Is there some pro-coaches convention I don’t know about where stock cliches and phrases are handed out? Is it maybe some zen coaching philosophy I missed? It’s been getting to me all week leading up to the Syracuse game. You have 1st year Syracuse head coach Greg Robinson trying to keep his team from giving up on the season. All week long I keep reading one small line from him that pops up in every interview and article.
“It’s more important than ever to keep our guys upbeat,” Robinson said Tuesday. “We can’t talk about what was. What is, is. We must understand that. We’re going to focus on how we can get better. It’s real important that our minds are geared in the right direction. You signed on. Let’s go.”
[Emphasis added.]
Now for Coach Wannstedt’s favorite little nugget that he kept using during Pitt’s 1-4 start.
“It is what it is,” Wannstedt had acknowledged then. “We are what you saw. Unfortunately, we’re not a very good football team.”
Just one of those things, I suppose.
Syracuse’s struggling starter Perry Patterson is working on learning the West Coast Offense, and this article analogizes it to learning to dance.
Last season Patterson was asked to call several plays in the huddle, then walk to the line of scrimmage and figure out which one to employ based on what the defense was showing him. His biggest challenge occurred before the ball was snapped. On many pass plays there was only one receiver running a route, and Patterson knew exactly where that receiver would be and could zero in on him.
“We would design a play where we know we’ll get a certain defense and we’ll have some kind of play-action off it, and it would just be a deep ball or an area of the field we knew would be open,” Patterson said. “It was either that or nothing.”
The West Coast demands just the opposite of the quarterback. Before the ball is snapped it is much simpler than the old offense, as Patterson calls one play in the huddle. However, once the ball is in Patterson’s hands an intricate dance begins in which he must go through a series of progressions from a primary receiver to a secondary receiver to a third receiver that often take his eyes and feet from one side of the field to the other before he delivers the ball, a sequence that must be completed in under 3.5 seconds to have a chance to succeed.
It is a dance that must be choreographed perfectly. It is designed to have the quarterback operating in perfect rhythm with his receivers and offensive line. If the rhythm is not established or somehow gets lost – and opposing defenses are designed to disrupt it with press coverage, blitzes and the like – the dance becomes a tangled mess.
Patterson and his coaches have spent nearly the entire season trying to untangle the mess and perform the dance the way it was designed.
Patterson hasn’t exactly had help from his O-line either. He has been sacked 21 times in 6 games. That’s second worst in the Big East behind Palko who has been drilled 24 times in 7 games. Some time before or after the game they really need to compare notes.
This bad season for Syracuse has reached the point where they have assumed the #8 spot in ESPN.com’s Bottom 10 (Pitt is finally out of it for a while).
Syracuse’s stand-out safety Anthony Smith gets a puff piece. The Senior nearly went to Ohio State, and ended up choosing Syracuse over WVU because the Orange were still winning at that time while the ‘Eers were down. Whoops.
