The Coach's Show | Syracusefan.com

The Coach's Show

SWC75

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The coach’s show is on TK99, (FM 99.5) in the Syracuse area and can also be heard through Orange All-Access on the SU Athletic website. It’s 8PM Thursdays- or two days before each game, when they are not on Saturday. They have a link to their “Radio Mailbox” for submitting E-Mail questions on the SU Athletic website. You also can call in questions at 1-888-740-2873 or locally at 315-424-8599.

In past years it took sometimes weeks for a podcast to turn up on the SU athletics website, so I tried to do a virtual transcript of the show. This year I missed the first show and the pod cast was available the next day at this site:
http://www.suathletics.com/podcasts.aspx
This year I’ll start out by just summarizing the main points and referring people to the pod cast to listen to the whole thing. If the pod cast starts appearing later- such as after the next game, I’ll go back to doing more of a transcript.

My Questions/Comments

“Coach, they say we shouldn’t judge a team by it’s best or it’s worst game. I think we just had the first of the games we need to ignore. I’m wondering if the team will respond with the other one. I went to bed frustrated but wondered how Antwon Bailey, Ryan Nassib, Philip Thomas and Ross Krautman must be feeling. You stress the importance of your leadership program. Here is where it is most needed. Can you give an assessment of how the players have responded to this game and what their mindset is as they prepare for the Tulane game?”

Coach Marrone

Coach again regretted that this was “the first time we’ve given a game away since I’ve been here”. (How about Louisville in his first year?) He said he told his players to think of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein and all the failures they had before they were successful. “Then I talked about some people they could relate to better: the 2001 Patriots, who lost their starting quarterback and then won the Super Bowl, Michael Jordan who was cut from his high school basketball team and Vito Antuofermo and all the heart he showed”. (Can they even relate to that?). He told them “don’t let one loss become two“.

They discussed overtime games. Coach said it’s nice to win a couple but “you don’t want to have a lead and go into an overtime game. You have to put a team away. I tend to try to force plays we can make to put them away and I’ve got to avoid that. “ On the roughing the kicker play: “I knew we’d get someone scott free on that play but looking back at risk/ reward, 4th and 19 wasn’t the best time to do it. We are trying to create a foundation of aggressiveness when the time is right. . We want to get more pressure on the kicker because studies show you can get an average of ten more yards on punt returns if you pressure the kicker.” (I guess that means the fair catch comes 10 yards closer to the goal.)

Regarding the decision to kick the field goal in overtime. “On the road you may go for it. We wanted to run it to the right hash. You don’t want a player to bounce out on the play and try to do too much.” (That makes it sound like they were thinking field goal even on third down.)

I called in my question. Beforehand, I made reference to an article in this week’s Sports Illustrated about Georgia State Coach Bill Curry, who used to coach at Georgia tech and Alabama and before that played for the Lombardi Packers and Don Shula’s Colts. Curry recalled playing for Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech and, when he missed a class, he was made to run the steps in the stadium until he threw up. When he played for Lombardi, he hated him but later when he recognized the value of discipline he went to Lombardi’s deathbed and thanked him. Today he’s got a reputation for stressing things other than just winning and money. The article asked “Don’t we want more Bill Curry’s in college football? Don’t we need more?” I told Coach Marrone that as I read that, I asked myself, “Don’t we have one here?” He was flattered by the comparison. He said that he’d read many articles by Coach Curry in the magazine put out by the American Football Coach’s Association and heard a lot about him when Doug coached at Georgia Tech and met him a couple of times and they both believe that structure and discipline are key to overcoming adversity.

I noted that he seemed concerned about how his team would overcome the adversity of last week’s performance and so I asked how the team was responding, in particular Bailey, Nassib, Thomas and Krautman. He said they’d had a very good week of practice. “When a player makes a mistake- drops a pass or something, I want to come right back to him to show confidence in him and not alienate him- make sure he knows he’s still a part of the team. There’s not been a lot of finger pointing and I’m very proud of the way it’s been handled. I’m very comfortable with the team’s attitude at practice but what everybody sees is how we perform on Saturday.”

Dave in Syracuse praised all the young defensive players we have on the team and asked about Durell Eskridge- will we see him play this year? No. He had a “clearing house issue and we wanted him to concentrate on academics for now. It’s not that he’s not doing well in academics but he won’t play this year.” Matt Park described him as “6-3 and he can hit”. (I have a feeling that next year’s defense is going to be really something to watch.)

Matt continued the topic of the defensive improvement- 11 tackles for a loss, 4 turnovers. Coach noted that young players like Dyshawn David, Eric Crume, Micah Robinson and Cameron Lynch had been playing a lot and said we’d get Shamarko Thomas and Orlando Fisher back for this game, although Fisher will be in a reserve capacity. (They didn’t mention Chandler Jones).
HCDM added: “You will definitely see Adonis Moore in this game. We will also go back to Kyle Foster and Jerome Smith. We want to see young people step up as they have on defense and increase competition…the greatest development takes place in actual games.”

He praised Dyshawn Davis for his ability to “check in to different defenses“. He said that modern defense are much more complicated than they used to be with various versions of every strategy and when you see a young player grasps the adjustments that need to be made during a play, it’s impressive. Dyshawn knew that the guard would vacate his position on his big hit and “he filled it in a big way”.

Matt asked Doug to respond to the statement of Oliver Luck about Army and Navy having better histories than Syracuse. “We appreciate they want (what could be the last), the Ben Schwartzwalder Trophy and that the great thing about this country is our freedom of speech. As a young coach at Georgia Tech I said something I regretted and learned from that.”

Ben in Manlius asked what Coach thought about the move to the ACC. He called it an “unbelievable time…In this day the way things are changing you like stability and you have to look at who you surround yourself with. The schools in the ACC have great academics and are competitive on the field. This gives us a sense of security for a long time. I can only feel for the student athletes. We talk about loyalty and commitment but you have to do what’s best for the school. You have to look out for yourself.”

A E-mailer asked why we were struggling so much in short yardage and what can be done about it. “It comes with two names: Adonis Moore and Jerome Smith. We’ve spent a lot of time on it this week. You can change things, you can change people but you have to have confidence.” He said the call on 3rd and short when we passed to Bailey was a good call but “we didn’t execute.” He said that Smith and also Moore were “running too high”, (upright), and he’d rather teach that in practice than in games, (even though “the greatest development is in the actual games”). “There may be a hole to the right but it might take too long to get there. I’m a ’downhill’ guy.”

They talked about the trip to New Orleans. Matt noted that the coach was with the Saints when Katrina hit. HCDM: “It’s still difficult to talk about it. Pictures don’t do it justice. The fight and resiliency of the people was impressive. The Saints ownership made a decision to get the team out in the community. Sometimes that means show up for a photo-op with a shovel but not this time. We built things. We took buildings down or cleaned them up. . I still get choked up thinking about the that kick off against the Falcons, (the first game back in the Superdome: there were people in the stands- whole rows of them- crying.” He said he was even tearing up thinking about it now.
He segued from that into saying that he knows what fans here have gone through and that a game like the Rutgers game meant to them and how important it is to play well against Tulane.
They talked about the ESPN “All Access” show and Coach said it could help recruiting to see how the coaching staff goes about things. “We were very fortunate to get on there. Schools like Tennessee and other big-time schools have been on the show. Nobody could watch it and not feel that our players were well-coached.” He said “We are a development school” but didn’t explain exactly what that means.

The keys to beating Tulane are “Hold onto the football. I don’t want to sound negative but make sure you don’t lose the game. We have to make something happen on special teams and we’ve got some defenders coming back.”
 
So AAM will play this week. Perhaps he should have last week?
 
SWC, we owe you so many beverages for these reports. Cheers!
 
Thanks-I keep planning on asking a question and then forget about the show when the time comes.
 
Can't wait to see how he does. On offense him and Hale are the 2 I was most excited about from a 4 year potential POV. I can't wait to see Hale next year (assuming he doesn't see the field this year which looks like a good bet).
 
As always, thanks, SWC for the great report. Can't wait to see AAM and some younger players get snaps!
 
Matt asked Doug to respond to the statement of Oliver Luck about Army and Navy having better histories than Syracuse. “We appreciate they want (what could be the last), the Ben Schwartzwalder Trophy and that the great thing about this country is our freedom of speech. As a young coach at Georgia Tech I said something I regretted and learned from that.

Anybody have any idea what he said, and in what context? Just curious.
 
Matt asked Doug to respond to the statement of Oliver Luck about Army and Navy having better histories than Syracuse. “We appreciate they want (what could be the last), the Ben Schwartzwalder Trophy and that the great thing about this country is our freedom of speech. As a young coach at Georgia Tech I said something I regretted and learned from that.”

Translation: "That guy is an @$$h0%#, and the West Virginia football team must pay for his arrogance."
 

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