University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: 2006 Prospects Stored In Fine Print
August 21, 2006 | Football
Aug. 21, 2006
By Lee Pace
Extra Points
A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.
Statesman John Foster Dulles
Cure for an obsession: Get another one.
Aphorist Mason Cooley
Wherever you look around the practice fields these steamy August mornings, you will find obsessive-compulsives at play. We are talking micro-management to degrees of thousandths. We are also talking about the win-loss record for the 2006 Tar Heel football team, an assemblage with enough good players to provide a satisfying season and enough question marks to cause considerable angst between the portals of Kenan Stadium (Exhibit A: season-ending injuries like that suffered by safety Trimane Goddard). The devil's in the details for John Bunting and the Tar Heels.
"In order to be a great team, you have to do those little things, those detail things, to pinpoint accuracy," says senior receiver Jesse Holley. "At times in the past, I think as an offense, we didn't do those things to that pinpoint accuracy, and it showed in games.
"It's a receiver running four yards and cutting instead of five.
"It's the running back picking up the right blitz.
"It's the tackle getting lined up right.
"It's the quarterback with the proper footwork.
"If you win, these things get swept under the rug. But if you lose, you come in and watch the tape and see all the little things. You shake your head at all the touchdowns you left on the field."
The fine print in the Tar Heel playbook is all about efficient use of the eyes, the feet, the hands and the heart. The details include playing low to the ground; legion are the quality athletes relegated to the bench for the sin of standing straight up. Inches are important. Vision is critical. Nuance is essential, and that comes only from experience. Brian Chacos has been around for five years; he knows that a defensive end's foot splayed a few degrees to the outside clues his rush direction. Chacos tries to educate the young guys, the Garrett Whites and Andre Barbours.
"Looking at a guy's feet before the snap can tell you so much," says Chacos. "You can watch the way he leans in his stance, too. The little things add up, but it takes time to learn them."
"Where you look is where you go," sophomore linebacker Mark Paschal offers. "That's the biggest jump from high school to college. You have to read your keys and fit your plays. You have to know where to be at the right time."
Defensive coordinator and secondary coach Marvin Sanders stands behind his players during pass-skeleton drills and watches their helmet swivel and the direction of their eyes. "Most of time when a DB or a linebacker gets beat, their eyes have wandered," says Sanders. "We're to a point where we're not limited by athletic ability. We're limited by the little, finer things."
Tight ends coach John Gutekunst hammers home his players' need to make eye contact with the defender assigned to them on various "combo routes" in the Tar Heels' route tree. The pattern might be a corner route if the defender does one thing; it's a post route if the defender does something else.
"If you make eye contact, you're in their head," tight end Jon Hamlett says. "You can set them up to go one way or the other, and you go the other way. You can turn their hips one way and you go the other. But it doesn't work if you don't make eye contact. They're not paying enough attention if you don't catch their eyes."
If God is indeed in the details, as architect Mies van der Rohe once posited, then the path to the pearly gates of a bowl game will be the Tar Heels' disciplined and masterful use of their feet. It's quarterbacks getting their launch points perfect - three steps, five steps, five and a hitch, sprint-out, play-action. It's punt-protection team members stepping back in unison three steps, punching the on-rushing opponent and taking off downfield; if the movement's not choreographed perfectly, there's a gap for a defender to slide through. It's offensive linemen getting not only their first step precise at the snap of the ball - but their second step as well.
"In the running game, the first guy to get his second step in the ground is going to win," says offensive line coach Mark Weber. "You hear about the first step. But it's the second one that matters. If you can't get your second step in the ground, you're not going to be very powerful."
First-year offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti makes an art form of mastering the minutiae. One of his first tasks upon arriving in Chapel Hill in January was to order bookcases for his office to hold the voluminous teaching tapes and playbooks he's accumulated over two decades. "I'm a collector of playbooks," Cignetti says with pride. Want to see Joe Montana's footwork with the Kansas City Chiefs from the late-1980s? Cignetti has a shelf full of tape. Want to see Jake Delhomme as a scout-team quarterback with New Orleans? Cignetti can run the tape.
"It's unbelievable to me, never having coached or played the position, the detail to which Frank breaks it down," Bunting says.
Cignetti is an intense, high-energy guy. His mantra is "Teach, critique and demand." The coaches teach on the practice field. They critique in the meeting room. And they demand that things "are done right." He borrows frequently from a motto developed by Green Bay Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, with whom Cignetti worked at the University of Pittsburgh and the New Orleans Saints, that a quarterback's life is built around, "Feet, decision, precision."
Cignetti elaborates: "We train the feet. We train the decision-making process. Then you have to throw the ball with accuracy."
Practice time is a symphonic arrangement of stations and drills in which up to six quarterbacks might be throwing at any given moment. The video staff was forced last spring to find more cameras and more shooting angles to handle Cignetti's voracious appetite for video tape and training tools.
"The quarterbacks get in twice the amount of throwing in the same amount of time," says Chris Allen, director of the football program's video and computer operations. "It's amazing the volume of work they do. Coach Cignetti wants every rep, every practice on video. Early on, we were running out of cameras - with four in the towers and one hand-held. I told him, `Coach, you're killing us with the video.' But I can see how it will pay off."
The two Tar Heels competing for the starting quarterback job are ideal students for the Cignetti system and the coach's insistence on getting the details right. Both Joe Dailey and Cam Sexton are intelligent and enjoy the cerebral part of tape study and playbook mastery. Good quarterback play is more than throwing a tight spiral 50 yards.
"A huge emphasis in the summer was footwork," Sexton says. "We worked on learning the formations, the check-downs, the plays in general. But footwork is important above all. You've got to learn what each pass calls for. They key to our whole offense is good footwork."
With what should be a strong defense, efficient kicking game and quality running attack, Cignetti and Bunting are doling out only limited demands on the quarterbacks.
"The quarterbacks do not have to win the games," Bunting says. "They have got to deliver some passes, play smart and make good decisions. When we get the ball in the running backs' hands, in the tight ends' hands, receivers' hands, they are going to make some plays."
In other words, there'll be no big numbers from the quarterbacks this year - just as long as there are no bad numbers.
"The little things are no turnovers, no fumbles, no interceptions, no big mistakes, run the ball efficiently," Sexton says. "When you do those things, you give yourself a chance to win football games."
From eyes and feet, the detail work moves to the hands. Play along the line of scrimmage is predicated on linemen using their hands; whoever gets his hands inside the other's hands can control the battle. A key element of the Tar Heels' Cover 2 defensive scheme is cornerbacks getting their hands on receivers, slowing them down and re-routing them to the safeties and linebackers. And with the receivers, the art is maintaining intense focus on the ball, not relaxing on the easy catches, avoiding the temptation to turn and run before securing the ball, catching with the hands and not the body, and tucking the ball once the catch is made to avoid the stripping efforts of the defensive player.
Defensive tackles coach Kenny Browning dispenses with more kernels of fine-point football than any human alive. Once during a drill in early August, he cautioned his tackles, who are not allowed to hit the quarterback in the first place, to hold up their pass rush several feet from the quarterback to make sure Dailey or Sexton "doesn't follow through and break his thumb hitting your helmet." His players know he's demanding about the fundamentals.
"Hands and vision are a huge part of playing inside," Browning says. "Pad level is how you create power. If you have your pads lower than your opponent, you have leverage. And leverage equals power in line play. They think they are getting it, but I always want it a little better. They know I'm obsessive."
Kentwan Balmer has moved from end to tackle this year and is learning how important those details are in the cauldron of energy and calamity between the tackles.
"It's a little freer, and little more open on the outside," Balmer says. "Inside, it's different. It's all about pad level, leverage and hips. If you have those three things, you should be in position to make a play. You can't play lazy inside."
Like Chacos on the offensive side, senior Shelton Bynum imparts words of experience to the young cubs on the D-line - Aleric Mullins, Tavares Brown, Greg Elleby, Darius Powell and Darrius Massenburg.
"Young guys out of high school never have to work on any of this stuff," says Bynum. "They were `the man.' They could throw people around. Here, everyone was all-something back in high school. Technique and the little things are what make a difference. It's all about using your hands, pad level and reading the play."
The kicking game also hinges on the little things that, if not properly attended to by place-kicker Connor Barth and punter David Wooldridge, can wreak havoc with point production and field position. For Barth, a key issue is marking off his steps before the kick. For Wooldridge, it's getting a good drop of the football prior to launching it with his leg.
"If you're one inch off, it will change the kick every time," Barth says. "The leg swing itself is pretty easy. But if your steps are off, that's what's going to cause you problems."
Once Barth and his holder (who happens this year to be Wooldridge) establish the ball-placement position, Barth makes three steps back and two across at a right angle to the intended line of flight. Much of his early season slump in 2005 Barth attributes to missing his steps by as little as two inches in one direction or failing to keep the angle sound on kicks from the hash mark; he made only three of 11 attempts the first half of the season.
"I got my steps straightened out middle of the season and made of eight of 10 kicks," he says. "It made all the difference."
Wooldridge drops the ball hundreds of times per practice. A good drop for a punter is the equivalent of a perfectly teed golf ball for a tee shot; a bad drop is like trying to hit a driver with the ball sitting in a divot opposite your back foot.
"There are microscopic things you've got to get right," says Wooldridge. "If the nose is up, you'll hit it too high. If the ball turns a hair outside, it could be a shank. Your stride works with the drop. If you have the mindset of trying to kill the ball, you'll over-stride and that causes you drop the ball to the inside. And you won't hit it solid. It's like the golf swing - you can't swing too hard."
One detail Bunting believes the Tar Heels have mastered is the nuance of "finishing" - of applying the second and third layers to a block; of getting off the grass and following the play 10 yards downfield; of baiting the opposition with a full-speed pass route even though the ball's not coming your way.
"Our football team for the most part does not need to be coached on finish any more," he said after one of the Tar Heels' early practice sessions. "We're not taking it for granted, but we finish plays. Those guys are going as hard at the end of practice as the beginning."
Alas, less than a week later, Bunting launched into a post-practice tirade, hammering his players for giving into the heat and dead legs and mental weariness of round-the-clock, training-camp football.
"We should not have to coach effort!" he railed. "Here we are, the first practice of the most important week of training camp, and we're having to coach effort!"
Running backs coach Andre Powell calls this process "being a pro." It means doing the right things every day, all day - from showing up on time for breakfast to paying attention in meetings to protecting the football on running plays.
"I had been riding Richie Rich like a government mule," Powell said of a red-shirt freshman tailback. "All of a sudden, the other day he practiced like a pro. I said, `Boy, you're in trouble now. I've see you can do it. Now you've got to do it every day.'"
Linebackers coach Tommy Thigpen on one day is challenging senior linebacker Larry Edwards to take the team on his shoulders: "Don't be afraid to take this team over," Thigpen tells him. The next day Thigpen is pointing out to Paschal how a momentary lapse of focus caused him to overstep his pursuit on a running play, allow a blocker to get an angle on him and free the ball-carrier to bounce outside for a nice gain.
"Today we bought into the fatigue and heat," Thigpen says. "Coach Bunting preaches mental toughness. You've got to stay focused and challenged and not get fatigued and lose sight of those things like alignment and assignment."
Sanders frequently tells his players that football is 80 percent mental.
"It's what happens before the snap, getting lined up, knowing your responsibility and playing hard," cornerback Jacoby Watkins says. "After that comes athletic ability. And we've got a lot of ability."
And so the pursuit of infinitesimal perfection continues. More detail to follow at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 2.
The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.
German physicist and philosopher G.C. Lichtenberg
Lee Pace's Extra Points runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the football season. His Extra Points Mailbag appears each Friday before games and answers your questions about the Tar Heels, so email your questions to leepace@nc.rr.com. (Please, no recruiting questions as NCAA rules limit recruiting information on a school's official website.)
