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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Back in Black

Jerry Glanville brings both his passion and his philosophy of defense to Hawaii.
by: Richard Scott
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Jerry Glanville will be the first to insist he’s not re-inventing the wheel in his return to college football. “I’m not bringing anything back to the game people aren’t already using,” said Glanville, who hasn’t coached in the college ranks since 1973. “Whether I’m coaching defense or the kicking game the way I coach is to try and take opponents totally out of their comfort zone, that there’s no play where they can feel like we aren’t coming after them, like we’re sitting there waiting for them. We don’t sit and play much. We want to be an attacking team on special teams and an attacking team on defense. If we’re not forcing a turnover we’re trying to block a punt.”

He may not be bringing any new concepts to college football, but Hawaii players should benefit from his ready encyclopedia of experience and knowledge.

Sure, the game has changed since he last coached college football, but Glanville has spent the past 12 years preparing for every television game like a coach, making a startling habit as a commentator for calling plays before they happen.

“In special teams, the thing that has changed the most is punt protection. On offense, the thing that has changed the most is pass protection schemes,” Glanville said. “In both areas, they’ve progressed to the point where they’re doing things the way they do them in the NFL.

“When I last coached in college, they didn’t do things like they did in pro football, and they do now. And not just Hawaii. I’ve studied the other teams on our schedule and it’s done throughout college football.

“On defense I see people running things we ran in the early 70s. There’s more zone dogging, more zone blitzing than there used to be, but that’s been true for the past eight years. That’s not new now. That’s another case where the NFL has trickled down to the college level. Most teams have a zone dog package now.”

Choosing the right players for his own defensive package starts with a thorough evaluation process. The one thing Glanville never has and still won’t do is spend time studying the past performance of his new players, simply because he doesn’t know what those players were coached to do or what was expected of them.

Glanville then invests time and effort in looking past basic athleticism and skill to see what’s inside his players. For instance, a savvy nose guard who understands his role in the defense and does an effective job of keeping the center or guards off the middle linebacker is far more valuable than a more athletic nose guard who might make an occasional big play but spend the rest of the game preventing his linebackers from making plays.

“You have to remember we’re in the results and production business,” Glanville said. “You may be a better athlete than me and we’re both competing for the same position, but you have to be careful not to just play the best athlete but to play the person who can give you the best production.

“I’m looking for someone who does what he’s told and gets the results and you hope that’s your best athlete. What you want is your best football player.” By understanding his personnel more effectively, Glanville can then make better use of individual talents and skills in his personnel groupings.

“What you have to do in a matter of 2-3 weeks is figure out what this guy can do and then put him in a grouping where those abilities are allowed to be used,” Glanville said. “For instance you might have an outside linebacker that you can’t use in coverage but he’s an excellent dogger or blitzer. Then we’ll build a package where we’re only asking him to use his strengths. We don’t give up on him. We put him in the right personnel groupings.”

Glanville does his best personnel evaluation during his film study. For all that he might miss in the frenzy of practice, “the film doesn’t lie,” Glanville said. “The key is to believe what you see on film. It doesn’t care about personalities. It doesn’t care about background. It doesn’t care about anything but the results. The difference between good coaching and bad coaching is believing what you see on film and that should be the basis for your personnel decisions.”

In his extensive film study over the past 12 years he has seen a dramatic change in personnel, especially in the college game.

“The biggest difference is the size,” Glanville said. “Right now we’re looking at a nose tackle who doesn’t look that big, but he weighs 286. In 1974, 286 would have been so big that he would never have played on defense. We’d have moved him to offensive tackle because he wouldn’t have been able to move at 286. But 286 isn’t even large anymore. We have guys who are 350-360. These kids get bigger every year, and they can still move. They run better than we did when we played, at 100 pounds less.”

While the passing game has changed dramatically since Glanville last coached in college, it really hasn’t come that far since his last NFL coaching stint.

“I haven’t seen anything we haven’t had to defend before,” Glanville said. “You see a lot more spread offenses and more one-back and N-back formations now but there are still only 11 people out there – that’s the good news.”

Even with the changes in the passing game, Glanville remains a run-first defensive coach guy who would prefer to see opponents pass as often as possible. To that end, he will employ a wide variety of defensive packages, using anywhere from 4 to 8 defensive backs at the same time. The key determining factor will be his opponent’s offensive personnel groupings.

Glanville has a reputation as a blitz coach, but reputations and nicknames such as Glanville’s “Gritz Blitz” are often built on extremes rather than realities. His aggressive approach is a lot more calculated than his reputation would suggest.

“We attack by personnel groupings,” Glanville said. “Because of the personnel groupings, we never call a blitz if they’ve got enough people to block it. People say, ‘well this guy’s always blitzed for a living’ but if, for instance, they’ve got a tight end who picks up the strong safety and that’s his job, we don’t bring the strong safety. We look at your pass protection schemes and your personnel and try to break down your protections so that when we do come after you we have a high expectation that we’re going to have more people coming than you can pick up, or we’re not coming.”

Glanville’s blitz packages will also be determined in part by the skills, talents and confidence of his defensive backs. He is neither a “man” nor a “zone” coach. Instead, he prefers whatever works with each particular individual, team and situation.

“I would never play man unless we’re capable of playing man,” Glanville said. “Playing man when you can’t do it is occupational suicide. Man is fun to play and it causes problems for the opponent but it also causes problems for you if you’re not capable of doing it right.

“I’d like to play both but to play both you have to know you can win when you’re playing man, and that changes man-to-man depending on who you’re playing against.

“I’ve seen three teams play full-press bump-and-run against Southern Cal and two of those teams were beaten terribly on the fade on the outside man-to-man. One bump-and-run was good enough to hang in there and make it a close game out of it, but they still lost. The point is, if the other team’s personnel is better than yours, you’d better do something to help your guys in coverage instead of leaving them alone.”

Whatever he does this fall, it’s bound to be exciting. That’s been a Glanville trademark throughout his career. If his coaches and players are correct, it will also make Hawaii a better defensive team.

Some people laughed when Glanville returned to the sidelines. June Jones, the University of Hawaii head coach and a former assistant under Glanville with the Atlanta Falcons, looked behind the questions and concerns about the last 12 years, beyond the all-black outfits, racing fast cars and the tickets left for Elvis at every will call, and hired Glanville to coordinate the defense and help with special teams.

“I’m glad that Jerry is a part of us now,” Jones said when Glanville joined the Warriors this past March. “It excites me because he actually helped me get my first coaching job here at UH. He called Dick Tomey and put in a good word for me, and then he hired me in the NFL when nobody would. So I’m glad to be reunited with him. This is great not only for both of us, but for our team and the university as well.”

It’s particularly great for a defense that finished 116th out of 117 Division I-A teams in total defense in 2004, allowing 488 yards per game and gave up 38.4 points per game.

Glanville won’t address last year’s shortcomings with his players. Never has when he came into a new job. Never will. It doesn’t do any good. He’s too busy moving forward, teaching his defensive philosophy to an eager group of players. For all Glanville wants to teach his new players, nothing will be more important than establishing a new foundation built on higher standards of effort and attitude.

“We probably do this differently than anybody else; I told the players we grade the extra-point block probably harder than anyone else,” Glanville said. “Let’s say you just had a 15 or 16 play drive and you battled the offense and they still scored. At that point the extra point block is really all about character. I’ve told our players that I’ve always judged our defenses and what’s inside of them on their effort on the extra-point block. You’re not going to block many, so that’s why it’s such a true test of character.

That’s why Hawaii’s reputation for defense isn’t an issue for Glanville, and shouldn’t be for his players.

“I asked them the other day, ‘what is reputation?’ We’re playing a team in the opener (USC) with a great reputation. A kid I hardly even know said, ‘it’s what other people think you are.’ Wow. How about that for a 19-year-old? I told them, ‘isn’t that something, that we care what other people think we are? Is that what we’re about?’

“They said no and I told them ‘here’s what we care about: on the extra-point rush, what’s inside of us?’ We’ve got to get to the point where we only care about what we think about us, about what’s inside us. God knows and nobody else knows but us and God. The extra-point block is where we spill our guts, where we have to show who we are and what we are. Not many people approach an extra-point block that way.”

That approach is incorporated into every aspect of his defensive philosophy, especially when it comes to getting everyone to the ball.

“I’ve never coached breakdown, gather up and take all the moves from the receivers and running back,” Glanville said. “We play funnel attack tackling. If you’re going after him and you’re involved in run force, you tackle him outside-in. If you miss the tackle inside, that’s OK, but you can’t miss the tackle and lose your force. You’ve got to make that guy go inside. We want a funnel every time we go after the ballcarrier, and if I’m the fill guy I’m coming inside-out and I don’t try to breakdown and gather up and try to take on all of your physical ability.

“For instance, we face (Southern Cal standout) Reggie Bush in the opener and you couldn’t dance with him even if you wanted to. If I miss the tackle as the fill guy I’d better miss him outside. I can’t let him come back inside. So we funnel every play, but we don’t throttle down, we don’t quit running hard, we don’t slow down. If we miss the tackle, we miss it to the way we’re forcing the person to go.

“We over-teach, over-emphasize and over-demand that gang tackling is what good defenses are all about. If you’re the ninth guy in on the tackle you get as much credit as the first guy. It’s not who hit him first it’s who ALL hit him. There’s always room for one more – come join the party.

“You still get what you ask for, how much you get depends on how much you demand and you can’t demand or ask for too much, as long as it’s within their capabilities,” Glanville said. “I haven’t found anybody that doesn’t want to be as good as they can possibly be.”

Hawaii assistant Mouse Davis thought he had seen it all in a lifetime of college and pro coaching until he saw Glanville watching film after a recent preseason practice. When only 10 defensive players showed up at the ball for a tackle Glanville picked up on it quickly and immediately started looking for the 11th guy on the film. In a flash, that 11th and final player ran into the shot to complete the play. He had come from a long way off, but he was there, fulfilling Glanville’s mission.

“He’s very thorough in teaching and re-teaching and teaching and re-teaching his basic concepts,” Davis said, “but what he really does so well is emphasize flying to the ball, the concept of run and chase, run and chase. If you’re going play for him, you’re definitely going to run and chase or you aren’t going to be out there for long.”

That’s exactly what Hawaii coaches expected when Glanville got back into coaching.

“What he brings is not only a world of knowledge but a world of enthusiasm and desire and passion and love for the game,” Davis said. “He’s already made us immensely better and we haven’t even played a game. It’s like he just stepped off the field yesterday. He’s not re-learning anything. He’s just back doing what he’s always done. He’s still full of piss and vinegar.”





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