight goals to close out Game 3 in emphatic fashion.

How did both teams perform? Who is worth watching in Game 4? And given that there’s a sweep in play, what could Monday mean for both teams, knowing that one of them could see their season come to an end? Ryan S. Clark and Kristen Shilton answer those questions while reviewing what has been a lopsided Eastern Conference finals.

The Panthers withstood an expected early push from Carolina and settled swiftly into their own game. They failed to capitalize on their first-period power-play chance but made up for it by opening the scoring with a goal credited to Niko Mikkola (that actually went off Carolina’s Dmitry Orlov) midway through the first. It was a deflating marker for Carolina goalie Pyotr Kochetkov to cede right after a solid Hurricanes penalty kill and appeared to diminish Carolina’s confidence.

There was potential to shift Carolina’s momentum, though. Before the first period ended, Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen finished a check sending Jackson Blake awkwardly into the boards. That earned Luostarinen a five-minute penalty and game misconduct, putting the Panthers down two of their top forwards in Luostarinen and an injured Sam Reinhart. But Florida didn’t let the lengthy man advantage hurt its momentum. The Panthers killed it off and matched Carolina’s shot total while shorthanded.

While the score was tied at 1-1 going into the third, Florida regained its lead with Jesper Boqvist undressing (to put it mildly) Orlov in shocking fashion. Boqvist entered the lineup to replace Reinhart, and it was the type of contribution Florida could only hope to see from its depth skater.

It was all Panthers from there, with goals from Mikkola, Aleksander Barkov (capitalizing on a turnover by Orlov), Evan Rodrigues and Brad Marchand giving Florida a 6-1 lead halfway through the third and putting Carolina against the ropes going into an elimination Game 4. Florida will wonder about Mikkola’s status ahead of that tilt. (He left in the third period Saturday after slamming into the end boards.) But the Cats can’t be too frustrated given their win. — Kristen Shilton

play

0:53

Jesper Boqvist puts Panthers back ahead

Jesper Boqvist goes through the goaltender’s legs to restore the Panthers’ lead vs. the Hurricanes.

Unofficial Canadian poet laureate Avril Lavigne once posed one of more philosophical questions of her generation: Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?

Everything the Hurricanes did through the first two periods of Game 3 created the belief that they could potentially stick with the Panthers. Only to then fall apart in the third period. Again.

There are numerous reasons why losing Game 3 is so damning for the Hurricanes. What might be the most prominent and prevalent is there might not be anything else they can do at this stage. We have seen the Panthers take a 3-0 series lead only to be pushed to a Game 7 in a playoff series. That was the case in last year’s Stanley Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers.

But through three games of this series? The Hurricanes have switched goaltenders, adjusted their lineups and sought out other alterations within their structure — and still lost by a large margin while once again falling prey to being on the other end of a big period. — Ryan S. Clark

Three Stars of Game 3

Mikkola has had quite a series. The defensemen has broken up plays, taken command off the rush and created quality scoring chances. He had two goals in Game 3 for his first career multigoal playoff game and the fourth multigoal playoff game in Panthers franchise history.

It was two goals and a helper for the Cats’ captain. This was Barkov’s 20th career multipoint playoff game, the most in Panthers franchise history.

3. The Panthers’ third period

The Panthers unloaded in the final frame, scoring five goals to run away with Game 3 by a final score of 6-2. Five tucks is the most in any period in a playoff game in franchise history. The Hurricanes have now lost 15 straight conference final games since they won the Stanley Cup in 2006. — Arda Öcal

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0:44

Panthers pour it on with 2 more quick goals

The Panthers net two more goals in just over a minute to pad their lead vs. the Hurricanes.

Players to watch in Game 4

There’s no question Florida’s netminder has been building a Conn Smythe case with his excellent play in this postseason. However, Bobrovsky hasn’t been at his most dominant in (initial) closeout games during the playoffs. He made 26 saves for an .897 save percentage in Florida’s Game 5 win over Tampa Bay to send the Lightning home, and made just 15 stops (.882 SV%) in Florida’s Game 6 loss to Toronto in the second round, when the Panthers had a chance to advance.

Bobrovsky was practically impenetrable in Game 7 of that series as the Leafs imploded, but it’s fair to wonder what version of Bobrovsky the Panthers will get in Game 4.

When Florida had an opportunity to close out Edmonton in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final last spring, Bobrovsky turned in his worst showing of the playoffs, with five goals allowed on 11 shots that saw him chased from the net in an 8-1 thumping. Florida has put itself in a good position to send Carolina home, but wouldn’t it be nice to do it sooner than later? Bobrovsky at his best will help Florida do just that. — Shilton

Benching Frederik Andersen was done with the belief that Kochetkov could give the Hurricanes a stronger chance to win. Through two periods, it appeared that that could be the case, as Kochetkov received the necessary support from the Hurricanes’ defensive structure, something that had been an issue in the first two games.

But the Panthers’ five consecutive goals in the third period derailed things. The Hurricanes have now allowed 16 goals over three games. It’s a stark contrast to the first two rounds, when Carolina allowed 18 total in 10 games against the Devils and Capitals.

Kochetkov’s first two periods of Game 3 provided a level of consistency the Hurricanes have struggled to find at times. Is it possible they take something from the opening two-thirds of Game 3 and parlay it into a different outcome in Game 4? Or will it be game and season over instead? — Clark

Big questions for Game 4

Is Florida ready to end this series?

The cliché that the fourth win of a playoff series is the hardest to get exists for a reason. The Panthers experienced that firsthand last season when they took a 3-0 lead over Edmonton in the Stanley Cup Final, then crisscrossed the continent over the next week as the Oilers clawed back to force a Game 7.

Did the Panthers learn their lesson on how to close an opponent out quickly? Florida did it to these very Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference finals two years ago with a tidy four-game sweep featuring many of the same elements we’ve seen from the Panthers in this round. But Florida appeared to have Edmonton well in hand 11 months ago, too.

Game 3 was arguably the Hurricanes’ best of the series. If they can channel some significant desperation into their game Monday, how will Florida handle the pressure of an urgent club trying not to be embarrassed with a 16th consecutive loss in a conference final situation? The Panthers can’t afford to look past what will be a dramatic Game 4. — Shilton

Is this it for the Hurricanes — and what comes next if it is?

That in and of itself is a rather loaded question for several reasons, with the obvious being: Will Monday be Carolina’s last game of the 2025 playoffs? If it is, what could that mean for the franchise going forward?

The way the Hurricanes have been constructed has allowed them to become a perennial playoff team with a legitimate chance of reaching the conference finals. But that comes with the caveat that the Canes might not go any further than that.

It was a dilemma the Panthers faced before making the changes that saw them not only win a Stanley Cup, but also be one win away from a third consecutive Stanley Cup Final. Maybe it doesn’t come to that point for the Hurricanes. But if they allow five or more goals for a fourth straight game while also struggling to score? It could lead to some difficult questions this offseason in Raleigh. — Clark

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Up 3-0, Panthers will not ‘start looking ahead’

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6 hours ago

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May 25, 2025

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Up 3-0, Panthers will not 'start looking ahead'

  • Greg WyshynskiMay 24, 2025, 11:35 PM ET

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      Greg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer.

SUNRISE, Fla. — The Florida Panthers are one win away from an Eastern Conference finals sweep. They’ve outscored the Carolina Hurricanes, a team that’s lost 15 straight conference final games, by a count of 16-4. Yet Panthers forward Brad Marchand is still ready for this series to go the distance.

“We’re prepared to go seven here,” he said after their 6-2 victory in Game 3 on Saturday night. “I mean, you can’t start looking ahead. That’s such a dangerous game to play.”

Contextually, that mindset might seem preposterous. The Panthers are trying to match the Tampa Bay Lightning as the only teams since the Edmonton Oilers’ 1980s dynasty to advance to the Stanley Cup Final in three straight seasons, having won the Cup last season. They’ve dominated the Hurricanes with their physicality, scoring depth and the goaltending of Sergei Bobrovsky, who now has a .947 save percentage and a 1.33 goals-against average in the conference finals.

It seems like a matter of when, not if, Florida will eliminate Carolina — and the “when” is trending to be Monday night at home in Game 4. Yet the Panthers are the last team to take a 3-0 lead for granted.

Coach Paul Maurice recalled their semifinals series against the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2023, when they went up 3-0 and dropped a Game 4 on home ice. “We wanted it so bad that we tried to win the game on every play,” he said.

Then came the ultimate lesson on how not to close out a series: The 2024 Stanley Cup Final, which saw the Panthers squander a 3-0 series lead to the Edmonton Oilers before finally winning Game 7 to hoist the Cup for the first time.

Maurice hopes his players understand the dynamics at play in Game 4.

“They have the desperation advantage. You have, potentially, the desire advantage. Both teams will fight that. Can we control the desire emotion and play the game? Can they control the desperation emotion and play the game? The common denominator is just playing the game,” he said.

Game 3 saw the Hurricanes play with more desperation than they’ve exhibited in this series. The game was tied 1-1 entering the third period after Carolina’s Logan Stankoven — who Bobrovsky robbed earlier in the second period with a lunging blocker save — managed to knock the puck past him for a power-play goal at 14:51 to even the score.

The Hurricanes were finally looking like the stingy, tight-checking team they’re known for being. Maurice wasn’t expecting a windfall of offense from the Panthers after the first 40 minutes of Game 3.

“We’re not going out to the third period saying, ‘Well, we can tell this is going to work out [for us]. I’ve got an extra piece of gum in my pocket for the second overtime. That’s how our experience with Carolina has been,” the coach said.

The gum stayed in his pocket. Florida scored five goals in the first 10:37 of the third period to put the game — and potentially the series — away.

“We knew we needed to be a little better than what we were in the second period, so we tried to keep things simple and I think we got rewarded for that,” said captain Aleksander Barkov, who had two of the goals in the onslaught.

Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour was left dumbfounded.

“We’re playing better and then we just turn pucks over. It’s not what we do. I think everyone’s just pretty surprised, you know what I mean?” he said. “Just you can’t do that. In a preseason game it’s going to cost you. But against that team, and you turn it over for odd man rushes? Forget it.”

The key to the rally was a goal by forward Jesper Boqvist, who was put on Barkov’s line as an injury replacement for Sam Reinhart, the Panthers’ leading scorer in the regular season. He took a short pass from linemate Evan Rodrigues and then turned Carolina defenseman Dmitry Orlov (minus-4) inside out before scoring on the backhand against Pyotr Kochetkov (22 saves), who got the start over Frederik Andersen in Game 3 for Carolina.

Boqvist had just one goal and one assist in 9 playoff games this postseason, averaging 8:53 in ice time. In Game 3, he had three points (1 goal, 2 assists) and skated 15:08 for the Panthers.

“He’s an extremely gifted player. I love playing with him. He can kind of play anywhere in the lineup and he’s such an incredible skater. So strong with the puck, so smart. And that was a massive goal,” Marchand said.

The Panthers won Game 3 without Reinhart and without having forward Eetu Luostarinen for most of the game, after he was ejected for boarding Carolina forward Jackson Blake in the first period. Luostarinen was tied for the team lead with 13 points entering Game 3, with 4 goals and 9 assists.

The Panthers would kill off that 5-minute major in what Maurice called “a real inflection point in the game,” considering that Florida was missing key penalty killers in Luostarinen and Reinhart, who is day-to-day with a lower body injury. When they needed him, Bobrovsky (23 saves) was a great last line of defense.

Thanks to their third-period deluge, the Panthers are now poised to sweep the Hurricanes in the conference final for the second time in three postseasons. Yet even with Florida’s domination of the series, Marchand said his team is anything but overconfident.

“I don’t think the way the games have been played is really an indication of what the outcome’s been, score wise. They’ve been pretty tight. It just seems like we’ve gotten a couple bounces, a couple lucky breaks here and there that have given us a pretty good lead,” he said.

“But it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to change anything about next game. We’ve got to come in and prepare the same way. It’s always the toughest one to get, so we got to make sure we bring our best.”

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Panthers’ Luostarinen ejected after check in 1st

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8 hours ago

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May 25, 2025

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Panthers' Luostarinen ejected after check in 1st

  • Greg WyshynskiMay 24, 2025, 09:25 PM ET

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      Greg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer.

SUNRISE, Fla. — Florida Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen was ejected from Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals after a boarding major against forward Jackson Blake of the Carolina Hurricanes.

With 3:01 left in the first period, Blake was chasing the puck back in his own zone with Luostarinen behind him. As Luostarinen reached out with his stick, Blake stopped short of the boards and Luostarinen hit through him. Luostarinen drove Blake’s head into the boards, bloodying the Carolina forward.

The on-ice officials gave Luostarinen a five-minute major and then reviewed the hit. They confirmed the call on the ice. Per NHL Rule 41.5, when a major penalty for boarding is called, a game misconduct is automatic. A major penalty for boarding is determined by “the degree of violence of the impact with the boards.”

Luostarinen was tied for the team lead with 13 points entering Game 3, with 4 goals and 9 assists. He scored 12 of those points on the road. Blake returned to action in the second period.

The Panthers lead the series 2-0 and had a 1-0 lead in Game 3 when the major penalty was called.

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