First, can you let me know what you’re up to now – where you’re at?
Currently I’m the Defensive Analyst at ECU. I was on the offensive side for a decade before doing this. Mostly it’s opposition research – helping defenses get ready for whatever offense we play. Looking at tendencies, concepts and the personnel strengths and weaknesses of the teams we play to help determine what we practice more or less of each week.
That’s been more of my role for the last two years.
Any preference in coaching offense versus defense? Was coaching the defense a part of a higher aspiration to be a head coach some day?
I do love the offensive side more. I hope to get back on the offensive side again at some point. I love college football – my time in the NFL was awesome – Pittsburgh is a great franchise and there was no better place to coach in the NFL. But my heart belongs in college football – that’s probably where I’ll stay.
I don’t have aspirations to be a head coach though. The guy who showed me the value of learning both sides of the ball was Mike Tomlin. He was a wideout but coached defense. He’s been on both sides and that really helped me learn the game.
I like that with certainty now I am able to say what I’m looking at – now I have a better understanding of what this guy or that guy did and how to prepare for them.
Who were some of your mentors as a coach?
I was never around a more authentic and capable leader that Mike Tomlin. He is so skilled at managing players and being consistent. He is the same every day – win or lose. His approach and emotional response to things doesn’t change. That’s uncommon for coaches. And that’s important as a coach because he doesn’t react to things and change the processes up on you – he trusts you to get the work done. From a leadership standpoint that’s what I look for.
From the offensive standpoint Randy Fichtner took me under his wing. Creating a structure and creatively, that’s who I learned from. He taught me how to work with experienced and new quarterbacks.
With Ben being the guy, all bended around that. His ability to show me how to work with a guy like Ben was helpful. In college all is regimented. But with things being more Ben-centric, as it should have been with a guy that talented, we had to learn how to push the boundaries of what he was comfortable with. Randy used to say Ben was as much an artist as a scientist.
I was 27 and running drills – Ben was awesome and good to me. He could have said that I didn’t know any more than he did – but he was professional to me and listened to me anyway.
Any other mentors?
In college, the main basis for my interest on coaching quarterbacks was from Kurt Roper. The way he spoke about coaching quarterbacks from above and below the neck – he showed me how to prepare guys both ways.
The mechanics don’t change that much from college to the NFL. You may be refining more at the NFL level and you have longer to work with them usually in the NFL on the neck-up stuff.
Circling back on your work with Ben – how do you work with a veteran quarterback to install new concepts with someone who had so much success already?
The biggest thing is, no one should show up and try to change them. You work on scenarios – that’s what Randy taught me. I didn’t coach Ben as much as I presented opportunities and scenarios that mimicked what he might see in a game. I mean, how many 10-yard outs did Ben throw over his career? Thousands? We didn’t work on those much with Ben. I’d work on that with the younger guys.
With Ben, we’d simulate scrambling drills – have him run to his left which was more difficult for him and work on short, middle and long throws – outside and inside throws. He knows those things, sure, but we did that to create new opportunities to do some different stuff and to keep his body ready.
When we did drills on new stuff, if I did a drill with him, I needed to be very explicit with him and explain why we were doing it. I’d tell him that these drills simulate what we saw in this defense, and then see if he felt comfortable with it. As long as it was concrete as to why and we tied it to a game situation, he was more comfortable with it. You could often tell by his body language if he liked it or not and whether we’d move on from it.
I’ll be honest, I had some trepidation when I first started working with him – I thought he wouldn’t want to work with me. But once I started and learned to explain the why behind what we were running, I saw he enjoyed it. And finding different ways to practice and present things helped me grow as a coach as well.
How did you get started in Pittsburgh?
Shaun Sarrett and I coached together. When the assistant job opened up he asked if I wanted it and I of course said yes. There was no formal interview process. I think because Randy was promoted and was in Pittsburgh for so many years before that, he didn’t have that pipeline, so to speak. He was comfortable going with Shaun’s recommendation and because I coached in four other places, I think they felt that I could help out Blaine Stewart there as well.
Before that they never had two offensive assistants. This was new for them. And when Matt Canada was hired he had his own assistants he brought in. That’s part of the business – that’s how it goes.
You worked with young/new quarterbacks in Pittsburgh by necessity when Ben was hurt – what did you do to make them successful?
First off, success is a relative term. I think the defense was the reason we were successful mostly. They kept us in games and gave us some short fields.
To be honest, I think there were some things I did well and some I could have done better. We were 8-5 with the Bills coming in. If we beat the Bills we would have gone to the playoffs but we lost that game and the next two.
What do you feel you could have done better?
I felt I didn’t do as good of a job as I should have with the younger guys. I didn’t emphasize enough them taking care of the ball. We had too many turnovers – I didn’t do a good enough job with that. We had a Hall of Fame quarterback in Ben but the standard doesn’t change. Especially in Pittsburgh – that standard is different in Pittsburgh.
Getting good quarterback play is about knowing what a quarterback is comfortable doing. Mason and Duck were different in what they liked. There was some overlap – if you did a Venn diagram you could see some of that. But Mason was really good at the vertical stuff – that’s what he was used to and comfortable with – that’s what he did in college. Against the Dolphins we started off poorly. Then we went to those vertical plays and had some success – that’s what he was used to
Duck – he was proficient in zone reads and over-routes. He was the king of those in camp. Finding out what makes them comfortable and running those things is key. Duck and Mason – they grew up more on RPOs too, so we could lean on those more early on to get them settled in.
How do you divine the line between simplifying things for young players while at the same time not making it so simple that defenses didn’t struggle to stop it?
That’s the toughest thing and anyone who finds the answer to that will be successful. Keeping concepts simple but keeping the pieces moving – the personnel and formations – that really is the big thing.
The challenge for us then was that our offense was banged up. That kept us from being able to move some of the pieces around. Against the Bengals we ran the wildcat 15 times and put JuJu in different spots – we found ways to move the ball and score. I thought we did a good job there. We had Zach Banner in at tight end and created some asymmetry with that. Changing your personnel and formations like that to show new things to a defense – that’s how you do it.
In Buffalo we were able to run with some big personnel in third and short yardage – then we were able to throw it to Gentry. Presenting different things to the defense is important. I think we did a decent job of that in the middle of the year. With Mason in we did less of the lateral throws and threw more downfield to Washington. We found different ways to do that each week. We had an eight-yard touchdown pass versus the Bengals then another one versus Cleveland on a different look – an inside fade, out and up.
What worked then with Washington was his willingness to make it work. He came in in much better shape than he did the year before – he embraced the plan.
In the end it is all about presentation. Complicating things for the defense without making it overcomplicated. As a defense you can only practice what other teams put on tape – you can’t practice against ghosts. So you have to present different looks every game.
How much of the gameplan was influenced by Coach Tomlin versus the offensive coordinator?
Mike just wanted us to find ways to score while taking care of the ball. He knew things changed with no Ben there but he didn’t want us to become timid. He knew in reality with those younger guys we wouldn’t have four quarters of perfect execution, so he always said “Splash plays erase execution.” He wanted us to be aggressive – he didn’t push us running the ball. For instance he wanted us to get the ball downfield to Washington – that was something he wanted. There was nothing timid about him. Of course he was pragmatic about it – we weren’t going to throw the ball over the middle a ton. But he wanted us to be aggressive.
You had a lot of success in the redzone in 2018 – something the current team struggled with. Any reason behind that?
Well, Conner was superhuman that season. Having AB also helps – you can’t just single him up. That was a major difference. We also carried three tight ends and Rosie Nix – we didn’t do that before then. That helped us put a lot of big bodies in formations that didn’t have to be big formations. We could have big sets but still run empty backfields and get beneficial matchups that way. All three tight ends – Vance, Jesse and Xavier – they were good receivers. JuJu and AB were legit problems and again, Conner was a freak all year. With that formational flexibility and of course, Ben doing Ben things – that all helped.
Why the RPOs – what was the reason for bringing those into the scheme more with those quarterbacks?
They did RPOs before us actually – pop passes to the tight ends off the stretch. They did one to Eli in 2017 versus New England too.
Munch and Sarrett though – they went into a room and ID’d things in the power formation to run RPOs. That led to some really good redzone plays. We could lean on those more with Duck and Mason since they grew up with those, just like we could run more plays under center with Ben.
What are some of the trends as a college coach you see lately that may influence things at the NFL level soon?
That’s a good question. It’s my twelfth season in coaching and things are really different even from what I saw in 2011. Kids in college now are better with the volume of different formations and defenses are much better at reading offensive tendencies with all the information available to them now.
That’s why it’s become so important today to find different ways to present things on offense. Formation multiplicity along with more up-tempo is something you’ll see more and more of – especially since those things are less problematic for players on offense to adjust to since they are seeing that stuff earlier.
Teams are also continuing to get better with quarterbacks in the run game and RPOs. South Dakota is doing interesting things there that will find its way to the NFL eventually. With the option rules changing – and that’s really what the RPO is – the option – you’ll see more of that, even out of the gun now as rules continue to change.
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