Mickey Andrews\' Secret

Florida State\'s defensive coordinator didn\'t rise to the top by being a nice guy, but rumor has it he is one anyway.
by: Jane Musgrave
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Wickey Andrews doesn't mince words when talking about Florida State's early-season loss to Miami, a defeat that hung over the Seminoles like the state's ever-present humidity, threatening to wash away their hopes for a second consecutive national championship.

"It was a mistake on my part," he offers even though the question isn't on the table. "My biggest mistake was I didn't play more kids than I did. I had kids that played almost the entire game. By the end, they were pooped."

Andrews' willingness to accept responsibility for the loss and blame it on his decision to deviate from his trademark empty-the-bench game plan is typical say those who have coached with him and against him.

While Florida State's defensive coordinator is best known for his bombastic on-the-field demeanor, his breakneck competitiveness and his aggressive coaching style, those who know him say underneath it all is a humble guy who hasn't deviated far from his rural southern Alabama roots.

"He's almost a Jekyll and Hyde," says Chuck Amato, who coached with Andrews at Florida State for 16 years before leaving this year to become head coach at North Carolina State. "When he's on the field, he's very intense. But once he leaves, he mellows out. He's more reserved than you could imagine. You wouldn't know he's the same guy who was out of the field. He's a perfect gentleman."

When he's on the field, he's driven by an intense desire to win. Off the field, he's driven by an intense desire to win as well, but he does it by putting his ego on hold, seeking advice from others, giving credit to those who have helped him and accepting blame that could easily be laid on others.

Players, he insists, don't lose games.

"Most times when we lose, it's when we mess them up," he says.

If that's true, Andrews hasn't messed them up often. During his 17 years at Florida State, his defensive units have consistently been rated among the best in the nation. He is roundly credited with making the Seminoles the winningest football program of the 1990s, when it won more games (109) than any other team has won in any decade in NCAA history.

This year has been more of the same. Despite the loss to the University of Miami, the Seminoles defense is one of the top five nationally in rushing and scoring. Overall, it is rated in the top 10.

But when lauded, Andrews doesn't bask in the glory. In 1996, for instance, he became the first recipient of the Broyles Award, given annually to the top assistant coach in the nation. When he accepted the award from the Major Sports Association of Little Rock, Ark., he quickly shifted the attention to one of the runner ups. Andrews turned to Nebraska defensive coordinator Charlie McBride and thanked him for his advice. "He might have as much as to do with Florida State's success as anybody," he told those who had gathered to honor him.

But, Andrews says, he wasn't being humble; just honest.

"A lot of what we do defensively we got from other people, it's not something we came up with ourselves," the 59-year-old says.

But, McBride says, what makes Andrews different is that he'll admit it. A lot of coaches won't.

In fact, he says, some coaches won't even share their schemes, mistakenly believing that their opponents can't watch game films and figure out exactly what they're doing. Or, he says, coaches will take a page out of another team's playbook, and call it something else so they can somehow pretend they invented it.

Andrews does neither. If he uses something Nebraska calls Cover 9, he'll call it Cover 9, not rename it Cover 5, Cover 6, Blanket Bingo or hang some other moniker on it in a misguided attempt to disguise the scheme's roots.

It doesn't matter what you call a play or whether an opponent knows you have it in your arsenal, McBride says. The key is when you use it. And that's where Andrews is what McBride calls "sneaky smart."

"He'll blitz you on third and 10," he says. "His ability to call plays is the key. He'll make subtle changes week to week so you never know what he's going to call in any situation."

Keeping his opponents off-guard, not keeping his techniques a secret, is what makes Andrews a success.

"Mickey and I had a good relationship," says McBride, who retired at the end of last season after spending 23 years with Nebraska. "We never held anything back from each other. There were no secrets. We took our tapes, our notebooks and opened them up. A lot of things they did, we took and it made us better."

Florida State's speed, for instance, was killing the big, brawny Cornhuskers who achieved and maintained dominance for years by being bigger and stronger than the competition. When teams, particularly those in Florida, got fast, Nebraska's oversized farm boys couldn't keep up.

After meeting with Andrews and looking at what Florida State was doing, McBride says Nebraska turned their defensive backs into linebackers. "It made us a quicker and faster team," he says.

But, Andrews is quick to admit, neither he nor any of the other coaches at Florida State invented speed. He credits the University of Miami with that.

"Originally when we went from a 5-2 defense to a 4-3 defense we more influenced by the University of Miami than anything else," he says.

Likewise, he says, his trademark use of 40 or more players is not his invention. He learned it during the years he played for Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.

"Coach Bryant would use 60 players in the first half," says Andrews, who played wide receiver and defensive back on two of Bryant's teams in the early 1960s that won national championships.

Even after all these years, Andrew's penchant for rotating players on and off the field can still drive FSU head coach Bobby Bowden crazy. Bowden will look out on the field and see some untested underclassman out there and wonder what Andrews is doing.

"I'd say, 'What are you doing with that guy in the game? It's tied!'" Bowden told newspaper reporters several years back. "But that's what we've always done, and it's brought us a lot of success."

Andrews says there are several advantages of rotating players on and off the field. First, he says, players are fresher. "If the guys aren't tired, they can make the difference when it really counts," he says. Allowing a player to sit and rest for a while also probably reduces injuries.

Further, he says, it bolsters a player's ego and therefore his performance. "The second-stringer is going to try harder if he knows he's going to get in the ball game," he says. "The whole thing about substituting is that when you're a substitute you're not a second-teamer when you walk on the field. You're a first-teamer because the first team's out."

But while he credits the legendary Bryant with turning him into a substitution monster, it was a high school coach that showed him how to use players to develop a program so it isn't hounded by on and off years.

When he was a defensive coordinator at Clemson in the late '70s, he traveled to Valdosta, Ga. on a recruiting trip. While meeting Valdosta High School coach Wright Bazemore, Andrews says he just had to know how the coach kept winning state championships year after year.

"I coach next year's team this year," Bozemore said.

"I didn't know what he was talking about but I didn't want to show my ignorance," Andrews says. But on the drive back to Clemson he realized what Bozeman meant.

Since then, he doesn't red-shirt freshmen. He plays them so they will have the experience they need to replace departing seniors. In doing so, he says he doesn't have to worry when, as happened 1998, he lost two All-Americans and four others to the NFL draft. Despite the loss, a so-called no-name defense took the Seminoles to the national championship game.

And, he readily he admits, builds the name and no-name players the same way. He sums up his coaching style with one word: tough.

While he's never loaded up a team of recruits and taken them to the Everglades to toughen them up, in a latter day Florida version of Bryant's now infamous 1956 training camp for the Aggies, he says he is mindful of the lessons he learned while playing for the Bear.

"The biggest thing I learned from Coach Bryant is the commitment it takes to be a champion," he says. "You don't become a champion if you don't have a championship attitude, if your heart is not beating with your desire."

Further, he says, you don't become a champion without hard work. "You don't wake up in the morning and become a great football player any more than you wake up in the morning and because a great violinist. You have to prepare yourself to be the best you can be."

In the weeks before spring training, players are up at 5:45 a.m. working out. After spring training begins, at least 10 minutes a day is devoted to high-intensity workouts, bent knee and change of direction drills - exercises players elsewhere sometimes call suicides.

Andrews, however, scoffs at the term.

"We don't call them that," he says. "That's what it's called when you get beat."

And, players don't complain. And why would they? They come to Florida State to learn to be champions and Andrews is more than willing to teach them.

"We used to go to watch him coach in the spring and say, 'I wish I could coach like that,'" Dick MacPherson, former head coach at Syracuse who retired in 1992 after a two-year stint as head coach at New England Patriots. At many schools, players simply wouldn't accept his style of coaching which demands that players give 300 percent 100 percent of the time.

"But when you come up to that level, you have athletes that demand expert coaching and teaching," he says. "Kids go to school there to win. And Mickey wins."

Further, MacPherson says, Andrews has perfected the tough love approach. "He's very demanding and very loving. He gets them ice cream and takes care of their boo-boos. He loves them and they know that."

Still, some say his coaching style might have hurt his ability to get a head coaching job. He was head coach at Livingston University from 1970-72 and won a NAIA national championship.

Since coming to Tallahassee in 1984, he has interviewed for several head coaching jobs, including openings at Tulane and the University of Arkansas, but was overlooked.

Now, he says, he has his eye on one particular job. While he wouldn't say which school interests him, many suspect he'd like to return to his home state of Alabama and coach on the same field as his mentor, Bear Bryant. With Mike DuBose poised to step down at the end of the season, some say the fates may be right.

Still, Andrews isn't saying whether Alabama is or isn't his dream job. And, he insists he isn't worried about the future.

"When it happens, it happens," he says. "I'm in a great situation in Tallahassee."

And vice versa.

"A lot of what we do defensively we got from other people, it's not something we came up with ourselves"

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