Sometimes I sure am glad that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” With the season on the backside of the schedule and district play fast approaching and our Colonels sitting with a subpar 1-5 record I thought I would take a look at the current state of the program.
On the surface, our record and lack of points are glaring deficiencies in what the staff and I are trying to accomplish here. My initial expectations on taking this job have not been met by a long shot and our performance on the field is far below what these young men are capable of. The logical question to follow those statements is: “why?”
Let’s break down the two main questions from above.
1-Why have we lost so many games? The simple answer; because we have given up more points than we have scored. I know it sounds simple and slightly sarcastic, but it is the truth. Also, as I wrote about before, success does breed success. It takes a lot of little successes (executing plays) to get to a large success (winning games) and right now we are not accumulating enough of the little successes. As the great Joe Paterno says, “Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.”
2-Why have we struggled so mightily to score points? I think the largest reason is simply comprehension. We are still struggling to learn and understand the game of football. You take 11 players on the field, many of whom have less than 2 years of experience playing the game, and you are going to have somewhere around 22 or more mistakes possible per play. Each player must know A: what to do and B: how to do it each time they line up. The “what to do” is generally the easy part, but the “how to do it” takes time practicing. My old mentor and coach Mike Wyatt used to say, “What makes a good player? Knowledge and experience.” It takes many, many repetitions to gain experience and we are in the infant stages of getting these players the repetitions we need to have the performance we expect. If we can continue to minimize mistakes we can begin to string together longer and longer series of plays without shooting ourselves in the foot and find the endzone more.
I also believe that winning and success are part of a culture that is developed. Certain teams just seem to know how to win. They know how to have success when the opportunities are presented. It is a learnable skill and we are still learning that. It requires discipline, focus, practice and chemistry. Non football activities, community service projects, accountability for actions outside of the football program, measured successes in the weight room, preparation through film study and an understanding of expectations all aid in developing that culture. But like anything else, if we don’t understand what we are doing, it is very difficult to do it correctly.
Now on to the positives. There are far more positives than negatives, it is just going to take a bit of time for those to be seen from an outsider’s view.
Positive #1: We currently have 46 young men out for football. From what I have gathered, that is a very large amount for us to carry. That high number does slow us down slightly in terms of teaching, however, it gives us greater depth and greater amounts of talent. It also helps to offset losses from graduation and transfers.
Positive #2: Game experience. As mentioned above, many of our players are in their first or second year of playing football (27 to be exact). Of those 46, all have played in at least one game. Also of those 46, 13 freshmen and sophomores have seen significant varsity playing experience this year. It is a silver lining in a cloud that is very far away, but still a very significant silver lining. Slight side note: When I was at Panhandle State University, our first year we made a decision to predominately play those kids who would help us in the future. This was a program that had not won a game in two seasons. So that year we played 31 freshman as opposed to 6 seniors. We ended up taking our lumps that season with a 0-10 record, however those freshmen that we had so ungraciously “thrown to the wolves” ended up being the catalyst as juniors and seniors for standout teams.
Positive #3: I am continually impressed by their desire to learn. Most days I have to kick kids out of my classroom when class starts each period, they always come up to specifically talk about the football tests and scheme that week. Even during our multiple film sessions each week, the kids are full of relevant questions and I often don’t get through all the film desired. I have zero problem with this, as long as they keep wanting to learn.
Positive #4: Each week there are more and more cadets expressing a desire to play football. That tells me that despite the current record, your boys and the rest of the corps see a value in what we are doing.
Positive #5: Pride. To me this is by far the greatest positive that has me excited to coach these young men each morning and evening. They know that what they are doing on the field isn’t good enough and they keep wanting to improve on that. They ask to repeat things in practice so that they can be “perfect” with them (obviously we would anyway, but it’s a joy to hear them ask before they are told). I do not sense any ambivalence from them, rather their resolve seems to be getting stronger, as does their discipline. Continuous improvement through trials will yield great results!
As to the game this week, your Colonels will be facing Metro East Lutheran. On the year the Knights are 1-5 with their only win coming by forfeit to Barat Academy. I have no doubt they will be heavily motivated to get their first win on the field this season. The Knights will feature a spread out attack similar to what we saw earlier versus Winfield. Their quick passing game should be well defended by the Colonels’ backfield of Lowry, Shapiro, Harris, Vanatta and Smalley. The Knights will also try to run the ball out of the spread with quick hitting dives and wide zone plays. The intent is to have DEs Skinner and Jordane contain the plays to allow LB Workman and DT Strauss to clean up freely on the inside.
Offensively, look for MMA to keep pounding away at the run. A couple strong weeks of running by Cadets Udeh, Pate and Voss-Scott should carry over into tonight. And those strong running performances would not happen if not for the solid development of the offensive line. Cadets Skinner, Tennant, Villarreal, King, Mabbs, Strauss and Lozano have gelled well and are creating large holes for our RBs to run through. If the running game continues on track, expect to see QB Owens, DT air it out some to receivers Talley, Workman, Lowry and Heard.
As always, I believe in our boys and I think our chances of a victory tonight are very high, but it all comes down to execution. The team that commits the fewest mistakes will get a much deserved win and will have some momentum heading into district play next week.
Until next time…I’ll leave you with this quote from the late Steve Jobs; “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.”
ON ACADEMY!
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13 weeks. 10 Games. 3 Months. It seems like just yesterday when we had our first team meeting with 26 young men in August. Man how time flies. What an exciting, interesting, enlightening and educational journey this season has been for myself, my staff and hopefully our players.
