Penn State coaches clinic: Saturday morning

Tag: Larry Johnson


8Apr 2009
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Penn State coaches clinic: Saturday morning

Saturday morning began with some special teams drills run by Larry Johnson and Bill Kenney. The other coaches and I were too busy scarfing down bacon – crispy, the way fatty pig parts should be – at the hotel to get there in time for the special teams sessions.

For the rest of the morning, each coach on the staff brought his position group out for twenty minutes of explanation and demonstrations. I thought it was interesting that each coach has some sort of mirroring drill they use regularly, in which the offensive player has to mimic the defensive player’s movements or vice versa. All the coaches were very particular about footwork.

I expected the offensive linemen and defensive linemen to be huge. What I didn’t expect was that Andrew Quarless, the starting TE, would be the size of a Volkswagen. A Volkswagen Beetle, but a Volkswagen nonetheless. I’m a pretty big guy, and he dwarfed me.

The highlights of the morning were when Larry Johnson had his defensive linemen do their drills. He does a lot of work with things that look like inflatable exercise balls, but they’re solid and cost $150 apiece. To emphasize staying low and punching with the hands, managers roll these balls toward the players and they have to reach out with both hands and reverse the ball’s direction before continuing on with the rest of the agility drill. Please excuse my crappy photography, but a picture of this drill is above.

The other highlight was Bill Kenney. He coaches the tackles and tight ends, and he’s hilarious. While the rest of the coaches shied away from any foul language, he said “goddammit” and “shit.” An excerpt came when his players were working on a combo block and one of his tight ends forgot to block a stunting linebacker in the drill. Kenney said, “That’s what we call an ‘Oh Shit Block.’ As in ‘Oh . . . shit, I’m supposed to block him.'”

Overall, I didn’t learn too much from Kenney that I didn’t already know. He did talk about ball security amongst his tight ends, though. He said he wants them to keep four points of contact with the ball when carrying it – hand, forearm, biceps, ribcage – but that he never wants them running with two hands on the ball. He said if they get into traffic, they’re supposed to roll the ball onto their breastplate and maintain four points of contact, with the chest replacing the ribcage; he wants the off arm free for stiff-arms. This seems like a recipe for fumbles, but who are us Michigan fans to talk? We averaged about the same number of turnovers last year as Michigan State’s basketball team had last night.

Zing!
6Apr 2009
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Penn State coaches clinic: Friday evening

We ate dinner at Beaver Stadium and then headed back to Holuba Hall for the keynote address from Joe Paterno himself. Paterno is still full of fire. Earlier in the day, safety Nick Sukay was covering receiver Derek Moye and was beaten deep on one of Kevin Newsome’s few good throws. Paterno, who was standing in the defensive backfield despite being 83, gave Sukay an earful as he returned to his spot. He threw down his play sheet and screamed “Dammit!” and then proceeded to demonstrate – as well as an 83-year-old can – how to jam a receiver at the line. It was awesome.

Anyway, Paterno’s speech talked about how all coaches are trying to make young men into good men and that only coaches truly understand the importance and purpose of sports. At one point, he said, “Your principals don’t understand. Maybe you should buy them some flowers or a box of candy…if it’s a woman.” Then he paused a minute and said, “Well, nowadays, maybe if it’s a man, too.” The entire place exploded.

The other funny thing he talked about was recruiting:

You got guys out there like Dick Vitale going blahblahplublahgahbuppywuppy [sic]telling us who to recruit. I got coaches who have been coaching for 200 years.
We spend nine hours in the film room. We know who to recruit. But people still
try to tell us what to do.

After Paterno was done speaking, we broke off into question-and-answer sessions. I went to McQueary’s session, where he talked about different ways to beat Cover 0, Cover 1, Cover 2, and Cover 3. McQueary’s a great communicator, but when his receivers screw up on the practice field, they get the Look of Death.I saw safeties coach Kermit Buggs so one of the other coaches and I went over to ask him how he defends the wheel route out of Cover 3. He said the key is communication and in a straight Cover 3 (in which the two CBs and the FS have deep thirds while the linebackers split the short zones into fourths), the ILB has to cover the flat while the OLB runs with the deep man.After that, we saw Larry Johnson walking around and we stopped him to ask how he teaches kids to beat reach blocks. Basically, he maintains his strategy that defensive linemen need to get off the ball fast and hard. Their first steps need to replace their down hand so they cross the line of scrimmage instead of bringing that back foot even with the other; he doesn’t care if his tackles get reach blocked, as long as it’s one or two yards deep in the backfield and not at the LOS.After that, we saw cheese fries at Outback.

5Apr 2009
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Penn State coaches clinic: Friday morning

I got home yesterday from the Penn State coaches clinic. The clinic was held on Friday and Saturday and culminated with an intrasquad scrimmage. A lot happened and it was very interesting, so I’ll report it in segments.

The clinic was held at Holuba Hall, PSU’s indoor practice facility. The building is nothing spectacular, but it has two fields adjacent to each other, each one about 70 yards long. There were chairs and makeshift video screens in two corners of the facility. The offensive coaches (WR coach Mike McQueary, QB coach Jay Paterno, offensive coordinator/RB coach Galen Hall, and OL coach Dick Anderson) were going to talk in one corner, and the defensive coaches (LB coach Ron Vanderlinden, defensive coordinator/CB coach Tom Bradley, DL coach Larry Johnson, S coach Kermit Buggs) in the other. I stuck mainly with the defense.

Ron Vanderlinden – linebackers
I was interested in hearing Vanderlinden speak, not only because PSU always produces good linebackers, but because there were rumors that he might become Michigan’s defensive coordinator before Greg Robinson arrived. He clearly knows what he’s talking about, but he’s not a very dynamic speaker. Luckily, he demonstrated some of the drills he does with his linebackers and had highlights of his former star linebackers, such as Paul Posluszny and Dan Connor. He really emphasized the linebacker stance and remaining in that position – knees over toes, almost in a squat position – throughout a running play. He also talked extensively about teaching his linebackers to shuffle while remaining square to the line, saying he doesn’t use carioca drills (where players cross their feet) because the legs cross over naturally, but the shuffle is an unnatural movement. He doesn’t believe in doing a lot of different drills, just doing the same drills over and over.

Tom Bradley – defensive coordinator/cornerbacks
Bradley reminded me somewhat of Tobin Bell (Jigsaw from the Saw movies), slightly because of his looks and slightly because of his voice. He went through his defensive philosophy and stressed tackling; he said that for every 10 yards gained, there’s at least one missed tackle. To add on to that, he talked about “explosion plays” which are plays that gain 25+ yards. Teams that have zero explosion plays average 6.8 points per game. Two explosion plays give you 14.8 points per game. But if you give up three explosion plays, opposing teams will score 28.7 points per game.

Larry Johnson – defensive line
Larry Johnson is the father of the former 2,000 yard rusher and current Kansas City Chief running back of the same name. Johnson sounds like a preacher. If I were a recruit, this guy could make me want to run through a brick wall. A brick wall covered in bee stingers. He talked about being a good person and a good coach, and he wants to start a “new generation of coaching” in which coaches don’t swear at their players. He said that’s not how you teach young men. And it’s hard to argue with his coaching methods, considering the success he’s had at producing first round talent on the defensive line. He had some very interesting things to say about defensive line play, especially the first step. He also had video of some superb defensive line drills that I’ll talk about in more detail when I get to the recap of Saturday morning’s session. He was the best presenter I saw.

Dick Anderson – offensive line
After sitting through three consecutive defensive presentations, I thought I’d go over to the offensive corner. Jay Paterno was scheduled to speak at the last session, and even though I coach OL, DL, and LBs, it’s hard to understand the game if you don’t understand quarterback play. Unfortunately, the schedule had been rejiggered and instead of seeing JayPa, I observed the monotonous skeleton named Dick Anderson. Anderson is approximately 700 years old and was the head coach at Rutgers from 1984 until 1990. A fellow coach on my high school’s staff began counting the number of times he said “all right?” He repeated that phrase 95 times in 25 minutes. But it was more like, “Okay, on the snap of the ball, awwright, our playside guard, awwright, takes a reach step and reads the strongside linebacker, awwright . . . .” From what I’ve seen of PSU’s offensive line, I’ve never been impressed. His linemen don’t finish their blocks and don’t exactly blow people off the ball, so I spent more time thinking about what we were going to have for lunch than listening to Anderson.

In case you were wondering, they served us cold cut sandwiches, bags of chips, macaroni salad, and Pepsi products.