The Massachusetts football team held its annual Spring Game on Saturday, April 19 and debuted offensive dimensions that will give UMass a new look heading into the 2025-26 season. Four quarterbacks hit the field, AJ Hairston and Zach Lawrence playing for the team in white jerseys and Grant Jordan and Will Perry commanding the Minutemen in maroon. The maroon jersey team won thanks to a successful two-point conversion and the white jerseys missing a last-second field goal, 18-17.
Unlike the run-heavy playbook followed in the 2024 season, UMass aired it out in this intersquad matchup, with both Hairston and Jordan, starting quarterbacks for their squads, finishing with over 160 yards in the air. Hairston found the end zone twice with a pair of passes to Dallas Elliot and Brandon Campbell. 2024 was a downgrade from where the UMass pass game found itself in 2023. Throwing for just over 400 less yards in 2024 than 2023, much of that can be attributed to the injury of Taisun Phommachanh, who found his second year in Amherst as injury riddled as the first.
Offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian likes to run his offenses through an unrelenting air attack. Serving as interim offensive coordinator for the Utah Utes in 2024, his team threw for nearly 900 more yards than it ran for, and his style of play calling was seen early and often.
For both the maroon and white jerseyed team, the number of passes thrown was more than the number of rushing attempts. Cookie Desiderio was the lone running back who had double-digit rushing attempts.
Hairston showed off his wheels as well, finishing the game as the third leading rusher and the second leading rusher for the white jersey team. While he finished with 22 net rushing yards, he rattled off a 28-yard rush that set up a white jersey field goal on fourth-and-five later in the drive. Jordan also made use of his legs, scoring one of two rushing touchdowns for the maroon jerseyed team.
“We did a good job moving the ball, with the running clock it’s [kind of] harder,” head coach Joe Harasymiak said. “… We talked, both coordinators and myself, you know ‘just keep it clean, let them play fast’ but I thought [Hairston and Jordan] both managed the game, I thought they both made good throws … they were clean.”
There were not many instances in the 2024 season where the signal caller found themselves under center. In all three seasons under the tenure of former head coach Don Brown, “shotgun no huddle” was almost exclusively heard before the ball was snapped. While the spring game was a little more than an hour and a half long, we can confidently say that there were more snaps taken under center on Saturday than there were across the previous three seasons.
Switching up the formation of the offense play after play seemed to give receivers more time to breathe on their routes and gave running backs bigger gaps and holes to muscle through. The beneficiaries of this were Jacquon Gibson and Tyree Kelly, who led the maroon and white jersey teams in receiving yards, respectively. Gibson finished with 81 receiving yards, while Kelly finished with 79 yards, along with the longest reception of the day at 34 yards. No tight ends were used in the receiving game on Saturday.
“I felt great, man,” Kelly said. “I’m coming off an MCL sprain … I [came] from [USF] so I didn’t really get an opportunity to show my talent … the biggest thing is to keep improving man, keep believing … [my] last play I had a fade ball, I should have caught it. That’s the difference between winning the game and losing the game.”
Campbell reached the end zone for the white jerseys to start the second quarter, finishing the drive that concluded with his short run up the middle that was halted at the end of the first. His touchdown came from a passing attempt rather than a rush, looking to pass the pylon on Hairston’s right.
While the redshirt junior was a more consistent target in the previous season, seeing time on the field in all but one game, he was overshadowed by Desiderio in the spring game. Unlike Campbell, Desiderio saw the 2024 field only twice and ended his first season with the Minutemen with a mere 20 total rushing yards.
Saturday put the redshirt freshman in the spotlight. He led the white jerseys in rushing yards on 10 attempts for 64 yards without being backtracked once.
When Jordan searched for options on the ground for the maroon jerseys, Rocko Griffin was his main target. The redshirt junior steered the run game with 51 yards on nine carries, creating a 35-yard gap on the stat sheet between him and the second leading rusher Godson Ofonagoro. Griffin was also the difference maker for the men in maroon, completing the bobbling two-point conversion attempt.
This new edge to UMass’ offense will be tested in the Mid-American Conference. Without playing a full powered game on Saturday, opting for tag tackles, both offenses had more opportunities to test their depth. Playing against teammates as well, the spring game was not fully indicative of how well the offense will match up against future MAC opponents.
“I thought guys competed,” Harasymiak said. “It’s hard when you don’t go to the ground. Just using your tempo, your speed, it slows it down a little bit because you’re not going through people, but I thought the operation was pretty clean.”
The Minutemen will cool down to end the semester before summer training camp ramps up in July.
“UMass fans, get ready for a big season, man,” Kelly said. “We’re [going to] turn it around, we’re [trying to] go to a bowl game.”
Sydney Ciano can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter/X @SydneyCiano.
Johnny Depin can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter/X @Jdepin101.
