HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — For someone with decades of coaching experience, there isn’t a whole lot University of Houston football head coach Willie Fritz hasn’t seen.

Last season was not only his first year with the school, but his first leading a team in a Power 4 conference.

“It was a whirlwind without question. When you take over a program, everything is new to you,” Fritz said.

That includes navigating through a new era of college football with the NIL and the transfer portal.

“Before when you’d come in, the roster that you had was going to be there with you. Now they have the opportunity to leave, and you can bring guys. We want to be a program that develops. We want to retain our roster, and that’s what we want to do this upcoming year,” Fritz said.

The Cougars ended the season with a 4-8 record, and much of that was due to struggles on the offense. The team had only nine passing touchdowns.

To help rebuild a program with a long history of successful quarterbacks leading high-flying offenses, more depth has been added to the position.

They’ve signed Austin Carlisle out of Fort Bend’s Ridge Point High School. They’ve also added Texas A&M transfer Conner Weigman, who was highly recruited out of Bridgeland High School in Cypress.

“We’ll have great competition this spring. All of the guys are learning a new system, and our coach is learning them,” he said.

A new coach is new offensive coordinator Slade Nagle from LSU, who was on Coach Frtiz’s staff that turned around Tulane.

“I think it’s going to be an exciting offense, still play complimentary football, a little more drop back game than we’ve done in the past with our talent that we have. I think that can be a plus for us,” he said.

One thing for sure, whoever is named the starting quarterback will have plenty of help headed into the second year of the Willie Fritz era.

“We added a couple of wide receivers, Harvey Broussard and Amare Thomas. Luke McGary from Tulsa signed a couple of high school tight ends as well. You know, probably the biggest position we’ve improved on the offensive side of the ball is the offensive line,” he said.

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