Successful coaches get good players. But what they really do well is hold those players accountable every day and not let those good players get comfortable with the status quo.
By Marcus Hartman for Press Pros
Columbus, OH – Last week, we learned Ryan Day really isn’t turning into Jim Tressel, at least not yet.
(More on that later.)
But what about a different early 1980s Ohio State assistant?
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Saturday night after the Buckeyes thrashed Minnesota, Day went into a soliloquy that could have come straight from the mouth of one Nicholas Lou Saban Jr., he of the seven national championships at LSU and Alabama.
Veteran columnist Marcus Hartman writes the OHSAA, Ohio State, and sports at large for Press Pros Magazine.com.
“When you keep winning, it’s easy to take the problems and the issues and just say it’s not a problem,” Day said Saturday night.
Spoiler alert: Day DID see problems and issues from his team while it was winning 42-3.
In fact, he had one in particular on his mind, and he volunteered it without further questioning.
“I’ll just say it: Bo Jackson reaches the ball out on second down, that’s a problem,” Day said of his freshman running back who was awarded a touchdown after extending the ball over the goal line when he appeared to have been stopped at about the 2. “We should not be reaching the ball out. That’s going to be a fumble down the road. I’m just going to call it out for what it is. That’s an issue. And if the ball is fumbled, then we’re in a different situation right now. And so we have to recognize the things that we need to get better at.”
Day also did not like how backup quarterback Lincoln Kienholz executed an ill-fated short-yardage run (in a mysterious special short-yardage package no one was clamoring to see), bouncing outside when he needed to trust the blocking and just hit the hole behind the pulling guard.
“That’s going to lose us a game if we don’t recognize how important those things are,” Day said. “I love those guys, but we’ve got to get them fixed. And really, that goes to the coaches. We’ve got to get that straightened out. We’ve got to practice it better. We’ve got to drill it better. We’ve got to hold them accountable.”
Of course most coaches are for discipline, and even the ones who aren’t at least usually make a habit of saying they are when a microphone is in their face.
This speech was definitely not just for the benefit of the media, though.
Were there any doubt, Julian Sayin later parroted one of the phrases Day had used.
“Once you think you got it, you’re about to get it,” said the redshirt freshman quarterback and apparently quick learner. “So I think you don’t want to say, you know, ‘I’ve got it.’ You want to keep developing and getting better.”
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Now some people — generally those who were misinformed — used to claim Saban’s secret was just recruiting the best players.
He had great raw material to work with, no doubt, but lots of players with pro potential don’t make it to the pros — let alone become productive college players — so that is a criticism without much merit. Obviously, Saban’s Crimson Tide machine developed players, and they did so with an exacting discipline and relentless pursuit of perfection.
“It takes what it takes,” was the way Saban often described his view that there was no minimum or maximum amount of effort required to get something right. Work until the work is finished, however long that takes.
As it were, Day has much the same situation, roster-wise, so that makes our comparison even more apt.
OK, now what about Tressel, who joined Earle Bruce’s staff as quarterbacks coach in 1983, two years after Saban’s ill-fated turn as Ohio State defensive backs coach ended?
He came to mind during Day’s midweek press conference last week.
When someone asked Day about getting comfortable with the offense “not being on all the time” as the defense has improved and the style of college football at large has evolved over the past few years, the coach replied with an emphatic, “No.”
Whether or not the questioner had Tresselball in mind, that is where my mind went because I’m weird like that.
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Jeff Gilbert and I discussed a few weeks ago how Day — and before him, Urban Meyer — used to never be content to waste a play on offense.
They wanted to score on every play, even if it was just an inside zone handoff.
Coaches will tell you every play is designed to be a touchdown, but that’s not really true. If you run the ball into a loaded box on purpose, there is going to be an unblocked defender, and that guy should make the tackle. If he doesn’t because Ezekiel Elliott or Maurice Clarett was the ball-carrier, all the better, but that’s not how it looks on the chalkboard.
Tressel many times was content to call such plays anyway because he was fine with chewing up the clock, yes, but also to set up the passing game. He understood sometimes you have to be stubborn with the running game for the greater good, something many coaches today do not (Looking toward the Cincinnati Bengals offices now…), and he could wait for the right time to call for a bomb.
Meyer’s primary motivation in adopting the spread offense — and he said his version involved running the same plays he did as an assistant coach for Bruce but out of different formations — was to avoid doing that at all costs.
If you put an extra guy in the box against Meyer, he was either going to throw it long or have the quarterback run, and the latter was meant not to beat the extra man but to neutralize him. No waste pitches, as Jeff termed it in our conversation.
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Now it seems to me Day has adopted more of that Tressel mentality, but I guess the devil is in the details.
Tressel wasn’t opposed to big plays or scoring lots of points, but he was practical in trying to get them.
Day, it seems, is becoming more that way as well, but he still dreams of lighting up the scoreboard, too.
One thing Day, Tressel and Saban have in common would be this: Understanding the importance of discipline, details and staying ready so their teams don’t have to get ready.
“So those are the things that when you’re chasing greatness, you have to be all over,” Day said Saturday night. “You’ve got to take them serious. And it can’t be after a loss when all of a sudden, everybody starts sitting up straight in meetings or you’re going to get burnt.
“So like they say in the Navy SEALs, when you think you’ve got it, you’re about to get it. And we’re far from where we need to be, so we have to stay hungry every day.”
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