A dive into John David Baker’s East Carolina offense

We may never know if Pete Golding or athletic director Keith Carter gave a hearty AHOY, MATEY to John David Baker after he accepted the Ole Miss offensive coordinator job, but they should have. There are not many opportunities in life to say that to someone when it sort of makes sense.

Whatever their response, Baker returns to Oxford after two years as offensive coordinator for East Carolina. As you may have heard a time or 700 by now, Baker was on staff from 2021-23 in the Lane Kiffin era, serving as tight ends coach with a side of passing game coordinator (2021) and the nominal but salary-bumping title of co-offensive coordinator in 2022 and 2023.

The 2023 season is the important year because that’s when he crossed paths with Golding, who joined Kiffin’s staff as defensive coordinator. Fast forward to Golding now in charge of the Ole Miss program and looking for an offensive coordinator he knows and is familiar with the Kiffin offense he wants to keep, Baker checks both boxes.

Granted, the list of offensive coordinator candidates who check both boxes includes Charlie Weis Jr., John David Baker, and that’s it. Double granted, other factors were in play because Golding does not come across as an idiot with only two boxes to check.

Regardless of the checks and whatnot, the initial knocks against Baker are:

• He has 2 years of experience as an OC
• He has 0 years of SEC experience as an OC
• He has 0 years of Power 4 experience as an OC

That means he’s jumping straight into the deep end and will coach against defensive coaches with far more SEC and Power 4 experience, as well as experience living in a 24/7 pressure cooker as the face of one side of the ball. The number of Ole Miss fans yelling at him to RUN THE DANG BALL, and the intensity with which they will do it, will dwarf whatever he lived with at East Carolina.

As for his production numbers with the Pirates, they’re mostly all fine to good, but, since he has the keys to Ole Miss’ offense in his third year of ever calling plays, I’d like to see a little more pop, given the competition they played. However, I say that as someone with zero knowledge of East Carolina’s personnel situation, Baker’s relationship with the head coach, and the head coach’s game management abilities.

Meaning, were they down players in key spots, did Baker lack autonomy, and was the head coach a bozo?

The good news is Baker took over an offense that was perfect garbage in 2023 and improved it over his two years. Now, enough of me yammering, let’s dig in.

First, let’s look at East Carolina’s offensive profiles from 2024 and 2025 via Game on Paper, which only uses data from FBS versus FBS games. Actually, let’s start with 2023 just so you can see the transition from BUTT DOT COM to WE CAN BUILD ON THIS.

Here’s 2023:

When the takeaway from an offensive profile is that it looks like a watch telling you it’s 3:55, that is a major NOT GREAT, BOB. The ideal profile should fill as much of the white space as possible.

As a reminder, the pillars of a good offense are explosiveness, efficiency, and no turnovers. The more chunk plays you create, combined with a lack of negative plays and finishing drives with touchdowns and not giving away possessions, the better your offense will be.

Things like total yards, number of plays, and time of possession can be fun, but they don’t mean much. For example, here’s a game where Ole Miss won the total yards battle 703-503 (rushing yards 463-335), total plays 89-65, and time of possession by 2o seconds, and they lost 42-27.

After Baker took over ECU in 2024, things get A TOUCH better:

Baker doesn’t get enough credit for turning an offensive profile from a watch that says it’s 3:55 to the spitting image of an outline of France. The TL;DR of his 2024 campaign is:

• Solid to good running team
• Passing offense was very inefficient but did generate explosive plays
• Fairly good at limiting negative plays (Havoc percentage)

According to Bill Connelly, Baker’s offense was 59th in offensive SP+, and their red zone scoring percentage was 119th. Not great numbers, but a wild turnaround from 2023.

Now let’s look at 2025:

Despite the odd shape here, the offense slightly improved overall, thanks to a passing game making a monster leap. The TL;DR of his 2025 campaign is:

• Passing offense got more efficient while maintaining its explosiveness from 2024
• Running game went into the toilet, but didn’t create many negative plays
• In general, they got better at limiting negative plays
• Overall explosiveness of the offense plummeted because the running game was so bad
• Turnover margin went from 90th to 35th

The offense jumped to 34th in SP+, but the red zone scoring percentage was still very bad at 87th, which makes sense if you can’t run effectively.

Now, I’m just a simpleton who logs on to the internet, but the profiles above tell me that Baker knows what he’s doing and tries to play to his strengths. But again, if I were Pete Golding, I’m not sure I’d tie my initial success to an inexperienced offensive coordinator at the G5 level and hope he finds a way to improve against better competition and coaching.

Baker could turn out to be an elite coach, mostly fine, or looking for another job in 2027. Obviously, I’m hoping for the first option in that trio, but Golding is taking a chance on a hire he needs to get right to keep things rolling.