Urban Meyer Q&A on his offense

The Orlando Sentinel's Chris Harry has a great Q&A with Urban Meyer. I hope I don't get in trouble for this but it's basically all worth reading. See the original link here:

HARRY: You hear a lot in the offseason about coaches going to visit different schools and exchanging ideas with other coaches for the sake of the program and professional development. How's that work here?

MEYER: "That's a big part of what we do. For example, our strength coach and my administrative assistant, every year -- and they have no choice -- have to get on a plane and go visit the best places in America and find out if we're doing the right stuff. I've always encouraged our trainers, our academic people. It's the ones who sit around and do nothing. At some point, [everybody's] going to catch you. No, that is a must. You are graded on your professional development. That's part of your evaluation. And we don't want to be frivolous. We run a certain style, so we don't want to waste time. Go see your buddy? We don't want to do that. There has to be a reason. [The concept] is kind of amazing. I tell people, I'm sure Pepsi doesn't visit Coca-Cola and figure out how to make pop"

HARRY: Where do you draw the line?

MEYER: "It's hard. We've drawn it more. It got out of control a little bit. You have so much work to do. All of a sudden, people are walking in saying, 'Hey coach, you got three hours?' No. You just don't have time. So the last few years we've kind of made it off limits. We do allow some in. If Jon Gruden calls? Absolutely. Bill Belichick comes down every year. We're certainly not going to say no to them. So we handpick who we allow to come in."

HARRY: A guy like Gruden, you never know. He could be standing across from you on a sideline one day.

MEYER: "True. But you have to get something. This is a two-way street. For Jon Gruden to come in and just take? We're not going to do that. We're not into supplying information. We're into exchanging information. A guy like Bill Belichick? I get 10 times more than what he gets from us. Same for Jon Gruden. . . . I could go on and on and on. [California's] Jeff Tedford. He's one of my great friends. We always do it. Rich Rodriguez? We used to do it all the time [when he was at West Virginia], but now he's at Michigan and a competitor in recruiting so we don't anymore. [Rutgers'] Greg Schiano. I could go on and on. Mike Leach at Texas Tech. We often have conversation. [Utah's] Kyle Willingham and I talk twice a week."

HARRY: Give me an example of something Bill Belichick could share with you.

MEYER: "Where do I start? I am amazed at the how he handles elite athletes. You never hear about issues with off-the-field stuff. I am amazed to the point that I got on a plane and I went up and watched over three days and saw how he handled these, um, some of these elite guys. For some reason, the Patriots do this, but you hear about the Cowboys and these other teams just falling apart because of chemistry issues. And then there's Bill Belichick. Our whole program is based on what we learned from him; the core of the team has to be strong."

HARRY: When was the last time you saw a play or a formation where you went, "Wow! I've never seen that before."

MEYER: "Forty-five minutes ago. I've been watching Oklahoma tape all morning."

HARRY: Really? You often hear coaches say that nothing is new; that everything has been used before. Yet when the Wildcat showed up in Miami last year, it was like the NFL freaked out. But it was old-time single-wing football, which is lot of what you do here. What was the genesis of your offense?

MEYER: Part of it is single wing, yeah. I would say there's a spread element and a single-wing element. We've combined them both. We want to have a run component. At any time, anybody can stop the run. It's just taking one more defender than you can block and putting him right there [on the line]. Unless that guy is not very good and you have a great running back, like a lot of the Big Ten teams when I was growing up. Everybody would say, 'BYOB: Bring Your Own Blocker.' He's on scholarship too, and you have to run him over sometime. That's OK. But to simply say we're going to do that all the time and score points, I can't disagree with that more. So how do you take advantage of the guy that's the extra defender? There's two ways to do it. One: you run a single-wing offense, which means you spread a guy out so that [extra defender] has to go cover him. Two: you spread out and throw the ball. We're going to do both."

HARRY: What about the single wing has given it the staying power?

MEYER: "The fact you can run the ball when everybody is blocked. You'll hear a saying around here: 'Never run the ball against an unblocked defender.' Never do it! And I'm kind of giving you everything we do here." (The next few minutes involved some scribbling and lots of X's and O's, the bulk of which, without the diagrams, doesn't translate very well in print. I can promise you, though, it was as interesting as it was informative.) [Ed. Note: Darn! I guess this is why my site exists.]

HARRY: Option football has universally been written off as something that cannot work in the NFL. There are other offenses people say, flat-out, can't work in the NFL.

MEYER: "If you know me, you know I think any offense can work if you have the right personnel back. Offenses are overrated. People are not. The NFL will take a quarterback and put him on a very bad team and call him a bust. Never mind that the defense ranks last in the league and there's no offensive line. Chris Leak [in 2005] had about as bad a three-game [stretch] as we've had at Florida that I've ever had as a coach and it just so happened that Bubba Caldwell broke his leg, Jermaine Cornelius sprained his ankle, Chad Jackson had a bad hamstring and Dallas Baker broke his ribs. And so Chris Leak struggled the next three games when we're playing LSU, Georgia. It doesn't matter what you run. It's personnel based."

HARRY: You kind of just told the Alex Smith story. Your guy at Utah. No. 1 overall pick just four years ago. Goes to a bad team. A lot of folks already have written him off as a bust already.

MEYER: "I don't want to give you names, but I can list 10 other quarterbacks who aren't doing great, too. They're West Coast [offense] quarterbacks. It's about who's on the team."

HARRY: It seems what's happened with Alex is held up as the standard for spread quarterbacks projecting to the NFL. Obviously, you've heard that rap with regard to Tim Tebow's future there, and heading into the draft people were wondering if Percy Harvin's three years of running bubble screens meant he couldn't run a simple dig and the rest of the routes on the passing tree.

MEYER: He can run it better than most; and if someone is paying him $20 million, he'll run a great dig route. It's interesting that you say that. I don't hear it a lot, maybe in recruiting once in a while, but I did hear a NFL coach saying something about that. I like to do my homework. I went and checked the record of that coach and the guy barely had a .500 record. [Ed Note: Reminds me of what Mike Leach said about Mangini.] There are certain people I'll have a discussions with. And if I hear something like that, that's not a person I want to have a discussion with. That's nonsense. That's someone putting too much value on scheme rather than personnel."

HARRY: Is your offense easy to teach?

MEYER: "Again, it's based on people. I keep going back to that, but if you have really good players, it's really easy. If you don't, it's really hard. Is the West Coast offense easy to teach? If Joe Montana is throwing to Jerry Rice, yeah, Daffy Duck can teach it. I don't want to de-value teaching. It's absolutely critical, but I'm still going to go back to personnel."

HARRY: Are you a NFL fan?

MEYER: "I'm a fan of some players, some coaches, not necessarily teams. I try to watch the Patriots, but Sundays are such a busy day. Maybe on bye weeks."

HARRY: But you study some teams during offseason, I'll bet. That constitutes professional development, right?

MEYER: "Absolutely. Every year I go to a camp or two. I've already been up to Jacksonville. Spent five hours with Jack Del Rio. Phenomenal coach. I like this new guy [Raheem Morris] in Tampa Bay. I've been invited down there. And I'll get up to New England again."

Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel

Michael Jackson

The Living Legend that no longer alive...yet will stay a legend, Michael Jackson...

May your soul rest in peace

(http://buzznext.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html)

Since Jackson 5 he had inspires every walks of live through his music and his so called moonwalk dancing....

and he will be remembered years ahead...

(http://www.myspace.com/thegreatestmusiciansofalltimes)


(http://asignacioncompleta.blogspot.com/search?q=BEN)





(http://www.nj.com/morristown/index.ssf/morris_township/)

farewell michael


(http://www.latestnewsonline.net/tag/michael-jackson)

How to take a team to the woodshed with your spread offense

The spread may not always be the answer to everything, but if you can do what this team does, you don't need anything else. (Warning: This video contains images of putrid tackling, and may not be suitable for public consumption.)



(Ht HueyBoard).

Incidentally, though I generally agree with Dr Saturday that the spread isn't (and need not be) the sine qua non of someone's offense to the exclusion of everything else, practice time must be considered: Division I football teams have a fraction of the practice time allowed in the NFL, but even many high schools have more practice time, counting in summer passing leagues, spring football, and all that. And, with limited practice time, there can be benefits to being a hedgehog like Florida or TTech, and doing one thing extremely well, rather than going for mystical universality by being "pro-style, whereby the players are overloaded.

Steve Logan on the shallow cross and blitz-control

Steve Logan, currently with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and formerly the offensive coordinator for Boston College and head coach of East Carolina, has a nice presentation on using "hot" routes in the dropback game. This is a nice companion to my recent discussion on the "shallow," "drive," and "drag" concepts. (I also recently linked to Logan discussing four-verticals.)

Assorted links

1. Malzahn follow-on. Lots of follow-ups on the Malzahn post I had last week.

• Jerry at the Joe Cribbs Car Wash weighs in with his take.
  
• Fields of Donahue, too.
  
• Roll Bama Roll takes the slightly more cynical view (not surprising, though check out the comments for some great discussion). Only thing I will say about the Malzahn versus Franklin "we've heard it all before" debate is that all sides now admit that there were serious behind the scenes issues at Auburn last year -- regardless of whoever was at fault -- that would contribute to making any offense dysfunctional. And, of course, Auburn's offense ramained poor even after Franklin left. So continuity and support alone ought to make Auburn's offense at least a little better.
  
• Blutarsky feels deja vu but also does a little SEC predictin'.

2. Mike High Report on my post about Brandon Marshall's "trade value."

3. mgoblog in a post that should be titled "How to Blog."

4. TeamSpeedKills on why there is no Platonic Ideal "Urban Meyer offense," and why Meyer is more on the "Just win, baby," side of things.

5. Kansas State might be, well, corrupt: "A scathing audit of Kansas State University reveals a pattern of undisclosed payments, conflicts of interest, poor accounting and possible tax problems for the school, several of its former employees and its athletic department. The audit, released by the Kansas Board of Regents on Friday, describes thousands of dollars paid to companies owned by current and former university employees. They include head football coach Bill Snyder; former athletic director Tim Weiser; and Bob Krause, a former vice president for institutional advancement and former athletic director." (Ht Dr Saturday.)

6. Dan Le Betard meets up with now bankrupt ex-football star Bernie Kosar, and it is...interesting:

[Kosar] just learned the other day, after much trying and failing, how to make his own coffee. This is a man who owned his own jet and helped found companies, plural. But when his new girlfriend came over recently and found him trying to cook with his daughters, she couldn't believe what was on the kitchen island to cut the French bread. A saw.
''I was 25 and everyone was telling me that I was the smartest; now I'm 45 and realize I'm an idiot,'' he says. "I'm 45 and immature. I don't like being 45."

(Ht, again, Dr Saturday.) (Le Batard has kind of a buffoonish persona, but he always seems to snare good quotes from people. Last week he had this colloquoy with Jimmy Johnson: "Will you go days without putting on pants, Jimmy? ''Days?'' he says. ``Weeks! . . . ."

7. The Quad previews the Hawai'i Warriors. My take? They had an identity crisis last year while trying to inject more running into their run and shoot offense. The report is that this year they are getting back to basics, and, for a team like this, that should be a good thing.

8. Image of the week, courtesy of Eleven Warriors. (Ht mgoblog.)