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Sorry if this was already posted.. some great answers by HCSS. Especially his family motto "Don't you change".
Q&A: Scott Shafer
Andrew Tie
August 9, 2013
Our latest ACC Q&A subject is new Syracuse coach Scott Shafer.
Below are excerpts of his conversations with the ACC media.
(Scroll down to the bottom for links to previous Q&As.)
What were your thoughts or reaction to being picked sixth in the Atlantic Divison?
I’ve been accustomed for so many years to not looking at preseason polls. I don’t read any of those magazines. It’s not where you start; it’s where you finish. We’ve got to go on the field and prove we’re better than sixth place, and we look forward to that challenge.
Do you think you should be sixth?
I guess there’s ignorance behind not knowing people and teams. But that’s for them to decide. We should be whatever we are at the end of the season after we play.
What have these couple of days been like as the cool new toy for the ACC?
It’s been fun. Both Syracuse and Pitt are excited to be part of the conference. It’s a privilege to be joining a conference at this time. It’s been a great couple of days. I’ve really enjoyed the coaches. I’ve been around them a couple times the last couple months … just good guys that represent NCAA football to a really high degree. It’s great to be part of that group.
Who are some of the specific coaches you’ve talked to?
Pretty much all of them. I know Dave Doeren well from the past. Coach Swinney’s been great. I love Coach Beamer. He’s a guy I idolized as a young coach and have great respect for. Coach Cut at Duke – a great veteran of the game and a great coach for so many years. I like Coach Golden. I’ve known him for a long time. He was back in the MAC, and I was in the MAC for a long time. Really all of them, but those guys are some of the guys I’ve talked with a little bit.
I’ve talked to a few coaches about the safety rules now. There’s the potential for ejections on Saturdays, and a lot of coaches would prefer that that would be withheld until Sunday. Do you feel the same way, and how much input have the coaches gotten?
They’re going to always ask our opinions and take it for what it’s worth. We’ve got to practice what we preach or at least practice what I preach, and that’s to control what you can control. I really can’t control that rules committee and how they make their decisions. I know they have the best interest of the kids at hand, and that’s a good thing.
You’re always going to agree or disagree to different degree with all the different rules, but when it comes to safety, just the fact that they’re looking at the way they have, it’s a good thing in the long run. It’s important because above all, first and foremost, it’s about taking care of the health of our kids, so they can continue playing this great game that we all love so much.
But as you guys all know, it’s become a collision sport more than a contact sport. We got to do a good job making sure the kids are protected – rules are a big part of it. For us, a big part of it is how we’re coaching and how we’re teaching them to play and protect themselves by not putting their head down or not targeting helmet-to-helmet contact.
In the long run, it’s a good thing, and I think throughout the course of college football history, there’s always those things happening. You walk over there and see that leather helmet and can’t believe they used to wear those. And frankly for anybody that’s played the game, you know part of the game is pain and getting through pain, and there’s a big difference between discomfort and pain and injury, and we’ve got to do a good job making sure we’re protecting kids from the latter.
Now as a head coach, have you made an conscious changes to how you interact with the guys or how your coaching style is?
To some degree. We always had a motto at all the schools I’ve been at both the coaches and the players. It’s a motto that even my family and I – my wife and kids – that we embrace, and we always say, “Don’t you change.”
You’re where you are because of what you’ve done both as players and coaches. Remember what it’s taken to get to that point, and don’t change too much. Consciously, not too much other than trying to be around the offensive kids more because I was always on the other side of it trying to get my guys to kick their ass in practice. On the conscious side of it, that would be the only way … just try to be myself with the kids, and enjoy what we believe is the greatest sport ever invented and coaching it. I can’t believe they pay me to do this job.
Your first ACC game is a month in. Are you OK with that with the fact that you’ll get some nonconference games in and get the experience under your belt first?
I grew up in Ohio. In high school, we always played a couple scrimmages before the season. My dad was a high school coach, and he’d always try to schedule the best teams in Ohio, so we’d be ready for league play. I like the fact that we’re playing a good football team in Penn State with Bill O’Brien coaching them and doing a great job. One of the most underrated coaches in NCAA football is Pat Fitzgerald at Northwestern. He gets the most out of his players. We’ll have a hell of a battle against them. Tulane’s a much improved football team. I’m watching them on tape. Then we play Wagner, and it’ll be their Super Bowl when they play us. Hopefully those four games can give us an opportunity to get prepared to play one of the better teams and maybe best college football player I’ve seen in a long time.
What do you know about Clemson and Tajh Boyd right now?
That they’re a hell of a frickin’ team. They scare the hell out of you as a coach. But it’s a challenge we relish and a challenge we look forward to going into. We’re not afraid of anybody, never have been. We look forward to going after them and competing knowing they’ve got more stars next to their name than we do. We may not be as big. We may not be as fast. Doggone it, we want to play a style of football where we’re knocking the hell out of people and playing a hard-nosed game against everybody. That’s going to be the key to our success until we can improve our talent pool. As we move into this ACC, we’ve got to make sure we take advantage of the greatest part of the game, and that’s the contact side of the game and make that a big part of how we win games.
From your offseason study of ACC opponents, have you gotten a sense of the identity of the ACC vs. the Big East or this is a better league, a faster league? Do you have an overall sense of the conference you’re going into?
There are a lot of things that are comparable. I look at Clemson and comparing them to West Virginia, a team that we play year in and year out. They’re fast. They get the ball to the edge quick. They have a good quarterback – highly touted. Very similar to the West Virginia teams we’ve played … very talented kids that can run and catch the football with a lot of speed. Defensively, I’ve always been very interested in the linebacker play in the ACC. Linebacker play in the ACC has always been at a high level. That’s why so many of those guys go on and play in the league. You’ve got kids who can really hit, and I think that’s probably one thing I’ve been most impressed with watching other defenses, which I haven’t done a whole lot of in the past. I’ve always been watching offenses. The speed and talent at the linebacker position in this conference and really the history of those kids playing in this conference and D-ends. We’ve had some great D-ends at Syracuse obviously – Dwight Freeney and Chandler Jones. So we’ve seen a few of those kids, but it seems like there’s a lot more of those kids in the ACC.
Do you look at anybody and say that team plays like us or looks like us?
I hadn’t really looked at it that way comparing them to us so much. Maybe comparing them to some of the other teams we’ve played. Some of the skill sets of Missouri and West Virginia’s speed, Louisville – another great quarterback in Teddy Bridgewater … you can compare him to some of the kids in the league. It’s all different, but it’s all the same. It’s still the same game. It’ll come down to who plays the most physical style of football in my opinion. You guys know what’s going to come out of my mouth. Take care of the football, time of possession, physicality, score more than they do.
Is there a sense of what has piqued them about the ACC players they’re going to be facing, and has that in any way made you take a different look on reshaping the way you look on the ACC?
No, not at all. Football’s football. We played a lot of talented teams over the years. We’re going to have to play a lot of more talented teams in this conference. It really hasn’t changed the mindset other than make us extremely anxious to get involved with it.
ACC fans have not seen Jerome Smith at running back. What does he bring to the table? What are his strong suits?
We have a good set of running backs. Jerome’s one of them. He’s a good hard-nosed runner. He gets north and south … puts his foot in the grass. He’s a self-made man. He wasn’t highly recruited, wasn’t highly touted out of high school. He’s perfect for what I believe Syracuse is – a bunch of kids that are no-names out of high school and not highly recruited, and at the beginning of their careers, they don’t have a bunch of stars next to their names, but hopefully at the end of their careers, we’ll produce some of the better players in the country that can move forward like so many of them have prior to this group and become good pro football players as well.
How has your time studying offenses helped you now as a head coach?
I won’t direct a bunch of it. I’ll just try to manage it and let my coaches coach. When I was a coordinator, I always had a great appreciation for the coaches that just let me go in that dark room and prepare for a game and coach and not be on the headset saying, “what the hell did you make that call for?” I’d like to model myself after the coaches I appreciated the most. Let the talented guys you hired do their job, and try to manage the game and give them opportunities to communicate with their kids well and using timeouts at the right time and that sort of thing.
Yesterday Macky MacPherson said you had a more hands-off approach. Is that something you had going in or you developed along the way?
I wouldn’t say it’s hands-off. It’s not being a micromanager. Being a true manager – more macro than micro. Making sure things are in line with your philosophical points of view as a football coach and letting those guys do the work. Let those guys dig the ditch that they’re so good at digging. Let your coaches coach – keep them in line. Try to get the best players for them to make them better coaches. Good players make average coaches good coaches and so on and so forth. The key is to set them up with some kids that can do things you don’t coach.
Have you done anything to put your stamp on the team?
Nothing more than continue to do the things I’ve always done with the defensive kids I’ve coached throughout the years, and that’s to take the approach that we’re going to control the things you can control. Focus in on not worrying things that are out of your control. You can always control your attitude. You can always control your effort. You can always control your enthusiasm. Those are the things you want to promote. I know it sounds simple, but it’s the truth.
As a coach, we just got to do a good job setting the kids up to be physical enough in practice that they can take that hard-nosed approach to the field but also not beat up too many of our kids in the preseason. There’s that fine line and that balance with a school like Syracuse. It costs 55, some odd, thousand dollars a year to go to school there. It’s hard to get a lot of walk-ons to play in your program. We’ve got to be smart about the way we practice and the way we take care of each other. At the same time, being physical as all get-out, so we’re ready to play the type of game we want to. That’s the balance. That’s the fight that we have as coaches especially when you’re filling in some of the voids of some of the positions that we’ve lost.
Safety position – losing Shamarko Thomas to the Steelers. And up front, Justin Pugh, the 18th or 19th pick in the draft. Ryan Nassib, the most underrated college quarterback in the country last year in my opinion. Zack Chibane, Brandon Sharpe at the defensive end position. We’ve lost some good football players. You say this kid can do it. He’s as fast as him, he’s as big as him, he’s as this, he’s as that. You don’t know until he gets hit in the mouth and responds. You have to create that early in practice and find out how they’re going to respond to those situations without beating them up too much.
Are you worried about the quarterback spot without Ryan Nassib?
Worried probably isn’t the greatest word. I’m concerned about the quarterback position, but I love the character behind each kid that’s fighting to become the starter there. I love the passion of the kids that play the game at quarterback for us. They love football, and they’re working hard at it. They have good skillsets and good tools. It’s going to be a blast. The competition’s on and we’ve got guys we think can do it. I just can’t wait to see how they do.
What should ACC fans expect when they come to the Carrier Dome?
The most underrated fans in the country. If you’re from central New York, if you’re from anywhere, you get used to what your normal is, whether you’re from Clemson, Alabama, Michigan, Stanford. I love our fans. We get West Virginia two years ago, last year Louisville in the Dome. Our fans were phenomenal. I look forward to it. The Carrier Dome’s a really unique place … a special place. It’s the one of the “Last of the Mohicans” with the indoor facility at an NCAA Division I program. I look forward to it. Everyone’s asking me, “how’re you going to do when you go down to this school?” Well I’ve coached against most of those schools. Me and my family are like Johnny Cash. We’re like the Cash family. We’ve been everywhere in this business, but the kids haven’t. Our kids are going to go to a lot of different venues, which will be really exciting for them, but their kids have to come to the Carrier Dome as well. We look forward to getting them in there and trying to knock the hell out of them a little bit and play the game the way it’s meant to be played. It’ll be a lot of fun. It’ll be a hell of a challenge for us this year.
Q&A: Scott Shafer
Andrew Tie
August 9, 2013
Our latest ACC Q&A subject is new Syracuse coach Scott Shafer.
Below are excerpts of his conversations with the ACC media.
(Scroll down to the bottom for links to previous Q&As.)
What were your thoughts or reaction to being picked sixth in the Atlantic Divison?
I’ve been accustomed for so many years to not looking at preseason polls. I don’t read any of those magazines. It’s not where you start; it’s where you finish. We’ve got to go on the field and prove we’re better than sixth place, and we look forward to that challenge.
Do you think you should be sixth?
I guess there’s ignorance behind not knowing people and teams. But that’s for them to decide. We should be whatever we are at the end of the season after we play.
What have these couple of days been like as the cool new toy for the ACC?
It’s been fun. Both Syracuse and Pitt are excited to be part of the conference. It’s a privilege to be joining a conference at this time. It’s been a great couple of days. I’ve really enjoyed the coaches. I’ve been around them a couple times the last couple months … just good guys that represent NCAA football to a really high degree. It’s great to be part of that group.
Who are some of the specific coaches you’ve talked to?
Pretty much all of them. I know Dave Doeren well from the past. Coach Swinney’s been great. I love Coach Beamer. He’s a guy I idolized as a young coach and have great respect for. Coach Cut at Duke – a great veteran of the game and a great coach for so many years. I like Coach Golden. I’ve known him for a long time. He was back in the MAC, and I was in the MAC for a long time. Really all of them, but those guys are some of the guys I’ve talked with a little bit.
I’ve talked to a few coaches about the safety rules now. There’s the potential for ejections on Saturdays, and a lot of coaches would prefer that that would be withheld until Sunday. Do you feel the same way, and how much input have the coaches gotten?
They’re going to always ask our opinions and take it for what it’s worth. We’ve got to practice what we preach or at least practice what I preach, and that’s to control what you can control. I really can’t control that rules committee and how they make their decisions. I know they have the best interest of the kids at hand, and that’s a good thing.
You’re always going to agree or disagree to different degree with all the different rules, but when it comes to safety, just the fact that they’re looking at the way they have, it’s a good thing in the long run. It’s important because above all, first and foremost, it’s about taking care of the health of our kids, so they can continue playing this great game that we all love so much.
But as you guys all know, it’s become a collision sport more than a contact sport. We got to do a good job making sure the kids are protected – rules are a big part of it. For us, a big part of it is how we’re coaching and how we’re teaching them to play and protect themselves by not putting their head down or not targeting helmet-to-helmet contact.
In the long run, it’s a good thing, and I think throughout the course of college football history, there’s always those things happening. You walk over there and see that leather helmet and can’t believe they used to wear those. And frankly for anybody that’s played the game, you know part of the game is pain and getting through pain, and there’s a big difference between discomfort and pain and injury, and we’ve got to do a good job making sure we’re protecting kids from the latter.
Now as a head coach, have you made an conscious changes to how you interact with the guys or how your coaching style is?
To some degree. We always had a motto at all the schools I’ve been at both the coaches and the players. It’s a motto that even my family and I – my wife and kids – that we embrace, and we always say, “Don’t you change.”
You’re where you are because of what you’ve done both as players and coaches. Remember what it’s taken to get to that point, and don’t change too much. Consciously, not too much other than trying to be around the offensive kids more because I was always on the other side of it trying to get my guys to kick their ass in practice. On the conscious side of it, that would be the only way … just try to be myself with the kids, and enjoy what we believe is the greatest sport ever invented and coaching it. I can’t believe they pay me to do this job.
Your first ACC game is a month in. Are you OK with that with the fact that you’ll get some nonconference games in and get the experience under your belt first?
I grew up in Ohio. In high school, we always played a couple scrimmages before the season. My dad was a high school coach, and he’d always try to schedule the best teams in Ohio, so we’d be ready for league play. I like the fact that we’re playing a good football team in Penn State with Bill O’Brien coaching them and doing a great job. One of the most underrated coaches in NCAA football is Pat Fitzgerald at Northwestern. He gets the most out of his players. We’ll have a hell of a battle against them. Tulane’s a much improved football team. I’m watching them on tape. Then we play Wagner, and it’ll be their Super Bowl when they play us. Hopefully those four games can give us an opportunity to get prepared to play one of the better teams and maybe best college football player I’ve seen in a long time.
What do you know about Clemson and Tajh Boyd right now?
That they’re a hell of a frickin’ team. They scare the hell out of you as a coach. But it’s a challenge we relish and a challenge we look forward to going into. We’re not afraid of anybody, never have been. We look forward to going after them and competing knowing they’ve got more stars next to their name than we do. We may not be as big. We may not be as fast. Doggone it, we want to play a style of football where we’re knocking the hell out of people and playing a hard-nosed game against everybody. That’s going to be the key to our success until we can improve our talent pool. As we move into this ACC, we’ve got to make sure we take advantage of the greatest part of the game, and that’s the contact side of the game and make that a big part of how we win games.
From your offseason study of ACC opponents, have you gotten a sense of the identity of the ACC vs. the Big East or this is a better league, a faster league? Do you have an overall sense of the conference you’re going into?
There are a lot of things that are comparable. I look at Clemson and comparing them to West Virginia, a team that we play year in and year out. They’re fast. They get the ball to the edge quick. They have a good quarterback – highly touted. Very similar to the West Virginia teams we’ve played … very talented kids that can run and catch the football with a lot of speed. Defensively, I’ve always been very interested in the linebacker play in the ACC. Linebacker play in the ACC has always been at a high level. That’s why so many of those guys go on and play in the league. You’ve got kids who can really hit, and I think that’s probably one thing I’ve been most impressed with watching other defenses, which I haven’t done a whole lot of in the past. I’ve always been watching offenses. The speed and talent at the linebacker position in this conference and really the history of those kids playing in this conference and D-ends. We’ve had some great D-ends at Syracuse obviously – Dwight Freeney and Chandler Jones. So we’ve seen a few of those kids, but it seems like there’s a lot more of those kids in the ACC.
Do you look at anybody and say that team plays like us or looks like us?
I hadn’t really looked at it that way comparing them to us so much. Maybe comparing them to some of the other teams we’ve played. Some of the skill sets of Missouri and West Virginia’s speed, Louisville – another great quarterback in Teddy Bridgewater … you can compare him to some of the kids in the league. It’s all different, but it’s all the same. It’s still the same game. It’ll come down to who plays the most physical style of football in my opinion. You guys know what’s going to come out of my mouth. Take care of the football, time of possession, physicality, score more than they do.
Is there a sense of what has piqued them about the ACC players they’re going to be facing, and has that in any way made you take a different look on reshaping the way you look on the ACC?
No, not at all. Football’s football. We played a lot of talented teams over the years. We’re going to have to play a lot of more talented teams in this conference. It really hasn’t changed the mindset other than make us extremely anxious to get involved with it.
ACC fans have not seen Jerome Smith at running back. What does he bring to the table? What are his strong suits?
We have a good set of running backs. Jerome’s one of them. He’s a good hard-nosed runner. He gets north and south … puts his foot in the grass. He’s a self-made man. He wasn’t highly recruited, wasn’t highly touted out of high school. He’s perfect for what I believe Syracuse is – a bunch of kids that are no-names out of high school and not highly recruited, and at the beginning of their careers, they don’t have a bunch of stars next to their names, but hopefully at the end of their careers, we’ll produce some of the better players in the country that can move forward like so many of them have prior to this group and become good pro football players as well.
How has your time studying offenses helped you now as a head coach?
I won’t direct a bunch of it. I’ll just try to manage it and let my coaches coach. When I was a coordinator, I always had a great appreciation for the coaches that just let me go in that dark room and prepare for a game and coach and not be on the headset saying, “what the hell did you make that call for?” I’d like to model myself after the coaches I appreciated the most. Let the talented guys you hired do their job, and try to manage the game and give them opportunities to communicate with their kids well and using timeouts at the right time and that sort of thing.
Yesterday Macky MacPherson said you had a more hands-off approach. Is that something you had going in or you developed along the way?
I wouldn’t say it’s hands-off. It’s not being a micromanager. Being a true manager – more macro than micro. Making sure things are in line with your philosophical points of view as a football coach and letting those guys do the work. Let those guys dig the ditch that they’re so good at digging. Let your coaches coach – keep them in line. Try to get the best players for them to make them better coaches. Good players make average coaches good coaches and so on and so forth. The key is to set them up with some kids that can do things you don’t coach.
Have you done anything to put your stamp on the team?
Nothing more than continue to do the things I’ve always done with the defensive kids I’ve coached throughout the years, and that’s to take the approach that we’re going to control the things you can control. Focus in on not worrying things that are out of your control. You can always control your attitude. You can always control your effort. You can always control your enthusiasm. Those are the things you want to promote. I know it sounds simple, but it’s the truth.
As a coach, we just got to do a good job setting the kids up to be physical enough in practice that they can take that hard-nosed approach to the field but also not beat up too many of our kids in the preseason. There’s that fine line and that balance with a school like Syracuse. It costs 55, some odd, thousand dollars a year to go to school there. It’s hard to get a lot of walk-ons to play in your program. We’ve got to be smart about the way we practice and the way we take care of each other. At the same time, being physical as all get-out, so we’re ready to play the type of game we want to. That’s the balance. That’s the fight that we have as coaches especially when you’re filling in some of the voids of some of the positions that we’ve lost.
Safety position – losing Shamarko Thomas to the Steelers. And up front, Justin Pugh, the 18th or 19th pick in the draft. Ryan Nassib, the most underrated college quarterback in the country last year in my opinion. Zack Chibane, Brandon Sharpe at the defensive end position. We’ve lost some good football players. You say this kid can do it. He’s as fast as him, he’s as big as him, he’s as this, he’s as that. You don’t know until he gets hit in the mouth and responds. You have to create that early in practice and find out how they’re going to respond to those situations without beating them up too much.
Are you worried about the quarterback spot without Ryan Nassib?
Worried probably isn’t the greatest word. I’m concerned about the quarterback position, but I love the character behind each kid that’s fighting to become the starter there. I love the passion of the kids that play the game at quarterback for us. They love football, and they’re working hard at it. They have good skillsets and good tools. It’s going to be a blast. The competition’s on and we’ve got guys we think can do it. I just can’t wait to see how they do.
What should ACC fans expect when they come to the Carrier Dome?
The most underrated fans in the country. If you’re from central New York, if you’re from anywhere, you get used to what your normal is, whether you’re from Clemson, Alabama, Michigan, Stanford. I love our fans. We get West Virginia two years ago, last year Louisville in the Dome. Our fans were phenomenal. I look forward to it. The Carrier Dome’s a really unique place … a special place. It’s the one of the “Last of the Mohicans” with the indoor facility at an NCAA Division I program. I look forward to it. Everyone’s asking me, “how’re you going to do when you go down to this school?” Well I’ve coached against most of those schools. Me and my family are like Johnny Cash. We’re like the Cash family. We’ve been everywhere in this business, but the kids haven’t. Our kids are going to go to a lot of different venues, which will be really exciting for them, but their kids have to come to the Carrier Dome as well. We look forward to getting them in there and trying to knock the hell out of them a little bit and play the game the way it’s meant to be played. It’ll be a lot of fun. It’ll be a hell of a challenge for us this year.
