Thursday, March 22, 2007
'Stiney' and coaches go to school
Randy King
Randy King's Tech Insider is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Thursdays in season.
See Doug and Randy talk sports every week with the Sports edition of the TimesCast
Recent columns
So does Bryan Stinespring feel like he's a much smarter man now that he's spent some quality time with Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Norm Chow?
Stinespring fielded the loaded question and then laughed. Virginia Tech's offensive coordinator is way too smart to go there.
"You don't go down there to try and reinvent the wheel," Stinespring said. "Or all of a sudden, you're trying to take a lot from everybody, and pretty soon you become a jack of all trades and a master of none.
"You try to find things that they're doing, whether it's schematically in the run game or the passing game. A point here, a point there ... if you come back with three, four, five things that kind of carry over to previous existing things that you may do. Say, they may have built on it or added a new dimension to it, or another look or coaching point. So, yeah, I think we came out of there with some things that we feel like we can be beneficial to us."
Stinespring, along with assistants Curt Newsome (line), Kevin Sherman (wide receivers) and Mike O'Cain (quarterbacks), visited the Titans' offensive staff for a day and a half on Feb. 28-March 1. Running backs Billy Hite didn't make the trip because of business back in Blacksburg.
While NFL staffs don't routinely conduct such quickie seminars with college coaches, Stinespring said previous connections that he and his staff had with some of the Tennessee coaches -- assistants Marty Galbraith, John Zernheldt and Chow -- enabled this particular gig to transpire.
"When you go to an NFL team such as that, it really helps if you have some ties there because they're going to be very guarded of who comes in there and who doesn't," Stinespring said.
"So we have some ties there. Marty Galbraith has been an assistant in the ACC for a long time, somebody we've known for a long time," Stinespring said. "John Zernheldt is a guy who started his career at Ferrum College years and years ago [late 1970s]. I've known him for a long time and we've talked offensive line over the years. Curt Newsome coached with him for a year at James Madison, so I think that was a tremendous tie. I've had an opportunity to talk with Coach Chow before, plus Mike O'Cain had a previous existing relationship with Coach Chow [at N.C. State].
"So it was a great opportunity for us to be able to go in there and visit and feel like we were welcome there and have the opportunity to sit down and just throw things back and forth off each other a little bit."
Stinespring said he and his coaches flew to Nashville with a plan of what they wanted to explore and learn while in the Music City. We're not talking how-to-line-dance and Karaoke classes, either.
"We walked into their office at 9 o'clock [on Feb. 28], watched a little bit of tape with Coach Zernheldt ... just games to make sure when we got into coaching situations with the individual coaches that we had exactly what we wanted," Stinespring said. "We went down with a plan but we wanted to get a foundation watching their game tape of making sure what we looking for and how we could ask.
"So that was important to go through those game tapes and get a feel for that ... look at what they felt like was their [Nos.] 1 and 2 run play and [Nos.] 1 and 2 all-purpose routes. Then it gave us the chance to individually go in and break it down with the quarterbacks coach in terms of the read, the offensive line coach in terms of the protection, and then get an overall flavor for the offensive coordinator in terms of Coach Chow.
"We went in at 9, left at 6, and Coach Zernheldt came back to our suite and we kind of gathered information that we had, made notes of what we had from the trip. Then we went back in [March 1] at 8:30 a.m. and stayed until noon. We would have stayed longer, but there were weather issues in Nashville. So we were very good about piecing it all together, making sure all the little things were covered in the things that we liked and things we saw that could benefit us. We wanted to make sure we had all the minute parts of that covered as a staff before we left there."
In his fifth season as Tech's "OC" since Rickey Bustle's departure to take the head coach's position at Louisiana-Lafayette, Stinespring caught a lot of heat last fall from Hokie fans for an offense that often struggled with a first-year starting quarterback (Sean Glennon) and a depth-shy offensive line forced to replace three starters from 2006. A Tech offense that finished 99th in the country in total yards (295.2), 90th in rushing (113.4), 82nd in passing (181.8) and 49th in scoring (25.9) couldn't come close to matching the exploits of a Bud Foster-coached defense that led the nation in points allowed (11 per game) and total yards (219.5).
Despite a 10-3 season, Tech fans, as could be expected, couldn't help but wonder what if the Hokies had an offense to match their defense?
From Day 1 of fall practice last August, Tech head coach Frank Beamer preached that Foster's defense would have to carry the load as a young offense with a new QB developed. If Beamer said it once, he said it a hundred times: Glennon and the Tech offense's No. 1 priority was to hold onto the football ... in other words, not to win games but simply don't lose games instead.
That said, Stinespring's perceived lack of ingenious play-calling shouldn't have been blamed for all of Tech's offensive woes. Beamer has to be added to the list of culprits, too. I work for somebody else, too. And all I know is, if they say do it this way, that's how I'm going to do it.
OK, so "Stiney" isn't a Mouse Davis. Of course, who is? How many college gigs has that guy had? He just got another one last week. Portland State, I'm thinking.
That said, ol' Mouse won't ever outwork this cat. I will attest that nobody cares or takes their job more seriously than Bryan Stinespring. Just another reason he was in Nashville a few weeks ago when he could have been at home with his wife and four young kids.
That's why since he's been Tech's "OC" he's made previous off-season visits to Nebraska and Ole Miss, plus such NFL stops as the Indianapolis Colts, Carolina Panthers and New Orleans Saints.
"I've been a little bit of everywhere," Stinespring said. "We've always been trying to help ourselves. The day you don't try to improve yourself as a coach or try to expand yourself as a coach is the day that you fall behind. We ask our kids to work hard and I think we coaches should do the same thing. We should always be in a position to try and help our cause, try and help our young people. It's a great opportunity to self improve and try to help yourself by any means necessary."
Before heading to Nashville, Stinespring and Tech's offensive staff was in the process of breaking down and re-evaluating every single snap of last season. Think that's a ton of fun?
Stinespring said the biggest thing he wanted to learn from Chow & Co. was procedural stuff. How does the Titans' offensive staff break down opposing defenses? What cues does it look for? How to identify certain personnel matchup and how to exploit them?
"Everybody knows how to draw up plays," Stinespring said. "It's the little things that either make or break you, though.
"Tennessee was a team that got off a sluggish start offensively [last season] and then rallied to come one game away from being a playoff team. They led the league in rushing the last eight games and that turned things around for them."
Of course, Chow had a rookie quarterback named Vince Young, too.
"Oh, yeah, that kind of changes the complexion of everything a little bit," said Stinespring, laughing. "Yes, sir, it certainly does."
