Posts Tagged ‘bill obrien’

Bill O'Brien was recognized yesterday as the Hayes-Schembechler Big Ten coach of the year, and there's no doubt that the job that him and his staff have done at Penn State, coming into a very unique, and very difficult situation, has been impressive.

O'Brien noted on BTN Live yesterday that his NFL experience with a 53 man roster helped him manage practices and their overall roster after 20 players decided to leave the program following the announcement of NCAA sanctions.

"It was a matter of managing them and making sure that we didn't have blood-bath type practices every week, and we always used to use the phrase 'Get them to the gate' on Saturday and most weeks that worked, but sometimes it didn't."

Even after an impressive 8-4 season, O'Brien admits that he still has a lot to learn being a first time head coach.

"I learned that, number one, I have a lot to improve on. Whether it's game management, clock management, practice schedules, dealing with things that happen in the football building, or dealing with players. I'm just going to try to look to improve every single day and hopefully do the best that I can to help this football program improve." he explained.

"You learn a lot because when you haven't done this before, there are so many different things that come across your desk as compared to when you're an assistant, so hopefully you learn something new every day and can improve on that and go into next year with a better grasp on certain things."

O'Brien's passion and resolve  were just what Penn State needed during a very, very difficult time, and as the program moves forward, there's no doubt that they got the right guy for the job. In his first year on campus, he admits that there is plenty for him to learn but the bottom line is that he took on a situation that many coaches were very hesitant to enter...and at the end of the season it would have been hard to script it any better.

Congrats to Coach O'Brien and his staff for the well deserved recognition.

Hiring a quality video coordinator is will make your entire operation run smoothly. The really good ones have the practice film ready for coaches within minutes of walking off of the practice field.

"Video, in football, is your primary teaching tool," O'Brien points out in the clip. "That's really how I, in many ways, prepare the football team for the opponent that we're playing."

In short, getting the right guy in place allows your coaches to focus on coaching.

O'Brien and the staff believe that they have that guy in Jevin Stone.

As Stone points out, his duties go beyond just filming practices and games. They also film every single college football game on Saturdays so that coaches can pick out a specific play from any game that the staff may have caught a glimpse of and really liked (like a fake punt or field goal for example), and be able to break it down and look to implement it for the Nittany Lions.

"When you do this job as a video guy, you have to look at football in a different manner than you would any other way." Stone explains.

Here's a good look behind the scenes.

With his Nittany Lion squad having to deal with scholarship reductions over the next few years, Bill O'Brien and his staff are putting an emphasis on evaluating and targeting the right recruits and developing their non-scholarship players. 

When you think of traditionally strong walk on programs, teams like Wisconsin and Nebraska come to mind. O'Brien has started to make calls to staffs and athletic directors at programs around the country with a rich history of developing walk-ons in an effort to ensure that him and his staff get the most out of their "run-ons" over the next few years.

O'Brien started calling his non-scholarship players "run-ons" earlier in the season in an effort to give them credit for the hard work and hustle that they exhibit year round.

“Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, those places have great traditions of run-on programs, and those guys they just have done an excellent job, whether it was Coach Pelini or Tom Osborne or Frank Solich when he was there. They've really been one of the pioneers for run-on-type programs in the history of college football.”

“I'm going to reach out to a few programs." O'Brien added in the Patriot News. "I'm going to leave that between myself and our staff right now but a few programs here in the off season. Personally I will reach out to some of those coaches or athletic directors and see how exactly they went about doing that. And I already have, I already have done that and will continue to do that.”

In the eyes of the staff at Penn State, developing their walk-ons into contributors will be the key to success in the immediate future.

Earlier in the year, secondary coach John Butler explained that the lower amount of scholarships is going to challenge the staff to evaluate talent like they never have before, and then ensure that they maximize that player's given abilities. They'll be looking for those scrappy overachievers, with a ton of Penn State pride, who have to work ethic to go from walk on to major contributor by sheer effort and will.

"The biggest thing about the sanctions is when we recruit over the next four years we’ve got to make sure that every kid we bring in we can maximize his ability. We as a coaching staff have got to be able to get every single ounce of talent from every single kid. There’s no room for error. In the past, if you missed on a guy, he transferred and you replaced him. We can’t do that."

The staff has done an outstanding job since their arrival of maxmizing the talent that they inherited in Happy Valley, and making the most out of a very challenging and unique situation. The next few off seasons will decide the shape of the program as they continue to move forward.

If the success that they've seen so far this season is any indication, the Penn State community has got the right staff (from top to bottom) for the challenge that lies ahead.