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Sidelines
Kalani Simpson
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Coaches are inventive -- at stealing
COACHING is a unique fraternity. They, more than anyone, know that once the game is over they're all in this together. You have staffs visiting other staffs during the offseason. You have Pat Hill standing on the Hawaii sideline during spring ball.
You have new Idaho coach Dennis Erickson getting the inside scoop on the team he just took over ... from June Jones?
"I really like their quarterback, and I told him that in the spring," Jones said yesterday. "But he hadn't been with him long enough to have the same feel I had about him. But I'm sure now he likes him. He's executing what Denny wants done, he's accurate with the ball. And he's tough."
Yes, football coaches love to share, to talk shop, and if not in specifics, at least in general terms. Oh, we fans love to talk about trick plays, and about guys who are gurus of systems that no one else knows, but really, there isn't much that stays classified, in football.
See, coaches couldn't keep secrets if they tried. The truth is out there -- or at least the tape is. And everybody shares tape and everybody sees tape. In football, there are no 11 herbs and spices. In football, there is no secret sauce. At least not for longer than a week.
Everybody sees that tape. It's all right there on the tape.
Every secret detail is on the tape. And once that's out it's secret no more.
On Hawaii's "new" shovel-pass play: "I got the idea from a college game I was watching," Jones said.
And so everybody copies. Everybody borrows. It's a free for all. No rules. It's like Thunderdome.
So much so that the NFL is starting to look the same, all the teams copying each other, all of them running one variation or the other of the same couple of systems. (ESPN radio guy Colin Cowherd has a theory that NFL coaches even all look like each other -- they all have mustaches. Coincidentally, Jones, eight years in college now, no mustache.)
That's half the fun for coaches, you think, looking at that tape to see how someone else does it. Then, taking those ideas and taking that next step.
"A lot of the things I put in I've obviously stolen," Jones said.
OK, but now this. This season the cycle has taken that final turn. Right back at you.
"One of the things that I've been noticing is that the other teams, the last four games, every team has copied things that (Jerry Glanville's) doing to other teams. And now we're having to block that stuff," Jones said earlier this month.
Yes. That's right. Glanville is coming up with all these great new blitzes,
and their teams are taking Hawaii's secrets and turning right around and using these very same plays against UH!
"We've had to block everything Jerry has invented this year," Jones said yesterday. "Jerry's doing a lot of things that we didn't do last year and nobody's done. We had to block 'em, after the other teams haven't showed them all year. All of a sudden they watch our tapes and put them in."
Why in the world would you think that would work? I guess they figure it's just that good of an idea ...
"That's not hard for us to adjust because we've seen it in practice," Jones said. "But it's kind of a surprise."
It must be. It must be surreal.
Can you imagine the realization hitting you? Wait a minute, I know what they're doing! That's our stuff!
Jones said that someone has taken some of his offense from those tapes, too. Apparently, New Mexico State used his "new" shovel pass (you know, the one he'd stolen) Saturday.
"We kind of came up with that shovel pass the middle of last season. Now the more success we've had with it, teams kind of put it in. They hadn't run it, really, the way that they'd run it against us until we played them. And guess what, it worked. It worked pretty good," Jones said. "So sometimes you create a monster for yourself, too."
And what does he do when he sees opponents using his stuff? Eh, he's a coach.
"I'll look at it on the film the next day and see if they blocked it a different way or see if they came up with a better way of doing it," Jones said.