Tuesday was Mike Schultz’s first day on the field as Middle Tennessee’s new offensive coordinator -- two weeks after he accepted the job.

Schultz’s introduction to the Blue Raiders has been a whirlwind.

He’s spent long days and nights learning the offense former offensive coordinator Tony Franklin installed last year, as well as personnel and the names of his fellow coaches, who have done some major handholding to get Schultz ready for the first day of spring practice.

“Today was my first practice and I wasn’t sure where the field was until about 2 o’clock this afternoon,” Schultz said jokingly.

Schultz had just a few days to meet his offensive players before most of them went on spring break last week. Schultz used that time to bunker down in his office and watch all of the film he could get his hands on. He watched every cut-up of Franklin’s spread offense, every cut-up of every game from last year’s 10-3 campaign, and every game in its entirety, sometimes two or three times.

“And I’ve been trying to get myself in a position to move,” Schultz said of moving himself and his wife into their new home.

But Schultz doesn’t mind the cram session. After all, he was unemployed when Middle Tennessee coach Rick Stockstill called him about the position. Schultz was fired in mid-December after one season as the offensive coordinator at Illinois. Prior to that, he spent 11 years as an offensive coach at TCU, including eight as the offensive coordinator.

So, Schultz is doing his best to make this move stick and so is Middle Tennessee, which is on its third offensive coordinator in the past three seasons.

Schultz said he has no plans to change the offense that made the Blue Raiders so successful last season. He’ll make slight adjustments to fit his personal style, but nothing that will be that noticeable.

“There will be some tweaks in the run game and there will be some tweaks in the pass game, but I don’t think, unless you’re in on the meetings, you’ll see the difference,” Schultz said. “It will be very similar to what they were doing [before]. They’ve had great success here and [quarterback] Dwight [Dasher] has a great feel for the offense and knows what we’re trying to get done. The only thing that we’re trying to do is take a few of Tony’s ideas and build on that. Believe me, there’s not going to be a major overhaul. It’s going to be very minimum and we’ll try to stay within the system that was established here before.”

It helps that Middle Tennessee returns eight offensive starters, including Dasher, who ranked seventh in the country in total offense averaging 303.31 yards per game. And Dasher will have some extra help this year with running back Phillip Tanner back from a knee injury he suffered in the second game of the season.

The biggest losses are center Mark Thompson, and Patrick Honeycutt and Chris McClover, who were two of the team’s top three receivers.

Because there are so many returners, Schultz said he didn’t want to do anything too drastic.

“The one thing that I think Coach Stock wanted to do and I wanted to do was come in and keep our zone,” Schultz said. “Our kids, I think, we’re in a comfort zone; they had confidence, and that’s just me observing from the outside. So, it was very important to try and keep things as similar as we could so their comfort level would stay intact.”

Shultz said as difficult as the change is on him, it’s probably worse on the players, but even they’ve helped the new coach find his way. Schultz said during the first practice, Dasher recommended that the team run a drill similar to the way it was run last year and Schultz had no objection.

Other assistant coaches helped walk Schultz through certain parts of practice as well.

“The guys that I’m working with are unbelievable,” Schultz said. “There were four guys here that were left and those guys have been unbelievable about helping me. I’m going to have some of those growing pains early. Hopefully, I’m going to work my way through this.

"But right now, I’m concentrating on short-term goals and that’s get to the film room tonight and then trying to get through tomorrow’s practice.”