AMHERST — Most of the UMass football transfer offensive linemen made their way to Amherst in the winter, right around the end of January according to Minutemen associate head coach/offensive line coach Alex Miller.

Now less than seven full months later, when Miller and his position group sit down to eat lunch or dinner together, it sounds as if he’s been coaching them for all four years of their college football careers. Their table is full of rich conversation and laughter. Miller and the new linemen, as well as several of UMass’ veteran returning blockers, clicked right away.

What’s made it even easier to do so? The newcomers didn’t come to Amherst for just themselves. They’re with UMass to help the program take another leap forward in 2024.

“They’re mature, they’re good people and they play hard, and the way I’m wired, we’re just naturally gonna be drawn to each other with that,” Miller said of this year’s group. “And the thing I really like about the guys we brought in, is maybe they’re here for one year, but this place means a lot to them. And obviously for me, that’s a big deal.”

Alongside three-year starters Josh Atwood and Ethan Mottinger is redshirt junior Wyatt Terlaak, who appeared in eight games for UMass in 2023. Add in graduate transfers Brayden Rohme (California) and Luke Painton (Columbia), redshirt junior Mao Glynn II (Cincinnati) and a few other upperclassmen in the room, it’s clear Miller and head coach Don Brown went after one thing in the portal during the offseason: experience.

Atwood said after Friday’s practice that this is the most experienced group he’s ever been a part of during his five years at UMass. His coach echoed that same sentiment.

“Since I’ve been here, for sure [this is the group with the most college football experience that I’ve coached],” Miller said. “There are just little nuances that they know about. They know how to set themselves up for practice, and how to prepare for practice physically and mentally.”

Friday’s session marked one week of summer practice for UMass. Depending on the team, it can typically take several weeks to install the full offensive playbook. But because this Minutemen offensive line has played a ton of football already, they’ve already implemented nearly the entire playbook through six practice sessions.

Now with three weeks until the season opener against Eastern Michigan on Aug. 31, the rest of the time can be spent fine-tuning certain plays and formations. The hard part is essentially done.

“We’ve installed probably most of our offense at this point, so to be at that point in the first week I think is really good,” Atwood said. “Everyone has those little things they need to keep working on, but we have another half a month left to keep working. I think we’re gonna be in a really good spot. I think we’ve progressed as we should so far in practice.”

Miller said he hasn’t always been able to front-load the installment process with previous teams like he’s done this year. Atwood, Mottinger and the rest of the leaders on the line were simply ready for it.

Plus, with Brown and defensive coordinator Keith Dudzinski finding unique ways to disguise defenses during 11-on-11 sessions, the offense needed to have as many plays at their disposal as possible.

“It has to do with having the older players, you can get a little heavy on the install early,” Miller said. “Especially going against Coach [Brown’s] defense, you wanna get everything in. You’re gonna see a bunch of different looks so you can have a bunch of different offenses to work with. Having the older guys, we’ve been able to fast forward that, so now really we can refine it over the next two weeks before we get to that week before the game.”

Playing against a Don Brown-led defense is one advantage that UMass’ offense has every offseason. It’s hard to find a more creative defensive mind than Brown, so what the Minutemen see in practice only makes competing against other teams seem a bit easier.

And again, having a unit that has played the amount of games that UMass’ o-line has is an unquestionable bonus.

“Up front, because we’re so old and we’ve seen a lot of college football, we’re not getting surprised by blitzes anymore,” Atwood said. “We know what to expect, especially playing this defense for camp and spring ball, it gets so damn tiring. So playing them every day, it’s gonna make us so much sharper up front.

“Having their perspectives coming in from other offenses, they’ve played a lot of football elsewhere, I think it’s gonna help us overall,” Atwood added of the transfers. “Our communication is getting better every day, we’re slowly getting on the same page in terms of thinking the same way about our plays.”