Player development and coaching philosophy

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I thought this was a great article about Brenden Stai giving comments on player development along with other interesting insights when he was a GA at Nebraska.

http://www.omaha.com/huskers/blogs/chatelain/mad-chatter-brenden-stai-on-nebraska-s-player-development-need/article_e91608ac-258a-11e5-93ef-aba0ce42ecd3.html

It's too early to compare the staffs, but player development should improve based on what HCMR did at Oregon State....... The fact that our 3rd and 4th strings guys didn't get much practice time shocked me a bit. Hard to create competition when that happens.

The coaching comparison is also premature. I thought it was interesting about Brenden discussing the over emphasis on defense during practice on how it hindered the offense. I never heard that before but it makes sense.

 
Treand3 said:
Surprised this wasn't posted sooner.
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Yeah. Things are so slow with football news and recruiting that I was looking for topics.
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Something just occurred to me.

Is it possible that Bo failed because he never had coached at a lower level before and HAD to develop lower level players to succeed?

He was an assistant in the NFL obviously coaching some of the best of the best.

Then, he came here and started his college career at a top level school with reasonably good talent and high expectations. He then went to OU with good talent and then LSU with good talent. He then became the HC here.

He never was at an Akron, ISU or Souther Utah Sate where he had to take mediocre players and mold them into something good and prove himself.

It is possible that after spending some time at YSU he may come out of there with a totally different approach to developing talent and managing an entire roster. (that is if he can keep his temper in check).

 
BigRedBuster said:
Something just occurred to me.

Is it possible that Bo failed because he never had coached at a lower level before and HAD to develop lower level players to succeed?

He was an assistant in the NFL obviously coaching some of the best of the best.

Then, he came here and started his college career at a top level school with reasonably good talent and high expectations. He then went to OU with good talent and then LSU with good talent. He then became the HC here.

He never was at an Akron, ISU or Souther Utah Sate where he had to take mediocre players and mold them into something good and prove himself.

It is possible that after spending some time at YSU he may come out of there with a totally different approach to developing talent and managing an entire roster. (that is if he can keep his temper in check).
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Failed is probably a strong word but I know what you are getting at.

I have been coaching football for 15 years and I struggle with practice plans each season. I hate it.

 
I think this part can not be stressed enough. However, the red part is part that a lot of people either forget or choose to ignore. College football, even in practice, is very very different than it used to be because of regulations and rule changes.

I'm not making excuses. There are still programs that are very good at getting the most out of practices. But, to sit back and say..."Well, why can't they practice like Nebraska did it back in the good ol' days?" just isn't realistic.

Q: You’ve talked a lot about practice. How much of the issue is simply getting more out of those two hours on the practice field?

A: I thought that they got a lot out of practice. I really did. They put a lot of time into what they were doing. One of the biggest criticisms, and I think this trickles down from Coach Osborne through a lot of the coaches that were here at Nebraska that saw the way that they approached practice, was the way that they structured practice. Guys weren’t getting a lot of work. That goes back to developing players.
When I was at Nebraska, it was different. We had probably 25 or 30 more kids on the field, and we were running three or four stations. That’s unheard of. When you have those kinds of numbers on scout team, you can do that. The numbers have changed. Fewer scholarships. No more Prop 48s. The walk-on numbers have changed. That’s shrunk your roster. And you think about the amount of coaches we had back when I was playing, that’s changed as well. When I was helping out with Nebraska, I couldn’t coach. Even though I was there to help, I couldn’t necessarily take an offense and a defense and run a station because we weren’t allowed to do that. Your hands are tied differently than in the ’90s and ’80s and even the early 2000s. The rules have really changed.
To say that they weren’t efficient practices, that’s not true. They were efficient in the fact that they got a lot of work done with the guys that were playing the 1’s and 2’s. But the 3’s and the 4’s, those guys weren’t really getting developed ... and I think Coach Osborne and Coach Darlington and Coach McBride and all these guys that saw Bo’s practices wish to see those players that were standing around get work. Those guys were getting work because they were working scout team, but they weren’t necessarily working the offense and the defense that Nebraska was trying to install.
So when seniors would leave or someone would get hurt, now you’ve got to fill in and develop in a hurry. It’s difficult to do.
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teachercd said:
BigRedBuster said:
Something just occurred to me.

Is it possible that Bo failed because he never had coached at a lower level before and HAD to develop lower level players to succeed?

He was an assistant in the NFL obviously coaching some of the best of the best.

Then, he came here and started his college career at a top level school with reasonably good talent and high expectations. He then went to OU with good talent and then LSU with good talent. He then became the HC here.

He never was at an Akron, ISU or Souther Utah Sate where he had to take mediocre players and mold them into something good and prove himself.

It is possible that after spending some time at YSU he may come out of there with a totally different approach to developing talent and managing an entire roster. (that is if he can keep his temper in check).
Click to expand...
Failed is probably a strong word but I know what you are getting at.

I have been coaching football for 15 years and I struggle with practice plans each season. I hate it.
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I used the word "failed" only to the extent that I don't think he got the best out of the team while he was here and ultimately was let go. I don't consider the Husker program a total failure over his tenure.

 
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Doesn't Oregon have crazy practices where the 1,2,3 and 4th teams are all going at the same time? I get that there are only so many coaches but how does Oregon accomplish that yet Nebraska had guys not getting any reps?

 
LumberJackSker said:
Doesn't Oregon have crazy practices where the 1,2,3 and 4th teams are all going at the same time? I get that there are only so many coaches but how does Oregon accomplish that yet Nebraska had guys not getting any reps?
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Bo micromanaged everything. When he constantly was changing/adjusting a complicated scheme that his coaches had trouble digesting how can he expect them to teach it? They weren't experts at their jobs

 
BigRedBuster said:
Something just occurred to me.

Is it possible that Bo failed because he never had coached at a lower level before and HAD to develop lower level players to succeed?

He was an assistant in the NFL obviously coaching some of the best of the best.

Then, he came here and started his college career at a top level school with reasonably good talent and high expectations. He then went to OU with good talent and then LSU with good talent. He then became the HC here.

He never was at an Akron, ISU or Souther Utah Sate where he had to take mediocre players and mold them into something good and prove himself.

It is possible that after spending some time at YSU he may come out of there with a totally different approach to developing talent and managing an entire roster. (that is if he can keep his temper in check).
Click to expand...
This is a good point and very interesting to think about. IMO I'd say it definitely affected how guys developed but his real "failure" to me was the stubbornness to adjustments or changing/tweaking things. I remember when Bo first got here and he was doing well with Callahans players everyone said why couldn't Callahan develop and coach players like this.
 
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bleedNUred said:
BigRedBuster said:
Something just occurred to me.

Is it possible that Bo failed because he never had coached at a lower level before and HAD to develop lower level players to succeed?

He was an assistant in the NFL obviously coaching some of the best of the best.

Then, he came here and started his college career at a top level school with reasonably good talent and high expectations. He then went to OU with good talent and then LSU with good talent. He then became the HC here.

He never was at an Akron, ISU or Souther Utah Sate where he had to take mediocre players and mold them into something good and prove himself.

It is possible that after spending some time at YSU he may come out of there with a totally different approach to developing talent and managing an entire roster. (that is if he can keep his temper in check).
Click to expand...
This is a good point and very interesting to think about. IMO I'd say it definitely affected how guys developed but his real "failure" to me was the stubbornness to adjustments or changing/tweaking things. I remember when Bo first got here and he was doing well with Callahans players everyone said why couldn't Callahan develop and coach players like this.
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I think that all could be tied together.

When you are at a lower level school and getting recruits that are crumbs left over from the big boys, your talent skills are going to vary from year to year. So...that requires you to adjust to meet that group of skills.

 
That's an interesting point, BRB. When Riley was hired, one of the journalists made the observation that whereas he (like Miles) had experienced failure at previous stops before, that was something Bo had never had to deal with in his fast ascension -- perhaps to his detriment. When there were bumps in the road at NU, Bo dug in and things got nasty.

So I think that played a big part. But definitely he seemed at a loss as to how to get what he wanted out of the team to actually translate onto the field. At least in certain parts of the game.

 
zoogs said:
That's an interesting point, BRB. When Riley was hired, one of the journalists made the observation that whereas he (like Miles) had experienced failure at previous stops before, that was something Bo had never had to deal with in his fast ascension -- perhaps to his detriment. When there were bumps in the road at NU, Bo dug in and things got nasty.

So I think that played a big part. But definitely he seemed at a loss as to how to get what he wanted out of the team to actually translate onto the field. At least in certain parts of the game.
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Interesting. I guess some guys, like Meyer and TO never really experienced "failure" and they have done amazing. Saban though has had some "rougher" times. Same with Pete Carrol, interesting thoughts.

 
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