Q & A with Mickey Andrews

by: Mike Kuchar
Senior Writer, American Football Monthly
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For twenty-four years, Mickey Andrews has been coordinating the Florida State University defense. His longevity in such a competitive field and his commitment to stay in one place in such a transitory occupation where most other coaches are looking for the “next best thing” speaks volumes about the type of character he possesses. Now regarded as somewhat of the elder statesman in major college football, Andrews spent some time with Mike Kuchar of American Football Monthly chatting about everything from the new student athlete to the 4-3 defense.

Q: Mickey, during your incredible tenure, what has been the most significant change in coaching football the last 30 years?

A: I would say the biggest thing is the time restraints that the NCAA puts on you to prepare. Years ago, it seemed like you had all the time in the world. Now it’s pretty much four hours a day and that includes meetings, lifting time, practice time and putting the plan into place. It takes more planning and time management as a coach. The pro’s got all day; we have to get it done in four hours. It’s not a bad rule, it just restricts you and you need to plan differently. If a kid has to leave practice early, he misses a lot of the stuff that you did.

Q: What would you say to the student-athletes now that seem to believe that playing college football is a just a transition period until they make it to the NFL?

A: So many players have their mind-set that they’re going to college to play in the pro’s and it’s not realistic because most of them don’t make it. Several do, especially at our level, but that’s not the reason why you go to college. I’m sure other sports like basketball don’t help the situation when you see guys like the Kobe Bryant’s of the world jump right to the NBA and have a great deal of success.

Football is much different. Kids need time to mature. You try to be realistic with them. They come in here and see all the players ahead of them that played here and didn’t make it. You don’t have to lower your standards or goals, but playing in the NFL should not be the major reason why you’re here. Not everyone that comes through these doors is going to be a Wadsworth, a Sanders or a Marvin Jones.

Q: In what ways have the typical college football players changed and as an older coach how to you try to relate to them?

A: That gets harder every year. A larger number of the new players have not been raised in the same environment as they did in the past. It requires you to be physically and mentally tough. Offenses weren’t spread out; they were all bunched up. It was survival of the fittest when I played years ago. The way the game is played now and the way in which some of these kids are raised is much different. Society is much different. There are so many more distractions for kids now. So I think you have to keep reinforcing your values on these kids and letting them know that you care about them. I think the biggest mistake that coaches make is assuming that their kids know more than they do. We do a ton of different things like team building activities and get-togethers like paintball just to develop some type of cohesiveness. But I believe that gets harder every season.

Q: What is the most important lesson you’ve learned during all your years of coaching?

A: That one is easy. Leroy Butler taught me more about coaching than anyone I’ve ever been around. Leroy was a player here and the spring going into his senior year, we lost only three starters defensively so we were looking pretty strong. Problem was we had three deep at free safety and they were all excellent players, so I had a tough decision to make. We kept Dedrick Dodge at free and we moved Bill Reagan over to strong safety. So we wound up moving Leroy to corner. For years I believed that players had to do things the way I told them to. But Leroy couldn’t do things the way I told him to. He couldn’t backpedal like I told him. He kept asking me if he could get into a crossover run, because he couldn’t backpedal. I told him he was going to get beat every play if he did that, but I trusted him. We wound up playing a lot of quarter, quarter half with Leroy as the rolled up corner and he did tremendously. He beat a lot of receivers because he had that rolled up safety mentality at corner. He worked his way to a first team All-America and a first round draft choice of the Green Bay Packers. I found out at that time you have to adjust to what kids do instead of making them do what you want them to. He taught me a valuable lesson.

Q: Is there anything in the game now that is under coached?

A: I truly believe discipline is. It doesn’t necessarily mean behavioral discipline, because I think that’s important too, but the discipline to learn the fundamentals of the game. It doesn’t matter how quick or how athletic a kid is, if he doesn’t have the technique to perform consistently, he won’t be successful. You try to get to a point where he can discipline himself, and not have you do it for him because that’s were intrinsic motivation comes in. Maybe give him up-downs, run him, talk to him or put him on the bench. You have to stress that you won’t give up touchdowns just because you’re at this kind of level. We all have to be more demanding and focused in that area of football. We see it all the time. We had three players the other day over run a sweep in practice. We got one on contain and three more that simply over run it. You have to have the discipline to put yourself in the right angle to make the play. What do you do with your hands and feet? Where is your hat placement? All of our tackling drills work on taking the right angle. If they don’t do it right go back and do it again. One play can break the entire defense down. It has a great deal to do with how you finish plays as well. When it comes down to it, the most important thing in football is how you finish. If we got corners in a great position to defend a pass and the guy catches the ball, it don’t mean a thing if you don’t stop him from catching it. Be disciplined and finish.

Q: What makes the 4-3 defense such a good scheme? Why has it had such longevity when other schemes like the 50 front have become somewhat outdated?

A: When you play in a 4-3 you can make adjustments to every formation and motion. You always will have four down linemen attacking the football every play, whether you’re zone or man blitzing. You’re establishing a new line of scrimmage with four down linemen who have gap responsibility. What we do a lot of to maintain gap control is drop our rover or strong safety down into the box when we see two back offenses to create another player who may be unblocked. Coverage wise, we try to play a lot of man coverage with a low hole and a high hole player, but it all depends on the athletes that you have. We were blessed with a ton of speed here over the last two decades so that’s how we play. It’s a front and coverage that’s solid against the run and forces teams to throw the ball, and that’s essentially what you want as a defensive coordinator.

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