Teach the Basics
Anyone who’s watched Ivy football for more than just a few
years eventually notices that even the best teams aren’t exactly fine-tuned
machines.
We’ve all seen more than an excusable number of mistakes
even from championship squads.
But the best teams obviously cut down on those fundamental
mistakes, especially when it matters the most.
Dartmouth could have grabbed a share of the Ivy title last
season if it hadn’t been for an incredible series of mistakes in the week three
double OT loss at Penn that included a blocked chip shot FG, an inexplicable
INT before that and lots of other mistakes too excruciating to mention here.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve all documented lots
of reasons Columbia hasn’t been successful over the years. But sloppy play and
fundamental failures have been a constant. I’m talking missed tackles, blown
coverages, bad penalties, etc. No one is saying the Lions would be perennial
champs if they just got the fundamentals down, but some very big losses over
the years, every year, could have been avoided.
I’m not saying teaching and getting the players to really
internalize the fundamentals is easy, but there are things a coaching staff can
do to make the job easier.
Maintaining and promoting a good JV program is a big part of
it. Why Columbia’s Pete Mangurian
continues to spurn JV remains a serious mystery especially after last year’s
Lions exhibited the worst fundamental football in Ivy history.
I know it sounds like hyperbole to the perennial happy talkers out there, but the continued lack of a JV program is a serious example of coaching malpractice and is really grounds for Mangurian's dismissal every single day that he continues not to form it.
Recruiting players from programs with established programs
is another key to success in this area, and I don’t think Mangurian and company
are doing that enough.
While I can somewhat forgive Mangurian for trying to
institute a pocket passing offense, (I suppose it was worth a try), and I
absolutely DO NOT blame him for the financial challenges the CU administration
isn’t fixing for him, I strongly condemn this serious mistake he continues to
make in proper player training.
All the work and talk about body weight, weight training,
and pictures of players doing inexplicable drills like tug of war in the snow
really burns me when you see players dropping passes, blocking cluelessly,
blowing coverages, and missing tackles time and time again on game day.
The 2013 Lions were the worst prepared team in Columbia
history, and that is really saying something.
Getting the basics down in this league goes further than
other conferences in college football because of the reduced practice time and
the fact that our players are actually interested in going to class.
When Columbia loses, and really when just about every Ivy
team loses, you can almost always point to a series of very bad plays as
opposed to some super highlight moment from the winning team.
That’s how you win in the Ivy League; you avoid the boneheaded
plays and you’re already way ahead of the game.
7 comments:
And so we come to the heart of the matter; I have also said here a number of times that the execution demonstrated last year was appalling. First, I can't conceive of varsity college players making the errors I saw at every home game. Next, I can't believe that these faults escaped the notice of the staff.
This was a 2-part breakdown; team and staff. But coaches can demand certain play levels from their team, and bench the people who ignore instruction.
Jake is right on the mark. Before we worry about top recruits or anything else, we better use the talent we have as effectively as possible, and that starts with disciplined coaching and fundamentals. I didn't see much of that last year.
The problem of sloppy execution is hardly confided to Ivy teams. Just about every team suffers from that. Some of it is just being outplayed but few teams look magnificent in their execution.
The very best team in the FCS last year was North Dakota State. I only saw one game end to end (when they beat Kansas State AT Kansas State) but they are absolutely top shelf. Their head coach jumped to Wyoming so they may not be that way next year but every FCS team should study their '13 season tapes in fine detail for a model of how a well oiled machine should function.
My own pet peeve was lack of technique in our DBs when covering a receiver running a go route down the sideline. Our guys would faceguard instead of knowing when to turn and play the ball. Just appalling ball skills. Next in line was our young WRs giving up on patterns and then watching the ball fly over their heads.
Along those lines : an interesting website that discusses coach-able skills for corner backs :
www.greatcornerback.com/ball-skills.htm
Yes, it CAN be done!
Jake, at the risk of being labelled an administration tool, I have reluctantly come to conclude that the persistently negative tone of this blog has had the effect of driving long faithful readers/bloggers to vote with their feet by refraining from useful dialogue about matters relevant to success on the field. I say this more in sorrow than in anger.
We're getting the same amount of hits as we did a year ago and more than we did 2 years ago.
But I am posting less, because I just can't stomach the daily rah-rah stuff anymore. I believe it was enabling to failure to some degree.
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