FAU fires offensive coordinator Brian Wright

UPDATED 2:52 To give credit to the football scoop who broke the news first

After serving four years as an offensive coordinator for Florida Atlantic Brian Wright will be looking for a new job as Charlie Partridge relieved him of his duties Sunday night. The news was first reported by the football scoop.

Wright came to FAU from Montana State where he first served as their offensive coordinator for two season before being awarded the same position under former head coach Carl Pelini in 2011.

After watching Howard Schnellenberger's pro-style offense run out of favor with the Owl faithful Wright's spread-offense was a breath of fresh air.

When Pelini resigned during the 2013 football season under allegations of drug use during his tenure, Wright served as the team's interim head coach for their final four games of the season and won each game. FAU averaged 37.7 points per game during the four-game winning streak to finish the season 6-6, their first non-losing season since 2008.

After finishing the season with FAU's first four-game winning streak since 2008, Wright was strongly considered to be given the full-time head coaching job by athletic director Pat Chun but rather than promote from within, Chun elected to go with an outside hire and give the head coaching job to Charlie Partridge.

Partridge decided to retain Brian Wright as offensive coordinator to begin the 2014 season but after averaging 26.4 points per game in 2014, the Owls' offense failed to get any better this season despite the return of seniors Jaquez Johnson and Jenson Stoshak.

Aside from the opener against Tulsa in which FAU scored 44 points with 563 total yards of offense, the offense was stagnant all season as they failed to finish drives with touchdowns game after game.

Despite averaging 377.8 yards per game FAU ranked 106th in the country in points per game at 22.5 to finish the season.

So what does Charlie Partridge's firing of Brian Wright mean?

When I attended Partridge's first practice session available to the media the first thing that jumped out to me was Jaquez Johnson was taking snaps from under center. Before landing in Boca Raton, Partridge worked under Bret Bielema from 2008-2013.

Bielema loves to feature a run-first offense with pro-style concepts and a traditional drop-back passer taking snaps from under center.

In Partridge's first two recruiting classes he has signed zero dual-threat quarterbacks - unless you count Jason Driskel, which I don't - and over the weekend picked up another commitment who fits the mold as a pocket passer.

Over the year we saw glimpses of what Partridge may want his offense to look like as several times over the course of a game whoever was at quarterback would take snaps from under center.

Now that the one guy calling plays who didn't feature a pro-style background will no longer be on staff, perhaps that's what Partridge will be looking for when making his next hire.

With highly-touted quarterback Daniel Parr in the wings and a slew of talented running backs to work with the cover will not be bear for the next offensive coordinator.

In what will be a pivotal third year for Charlie Partridge and his staff, whoever he hires to run the offense will define whether Partridge succeeds or fails.