I’ve been stewing for the last month, trying to decipher the identity our football team is going to take. Nothing frustrates me more than seeing a team playing without direction week in and week out. It doesn’t matter what sport we are talking about either. All the great teams have identifying factors even the most casual fan can point out. Trust me; it’s a heck of a lot easier to win games when you have some pillars to lean on every week. These need to be established, and I don’t doubt Coach Kill is stressing them daily. However, we should start to see them sooner than later or this team will continue to frustrate us on Saturdays.
The old adage says you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. I’m guessing Kill has had this thought cross his mind a time or two in the last year. In a program that has lacked consistency at the coordinator level the past three plus years, this job is much more difficult. I couldn’t imagine trying to learn a new system every spring practice. In my opinion it equates to our kids basically being NFL free agents every year. Could you imagine any team in the NFL that would be successful if they had to learn a new system every single year? That’s why patience is paramount when it comes to turning this program around, and why Kill has repeatedly said this will take more than one year to do.
I’ve said before there are some similarities to what this team is going through, and what I experienced as a redshirt freshman back in 1997 when Coach Mason was hired to replace Jim Wacker. Coach Wacker had hired Tim Rose to try and establish a defense that would sustain his job as head coach. The defense Rose established had no place in the Big Ten, and certainly didn’t rely on any identifiable fundamentals. The first thing we heard from our new defensive coordinator David Gibbs as we sat in our defensive meeting room was that, “We Would Stop the Run.”
Was that comment earth-shattering news? Hardly, but it was finally something we as a defense could put our stamp on and energy into. We only ran 3 or 4 defenses that first year because that was all our coaching staff felt we could competently run. As the years progressed that defense matured to the point where we knew exactly where everyone needed to be on any given play. Once competency is achieved on basic fundamentals, the fun part happens. Guys aren’t thinking about fits or coverages, they are thinking about lighting up the cocky slot receiver coming across the middle on a drag route. The same kid who was talking all week about how many plays he was going to make. It’s the defensive end knowing he can take the tackle hard up the field on 3rd down to get a sack because the weak side linebacker will be there for the draw play.
We are working just as hard as every other team in the country; it’s just not showing up on the field. It’s having to teach these kids to walk before they run. What it means is that we may lose a few along the way, but those that stay to finish the job will be rewarded. I remember vividly sitting in the bowels of Beaver Stadium in 1999 and looking at my teammates who had just beat the #2 team in the country. We had just won our 6th game of the year and qualified for a bowl game. We had gone from a loser to a winner, and you know what we heard the minute we showed up for meetings the following Monday? “We Will Stop the Run” I heard that saying for 4 straight years, and it was certainly one of the pillars I leaned on.
Go Gophers!