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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


AFM’s College Coaches of the Year

by: David Purdum
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Mike Gundy Oklahoma State

Gundy led the Cowboys to the greatest year in their history, netting him AFM’s top
coaching award

The visitors’ locker room at Texas A&M is located right next to the entrance that takes you onto the field. Every time the doors open, the visiting locker room is treated to the sounds of Kyle Field, featuring rowdy fans, bands and entertainment. It’s not the most peaceful environment to settle a team down, especially one trailing 20-3 at the half.

Somehow, Mike Gundy did it. His Cowboys down 17 in a battle of top-10 Big 12 foes, Gundy knew halftime wasn’t going to be about significant scheme adjustments on either side of the ball. Instead, squashing any signs of panic was more important.

Once inside the locker room, he pointed out a couple missed tackles that had resulted in big plays and mentioned some drive-killing penalties. He walked over to the offensive staff and preached poise and calmness, before visiting with the defensive staff about the same priorities. There wasn’t a hint of stress in his voice or demeanor, according to players and coaches. “There wasn’t any panic; coach was calm, so we were calm,” remembered All-Big 12 defensive end Jamie Blatnick.

Despite the noisy atmosphere and three-score deficit, Gundy was at peace when he led his team back onto the field for the second half. “I don’t know how many people were in that stadium, but they were going crazy,” Gundy said. “But when we left the locker room, I felt good about the team, the assistants and I felt good about myself. I was calm. With young people, if their leaders are calm, then they’re going to be calm.”

A few hours later, after Oklahoma State had rallied back to beat A&M 30-29, there was a different noise in the visitors’ locker room. It sounded almost like a dance party. From celebratory dancing  to gutsy fourth-down calls, Gundy had all the right moves this season – except for one.

Late in the fourth quarter of a tie game at Iowa State, the Cowboys faced a fourth-and-one at the Cyclones’ 20. Gundy elected to attempt a field goal, which missed. In hindsight, he wishes he would have put the ball in the hands of his offense instead of his kicker late in the loss. But in typical Gundy fashion, he quickly learned from that decision, and what he learned helped the Cowboys beat Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl. “Now, we have a good kicker, but with our offense and players at quarterback and receiver, I learned as a coach that, in that that position, I’d rather put the ball in our offense’s hands,” he explained.

Two months later, Gundy went for it on fourth-and-four from the Stanford 32 in the second quarter and again on fourth-and-three from his own 40 with four minutes to play in the Fiesta Bowl. Both were successful and extended scoring drives, leading the Cowboys to their first BCS bowl victory.“I took the knowledge from the Iowa State game and said we’re not doing that. We’re either going to win or lose with our offense on the field,” Gundy said.

It worked, of course, and the dramatic overtime win capped a year of firsts for the Cowboys. Oklahoma State won its first conference title, capturing the Big 12 with a satisfying 44-10 whipping of Oklahoma. The Cowboys won a school-record 12 games and finished ranked No. 3 in the polls. Gundy became the first Cowboy coach to have four teams win at least nine games and now has the highest winning percentage in modern school history.

Forever a Cowboy

Former Oklahoma State coach Pat Jones recognized Gundy’s leadership skills early and started him at quarterback as a true freshman on the 1986 OSU team, which featured Thurman Thomas and Hart Lee Dykes. Gundy promptly set the NCAA mark for most consecutive pass attempts by a freshman without an interception at 138, a record that stood until Baylor’s Robert Griffin III broke it in 2008.

“We threw him in there with some veteran guys who were successful,” said Jones, “because we knew he had the people skills to make it work with those guys. They respected him.”

After Gundy’s playing days ended, Jones knew he wanted his former QB on his staff and went through the process of getting a special waiver from the NCAA to allow him to join the staff immediately as wide receivers coach in 1990. Gundy took extra classes in the spring so he could graduate and be a full-time coach. “I could always tell that he’d be a good coach by the way he handled players and by the way he recruited, and the way he worked with high school coaches,” said Jones. “We started him out slowly, keeping him in the state of Oklahoma. But you could tell when he expanded his role, that he had potential.”

Twenty-one years later, Jones, who after time in the NFL is a member of the Oklahoma media, has seen Gundy grow into that potential in all phases of coaching. “He’s really done a great job of not only bringing in the right assistant coaches, but also giving them enough flexibility to operate,” said Jones. “Mike and I still talk about those kinds of things, and he’s a lot more involved in the defensive side of the ball. Maybe not Xs and Os, but he’ll keep a good pulse on practice tempo and personnel. He stays a lot more on top of that than I think some people think he does. Mike punched all the right buttons this year,” added Jones. “He’s really grown into the position. What he really has done well is learn from his mistakes. He doesn’t repeat mistakes.”

Gundy agrees with his former coach and believes learning from past mistakes has unquestionably made him a better football coach than he was when he succeeded Les Miles at OSU in 2005. “There’s really not anything that can prepare you to be a head coach,” Gundy said. “There’s no playbook for being a head coach. Once it happens and you get in your office and close the door, you begin to realize that this is all on my shoulders now.”

When Gundy faced that moment, the realization that he was running a BCS program, he focused on staying true to what his parents’ instilled in him. He strived to maintain his integrity, character and values at all times. “Once you become a head coach, you have to have your own thoughts and do it your own way, because you can’t change who you are,” Gundy explained. “Your personality has to be the same and the players need to know that you’re being upfront with them or they’ll look right through you.

“I’ve grown over the years,” he added. “Like everyone, you look back at four or five years earlier, and think, ‘I can’t believe I did that or why would I have done that.’ And then you think, ‘well, at least I’ve grown and tried to create relationships, trust and accountability.’ Then, I reached back on the toughness that Les Miles and Pat Jones instilled in me and the knowledge that I’ve gained from coaches like Jeff Bower to get to this point.”

Doing “The Gundy”

Oklahoma State was a looser football team this year, according to Blatnick. Gundy’s dance moves helped. “You know, things just weren’t as uptight this year,” said Blatnick. “Really, the past two years, there has been a lot less stress. You used to be able to tell if we were getting ready to play Texas or Oklahoma. But coach really did a good job of relaxing the atmosphere a little bit. We had more fun this year, and that’s when we’re at our best, when we’re out there having fun, enjoying each other.”

Gundy danced in the locker room after wins over Texas A&M and Oklahoma. Players would gather around their coach in a circle and go crazy as he did what has become known as “The Gundy.” Corrnerbacks coach Jason Jones said, “We always love to see Coach Gundy dance.”

The more relaxed atmosphere carried over to the Cowboys coaching staff, as well. Gundy fostered it by encouraging off-season get-togethers for coaches and their families. New offensive coordinator Todd Monken had a barbeque in the spring. Jet ski trips to the lake are common, too. “Coach Gundy has done a great job of putting together a staff of coaches who are unselfish,” said Jones. “We just all want to win, and he’s brought in guys he knows are going to gel and fit in.”
Offense

The Cowboys’ up-tempo attack didn’t slow down with the arrival of offensive coordinator Todd Monken, who replaced Dana Holgorsen, now the head man at West Virginia. Oklahoma State finished third in the nation in total offense, averaging 549 yards per game. The Cowboys pushed the ball down the field through the air, but maintained balance with a ground game that averaged 162 yards.

The result was a prolific attack that scored 48.7 points per game.

Defense

A base 4-3, Cowboy defensive coordinator Bill Young utilizes primarily quarters coverage with adjusted pressure packages against quarterbacks susceptible to blitzes. Oklahoma State’s D was the definition of opportunistic, leading the nation in turnover margin. The Cowboys forced 44 turnovers, while only turning it over 23 times.

Yet the defense, which finished 107th in total defense, was often criticized. But Gundy said those stats are skewed. “Our defense defended more offensive plays than any other team in the country,” Gundy reasoned. “Plus, there were quite a number of plays that we defended when we were up by four or five touchdowns. So you’re just in kind of a base defense mode and are going to give up more yards and more points than normal. If you take the number of plays our defense was out there and divide that by points, you get kind of a per-capita formula and you’d see that our defense would probably be in the top 30 in the country.” 


FCS

Willie Fritz
Sam Houston State

The 2011 Sam Houston State Bearkats broke 26 school records. They did it by preparing more and practicing less. The Bearkats won their first eight games, highlighted by an overtime win at New Mexico.  By mid-October, coach Willie Fritz knew his team was headed for the post season. So he made the decision to limit on-field practice time.

“Going 14 weeks in a row is grueling both mentally and physically,” said Fritz, American Football Monthly’s FCS Coach of the Year. “I think cutting back on the on-field banging helped us through the latter part of the season.”

Reducing practice time benefited the Bearkats in multiple ways. “Every program has only a limited amount of quality players, so by cutting back on the banging, it helped make sure that we’d have quality guys when it mattered most,” explained Fritz. “We wanted to save our guys for the weekend and not try to win the game in a mid-week scrimmage.”

Fritz and his staff then used the time saved for extra game preparation, something Fritz said they did exceptionally well this season. “We really did a good job of being single-minded this season, focusing on our upcoming opponent and not looking back at past success,” said Fritz. “As a group, we did a really good job of preparation.”

The extra preparation and fresh team approach produced the program’s first outright Southland Football Championship and a school-record 14 wins. The previous mark was 11. The Bearkats were the only FCS team to finish the regular season unbeaten and reached the national championship game.

Offense: An option-based attack that’s 70/30 run-to-pass ratio, the Bearkats work out of the shotgun almost exclusively. SHSU runs the zone read and at times will motion in a back into the backfield to give more of a triple-option look. Sam Houston State also sprinkles in some pistol looks with some one-back power plays, draws and counters. The vertical passing game is critical and built on play-action off the inside zone.

Defense: A 4-2-5 base, the Bearkats are in some form of man coverage 70 percent of the time with a lot of press man coverage. Fritz brings pressure “70 to 80 percent of the time” and in a variety of ways by bringing extra players into the box and using both zone and man blitzes, even on run downs.

“We try to overwhelm you with numbers at the point of attack,” said Fritz. “I think it’s an exciting defense. You kind of don’t know where we’re going to hit you from.” Only on rare occasions will the Bearkats rush only four and sit back in a zone. But they’ll also disguise the look so it seems like major pressure is coming.


Division II

John Wristen
Colorado State-Pueblo

John Wristen walked off the field after his team’s spring game with confidence. In his fourth season since taking over during Colorado State-Pueblo’s transition from NAIA to Division II, Wristen knew he had a team capable of big things. His goal – just don’t mess it up.

He didn’t. The Thunderwolves rolled through the regular season undefeated and finished 11-1, the most wins ever for the program. The historic campaign didn’t come from some innovative scheme tweak or a gusty play call. In fact, Wristen may have coached less in those areas. His best coaching move of the season, he said, was to take a step back and remain patient.

“Sometimes when your team is on a mission and on a roll, you just have to step out of the way as a coach,” explained Wristen. “If your kids are going down the railroad tracks toward something special, you just need to keep them on the tracks. Sometimes you just need to get out of the way, tell them what time the game is and trust and believe in your kids.”

Wristen perfected the art of not over-coaching. He remained patient and became his team’s biggest cheerleader, constantly encouraging and motivating. He also stuck to the same philosophies that he built the program on - defense wins championships, make big plays on special teams, and manage the game on offense. It worked and produced two program-defining wins along the way.

The Thunderwolves got on the right track in their season opener, overcoming two 10-point deficits to beat perennial power West Texas A&M on the road. CSU-Pueblo blocked two punts and generated two scoring drives in the fourth quarter for a 26-24 victory. “We didn’t have big statistics (238 total yards), but we made plays on specials teams and caused a key turnover on defense and did enough to win the game,” said Wristen. “That kind of defined us.”

Six weeks later, the Thunderwolves took another step forward as a program, again on the road. CSU-Pueblo had never beaten conference-rival Nebraska-Kearney and fell behind for the first time in the game early in the fourth quarter. It would have been easy to say, ‘here we go again,’ but the Thunderwolves didn’t. Instead, they scored the game’s final 17 points, capped by an interception return for a touchdown with three minutes to go to seal their first win over UN-K.

“That fourth quarter of the Nebraska-Kearney game was really a defining moment for us as a program,” Wristen said. “And I think that entire game at West Texas (A&M), where we didn’t panic and had the maturity as a team, it was just really cool to see how much we had grown.”

Offense: A multi-faceted scheme produced an extremely balanced attack. The Thunderwolves rushed for 187 and passed for 181 yards per game. Starting under center approximately 60 percent of snaps, CSU-P mixed in the zone read with the option. The passing attack was built on West Coast principals.

Defense: A base 3-4 team, the Thunderwolves led the nation in Division II scoring defense, surrendering just 10.3 points per game. Defensive coordinator Hunter Hughes employed a rolled-up cover 2 while also using quarters coverage and some zone pressures. The overall philosophy is to limit big plays and rally to the football.

“In all reality, we want [offenses] to earn every yard,” said Wristen. “We don’t want to give up any big plays because we decided to blitz or vacate that zone. It may sound a little boring, but boring can be very successful.”


Division III

Glenn Caruso
University of St. Thomas

Glenn Caruso can’t stand entitlement. “It makes me violently ill,” the enthusiastic 36-year-old St. Thomas coach said. “The reason why we have gone from 2-8 to 13-1 in the last four years is because we haven’t spent one single day feeling entitled,” added Caruso, American Football Monthly’s Division III Coach of the Year.

The Tommies went 12-1 in 2010, so entering this past season, Caruso’s fourth at St. Thomas, his goal was to keep his team from feeling entitled, while also maintaining the confidence that comes with success.

Mission accomplished. St. Thomas went 13-1 with a second straight undefeated regular season and the program’s second regional championship. The Tommies won with a dominating defense that allowed only 10 points and 56 rushing yards per game. And they won by tweaking their schemes in the off-season in just the right fashion.

“In the off-season, we made a concerted effort to expand our schemes within our system,” said Caruso. “As a coach, we could sit here and watch these bowl games and say, ‘I like that blitz or I like that package’ and then go back to the office and install it. But after being here four years, we felt like the packages we had on offense, defense and special teams were well-honed and balanced. So what we tried to do was expand by working back through the system. We didn’t want to do something completely different, but just added wrinkles to some of our packages that maybe complemented our base stuff a little bit better.”

Balance is a huge part of Caruso’s offensive and defensive philosophy. His eight base running plays each have complementary play-action passes. Half are pocket passes and half are roll-outs. “The goal of the offense is to be as balanced as possible in everything we do,” he emphasized. “Not only do we have a corresponding pass to every base run play, but we also have a corresponding run call off of every pass play.” The balance carries over to ball distribution. Six players carried the ball on average of more than six times a game. Five players averaged more than a catch a game.

In addition to his balanced scheme, thorough game-planning was a key factor in this year’s success and playoff run. For the quarterfinal game against St. John Fisher, Caruso and his staff prepped and familiarized their players with an alternate game plan, a common practice for playoff games.

“When we go into a game against a team that is not familiar to us, we have a traditional base plan and then we go in with two sub-game plans,” he said. “You don’t need to do that when you’re facing a team year-in and-year out. But come playoff time, you’re talking about 70 snaps on offense and 60 snaps on defense, and that’s it and you’re going on or going home. To have a readily adjusted game plan going in, I think it saves a lot of time in the feeling out process. We don’t have to wait until halftime for one big adjustment period – we can go to our adjusted game plan.”

So when St. John Fisher threw out a couple new wrinkles, Caruso just implemented the alternate game plan on the fly, helping the Tommies overcome two first-half deficits en route to a 27-14 win. It put St. Thomas in the national semifinals for the first time.

Offense: The Tommies are a multiple two-back team with a run game balanced between a power attack and some inside and outside zone plays with a little option sprinkled in as well. The passing game is all based off play-action. The Tommies operate under center on approximately two-thirds of their snaps.

Defense: Based in the 3-4, the Tommies are a heavy pressure team, but play very little man coverage behind it. “Our goal is to stay as balanced as we can in the ways that we bring pressure,” Caruso said.

Most of the pressure packages come from the linebackers and are predominantly five-man pressures, but the Tommies will bring six in certain situations. Behind the pressure is a lot of zone, but not always traditional cover 3 hot concepts, he said. “A lot of it is based on breaking down pressure and trying to figure out where we have our best personnel match-ups,” Caruso added. “We also try to take advantage where the teams are splitting the protection and where they’re most vulnerable.

“I think we do a pretty good job of not risking the farm to get pressure,” he continued. “I think we do enough work in the off-season and in game-week to try and figure out how we can get pressure without having to bring wholesale blitzes.”

NAIA

Ted Karras Jr.
Marian University

It was third and long. The Marian Knights were clinging to a 12-7 lead in the fourth quarter of a rainy, sloppy week-two road test at Grand View University.

Head coach Ted Karras called timeout. He looked at his inexperienced quarterback, Adam Wiese, who already had thrown three interceptions in his second career start. “You make the call,” Karras told his QB.

Wiese chose a four-receiver route, built around a curl, wheel and post pattern. The post was open, and Wiese connected with Dextor Taylor for a 22-yard touchdown, helping the Knights prevail, 19-14.“I think that gave him a lot of confidence and gave our team a lot of confidence in him, too” said Karras, American Football Monthly’s NAIA Coach of the Year. “I think that was a turning point in our season, when our guys realized we had a good team and could play with anybody and make big plays when we need them.”

The hard-fought victory jumpstarted the five-year-old program’s first undefeated regular season, but Karras’ best coaching move came in the spring. Heading into his fifth season, Karras quickly diagnosed his roster’s strengths. He had a secondary capable of playing man coverage and an offensive backfield featuring a next-level fullback and a talented freshman tailback.

Karras, like any good coach would, tailored his scheme around those strengths. After passing for more than 3,800 yards the previous season, he dedicated more of the offense to the running game. The result was an extremely balanced attack. The Knights passed for 2,810 yards and rushed for 2,814 yards, with freshman back Tevin Lake leading the NAIA with 22 touchdowns.

Defensively, Karras trusted his secondary enough to bring more pressure than any previous season. “We finally had the corners that could cover in man coverage,” Karras explained. The increased pressure sparked a dominating defense that allowed a miniscule 7.4 points a game, the least in the NAIA by four points. The Knights surrendered just 13 touchdowns all season, three of which came in a wild, back-and-forth playoff loss to eventual national champions Saint Xavier University.

While the scheme tweaks paid dividends, Karras believes strongly that this team had the best chemistry of any of the five he’s had at Marian. He fostered that chemistry in the off-season with a basketball league, formed from his roster. The top 12 players in grade-point average from the first semester are named captains and draft teams. On Friday mornings, six teams play basketball in a league that includes daily MVPs, stats, standings and playoffs. The other six teams are up in the cardio room with Karras, getting to know each other.

“We’ll circle up and I’ll call two guys out,” explained Karras. “They have to know each other’s names and something about them. By the end of the winter, I really felt like our guys knew each other better than we ever have.”

Offense:  Karras prefers to describe his offense as ubiquitous. It’s loaded with formations and personnel groupings, each tailored to his players’ talents. “We can go single-back, two-back and are even old-school enough to go three-back in a full-house formation,” he said.

Wiese, a pocket-passer, operated out of the gun approximately half of the time. The balance helped the Knights convert 45.2 percent of their third downs (4th in the NAIA) and finished third in scoring offense at 40.4 points per game.

Defense: Based out of a 4-4, Cover 3 look, defensive coordinator Martin Mathis adjusts to a three- man line when facing spread attacks.

The Knights are primarily a zone team and did play some man coverage when going with their 3-4 look. It was also the look they pressured out, picking and choosing between outside and middle blitzes, designed to attack each opponent’s protection flaws.
 

JUCO

Buddy Stephens
East Mississippi Community College

Buddy Stephens believes the East Mississippi Lions won the national championship in the off-season. It started with a stellar freshman class, filled with instant contributors. It turned special when Stephens and his staff upped the ante in the spring by increasing accountability even to the point of dismissing a key defensive starter. That was something that might not have happened the previous season, Stephens said.

“Last year, I did a poor job of coaching,” admitted Stephens, American Football Monthly’s JUCO Coach of the Year. “I didn’t do a good job of communicating to our guys what the expectations of our program were, and it allowed some things to fester. Right then, I knew I had to a better job of giving our players guidance. That was really the turning point.”

Entering his fourth season at EMCC, Stephens and his staff emphasized discipline and did not compromise on their beliefs. The result was a 12-0 campaign capped by a 55-47 road upset of then No. 1 Arizona Western College for the school’s first national title. “We had 24 out of 30 players graduate at midterm off a national championship team, a semester early,” Stephens pointed out. “It just shows that if you adhere to your philosophies that you can win a national championship.”

Stephens also stuck to his guns on the field, keeping his offensive playbook simple to complement his up-tempo attack. “We have just a few plays on our sheets, but run them out of a lot of different formations,” he said. “The goal is to try to play very simple and very fast. We’re going to play faster and know our assignments better than the other guy.”

East Mississippi ran 901 plays, 58 more than any other team, and averaged 556 yards of offense. The Lions attempted 519 passes, yet were only sacked only 15 times. Quarterback Bo Wallace threw for 4,604 yards and 53 touchdowns, breaking three JUCO records.

Offense: A concept-based passing scheme clicks when the quarterback is getting the ball out quickly. “We tell him that he has 2.4 seconds to get the ball off,” said Stephens. “Anything after that, you better throw it or duck.” The tempo is quick and the scheme is based on pinpointing mismatches in the secondary and in the box. 
 
Defense: A base 4-3, cover-2 team, Stephens looks for good defensive linemen, corners that can be physical and safeties that can run. He doesn’t bring a lot of pressure, describing his scheme as “medium pressure.”






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