Gus Malzahn gives up play-calling duties to Tim Harris Jr. amid midseason changes

Amid a five-game losing streak, the UCF Knights are making changes to the coaching staff. Head coach Gus Malzahn announced that Tim Harris Jr. is going to take over the playcalling duties moving forward for the Knights.

Tim Harris Jr. is UCF’s offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach and is in his second stint working on Gus Malzahn’s staff at UCF. Prior to this move, Malzahn had been calling plays for UCF.

“Offensively, Tim Harris is gonna take over playcalling duties the rest of the season,” Gus Malzahn said. “Real excited for Tim. He’s a rising star. He’s been waiting on this moment. Gonna allow me to be taking care of more of the head coaching duties, which there is more demands on the head coach this day and time than ever before. It’ll help me be on top of all three phases…Our players have a lot of confidence in Tim.”

This decision comes on the same day it was announced that Gus Malzahn made the decision to fire defensive coordinator Ted Roof. Malzahn emphasized that both decisions were his own.

UCF came into the season with high expectations that the Knights have failed to live up to. Their five-game losing streak is the team’s longest since the 2015 season when they went winless in George O’Leary‘s final season running the program.

While both sides of the ball have been an issue of late for UCF, the offense has struggled to find any consistency this season. In particular, the quarterback situation has been complicated, with the Knights starting three different quarterbacks and playing four different quarterbacks this season.

As a team, UCF is 20th in the country in total offense, averaging 454.8 yards per game. That’s largely because of the rushing offense, which is third in the country, averaging 267.88 yards per game on the ground. However, UCF has been one-dimensional and is 106th in passing offense, with 186.9 yards per game passing. All of that has amounted to the 51st-ranked scoring offense in the country, averaging 30.4 points per game.

However, that scoring offense is still being propped up by dominant wins against some relatively weak opponents to open the season. During the five-game losing streak, UCF is averaging just 21.2 points per game.

Tim Harris Jr. came to UCF on Malzahn’s staff in 2021. At the time, he was the team’s running backs coach and co-offensive coordinator. For the 2023 season, he left for Miami to be the Hurricanes’ running backs coach, returning to UCF for the 2024 season to be the offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach under Malzahn.

At 1-4 in Big 12 play, UCF is not in contention to make the conference championship game. However, at 3-5 with four games left, a bowl is still on the table for the Knights. They just have to win three out of their last four and it appears that these shakeups to the staff are how Gus Malzahn plans on winning those games in November.

Next up for UCF is their Space Game against Arizona, an annual tradition where the team wears uniforms that give a nod to the school’s connection to space travel. It’s also a game UCF has never lost.