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AFM Magazine


Gorilla Warfare

Chuck Broyles’ Pittsburg State Gorillas’ SCARY Offensive Attack
by: Matt Fulks
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Chuck Broyles doesn’t pretend to hold the “secrets” for winning. But through an aggressive style of play, a loyal staff and players, and an offense that works to stay one step ahead of defenses, Broyles and his staff have turned Pittsburg State (Kan.) into a perennial power in NCAA Division II. During the last 15 seasons, under Broyles, Pittsburg State is 154-30-2. The Gorillas have won the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) championships nine times, missed the Division-II playoffs only twice (1998 and 2002), and won the 1991 national championship.

“We have a lot of fun,” said Broyles, who played at Pittsburg State in the mid-1960s and later was an assistant there for Dennis Franchione during 1988-89. “Sure it’s more fun when you win, but as coaches we try to make it a good experience for the players and promise to work as hard as or harder than any other coaching staff in the country. But it’s the players’ team.”

The players certainly put on an impressive show last season en route to the national championship game, racking up 8,976 yards of total offense and nearly 56 points per game. The Gorillas’ 5,320 yards rushing last season were the most by a team in more than 30 years.

JUGGERNAUT OFFENSE

Chuck Broyles is a defensive-minded coach. Even though he was both an offensive and defensive lineman as a player, most of his work as a coach has been on the defensive side of the ball. In an odd way, that’s helped shape the Gorillas’ “simple” philosophy on offense.

“We try to be physical on both sides of the ball, even on offense,” Broyles said. “We make sure that we always have some aggressive, right-at-them football plays each week,” adds Tim Beck, who has been Pittsburg State’s offensive coordinator for 11 years. “On defense, there’s nothing more demoralizing than having an offense that gets after you and always stays one play ahead of you. So we try to be aggressive on our play calling and mix it up.”

Beck has developed the Gorillas into one of the most prolific offenses in the country. “I had a background in the split-back offense that coach Franchione implemented in 1985, which we ran for a long time,” said Beck, who was a defensive back at PSU during the mid-1980s and spent only one season, 1988, working on offense under Franchione. “We’ve gradually done some different things with our offense.”

The offense became an unavoidable force during 2004, a season in which Pittsburg State lost in the national championship game to Valdosta State. In addition to being atop the Division II polls much of the season, Pittsburg State dominated its opponents by compiling 598 yards and nearly 56 points per game. During their September games, the Gorillas recorded three of their highest margins of victory in school history. The largest in the span was a 77-7 drumming of Truman State. Of course, there also was the game against Missouri-Rolla when Pittsburg State scored 91 points. Despite being more of an option team, the Gorillas threw for 45 touchdowns, second-most in the country.

“It was the most fun I’ve ever had as a coach,” Beck said. “This group bought in to our philosophy. Even when we’d take our number one’s out, our number two’s would get our there and be like sharks in bloody water. They wanted to score every time they got out there.”

OFFENSIVE BREAKDOWN

Tim Beck considers the Gorillas to be an I-option, shotgun, one-back team. With quarterbacks such as Neal Philpot and Andy Majors, both of whom could run and pass, Beck wanted to be able to throw the ball a little more last season. So, even though PSU remains an option team, Beck’s multiple formations include setting up as a two tight end, one receiver, I-formation team, or trotting out four wide receivers.

“We change personnel groups a lot and try to make it tough on the defense for matchups,” said Beck. “We also try to give our opponent an unbalanced formation every week. You have to be prepared to line up against that. If you’re not sound defensively, we’re going to find a weakness on one side or the other.”

To help facilitate that, over the last three to four years, the Gorillas have worked extensively on having package plays – calling two plays in the huddle and then letting the quarterback decide which one to run based on the defensive front or coverage. The combination will include anything from two running plays, to a run and a pass, to two pass plays.”That means our quarterback has to be on top of everything and know everything at least as well as I do,” Beck said.

Despite the high number of touchdown passes last season and the ability to spread out four wide receivers, Beck estimates that 65-70 percent of Pittsburg State’s plays revolve around the run, which places an additional importance on the team’s offensive line and wide receivers.

“We get more compliments about our wide receivers and linemen than we do anywhere else because our receivers understand that they’re going to be good blockers,” Beck says. “If we’re going to trigger big plays, they need to block on the perimeter. Coaches call us a lot to get videos of our practice to see how we teach our receivers how to block. There’s no secret to it. The bottom line is effort of the players and wanting to get it done.

“Then, we stress aggressiveness up front. Unlike other football teams that are more lateral, we’re more aggressive north and south with our offensive linemen. We want to create seams that way. It’s quite a bit different from other teams, but it goes along with us wanting to be aggressive.”

Yes, the Gorillas have become known as a physical football team. Ashley Anders, the defensive coordinator at Valdosta State, the team that beat Pittsburg State in the 2004 national championship game, alerted his players that the Gorillas were going to be one of the most physical teams they faced all year.

That mentality goes into the offensive coaches’ thinking every week.

“You have to pick out a couple things that are tough on a defense and have flexibility in personnel so you can put the defense in a pickle on matchups,” Beck said. “But, since we feel we’re a physical team, we also want to run some power stuff at them and see how they handle it.”

“Our coaches do a good job of making it difficult for other teams to know what we do out of each set,” said Broyles. “Just to make sure we’re not giving up any tendencies, we scout ourselves every two games.”

Thing is, other teams are scouting Pittsburg State, as well. With advancements in video, teams in the MIAA get the traditional wide shot of teams in the conference, but they also get an end zone angle.”There are a lot of things that you could get by with that people wouldn’t notice on wide video,” said Beck. “For instance, adjusting your splits with your offensive linemen. With end zone video that becomes pretty obvious.”

That doesn’t make things easier on Pittsburg State’s opponents. As an aggressive offense, Broyles and Beck stress focusing on their style of play to their players. It doesn’t necessarily matter what the defense tries to throw at them. They don’t lick their chops more about one style of defense over another.

“We really don’t talk about certain defenses; we just know that there are specific things we can do against some defenses that we can’t against others,” said Beck. “It’s not so much that we’d rather see this defense or that one. We’ll just take what they give us and use the plays we have.

“Every week we just try to add one thing a little different such as run a new play out of an old formation. It’s important to have a little change every week. You want the defense to react to you. You take advantage of that by implementing something new.”

A STABLE STAFF

Tim Beck was on a recruiting trip in Mississippi after the 1989 season when he first heard the news that Dennis Franchione, who’s currently coaching Texas A&M, was leaving Pittsburg State for the head job at Southwest Texas State. Beck, who had been a student assistant and then a graduate assistant for Franchione, had the option of going to Southwest Texas or staying with Broyles at Pittsburg State.

“I had been working on defense with coach Broyles, and I had a good working relationship with him, so I decided to stay,” Beck said simply.

Today, it would be tough to get him to leave Pittsburg. “Early in your career your goals are different than when you have a wife and four children,” Beck said. “This is a great, fun school, and Pittsburg’s a great place to raise a family.”

Really, most assistants have stuck with Broyles throughout the past 15 years. Broyles is quick to point out that, according to the Pittsburg State media guide, the Gorillas’ staff, including volunteer assistants, has more than 230 years of collegiate and varsity high school coaching experience, which it states makes the staff the most experienced in the nation.

The continuity on the coaching staff has helped Broyles develop a comfort level. “Because we’ve worked together for so long, I don’t have to hand out assignments,” Broyles said. “Our coaches know what they’re supposed to do and they do a great job with it.”

Obviously, that helps the coaches, as well.

“When I moved over to offense in 1994, (Broyles) let me put together our staff and let us go,” said Beck. “He lets us do what we want to do offensively. He occasionally gives constructive criticism, but otherwise we’re on our own. That’s huge because if any of us ever take jobs somewhere else, our staff has done things that many assistants haven’t.”

“When you’re with Chuck, you’re kind of the head of coach of what you do,” said Jerry Kill, the head coach at Southern Illinois, who was Broyles’ offensive coordinator for two years. “When a guy lets you do that, it’s a powerful setting.”

GORILLAS IN THE MIDST

Chuck Broyles is quick to admit that, besides a good quarterback or running back, he and his staff generally recruit players that will fit into their style of play. They try not to put good players behind each other, so they recruit more on needs rather than on best athletes available.

There’s one main qualification to being one of Broyles’ Gorillas, though: ferociousness.

“There’s no greater game that within the framework of the rules, you can be as physical and tough as you can,” says Broyles, who generally redshirts all freshmen. “Why not play the game the way it was intended to be played?”

Broyles and his coaching staff show the players by example that being successful at Pittsburg State requires hard work. Broyles promises new players that the PSU coaches will work as hard as any staff in the country.

According to Kill, in the long run, that brings about another reason Pittsburg State teams have been successful. “They’re Gorillas and they don’t want to let the big Gorilla down,” he said. “Chuck’s players and staff respect him. Even to this day, I don’t want to let coach Broyles down. It’s like letting down your dad; you don’t want to do it.”





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