Most Football Coaches Are Copycats, but Even the Innovators Need Talent

Once asked for his idea of a coaching genius, former USC and Tampa Bay Buccaneer coach John McKay said, “The guy who won last Sunday.”

Football has produced all sorts of brilliant coaches, from Amos Alonzo Stagg to Eddie Robinson, from George Halas to Vince Lombardi.

Some were great teachers. Some were great motivators. Some were great strategists. But all had one thing in common: They won.

And they won for one primary reason: They had talented players.

Marv Levy, who recently retired after 42 years of coaching either at the major college or pro level, including four consecutive trips to the Super Bowl with the Buffalo Bills, is under no illusions as to the secret of his success.

“I was recently watching a television special on D-Day,” Levy said. “One of the soldiers involved in the Normandy landing said, ‘Once we were on the beaches, the generals didn’t mean anything.’ ”

There is no way to predict who the stars will be as football, the most popular American sport, heads into the new millennium.

But how about the new leaders? Who will be the innovators, the coaches who are smart enough to maximize the talent of their players?

Coaches are like movie makers in Hollywood. They feel no shame in being copycats. Just the opposite. If it works for somebody else, they figure, it would a shame not to use it themselves.

In Hollywood, that means that if a disaster movie makes lots of money, be assured 10 more disaster movies will soon be playing in a theater near you.

In football, if the West Coast offense earns a Super Bowl ring, be assured 10 other coaches will soon be trying it.

Bill Walsh is considered the resident genius of his time. He designed the original West Coast offense far from the West Coast. As an assistant with the Cincinnati Bengals, Walsh put together an innovative offense, which consisted of a short, controlled passing game involving the running backs as well as the wide receivers and the tight end. The West Coast offense became the offense of the ‘80s and ‘90s after Walsh became coach of the San Francisco 49ers and began winning Super Bowls with it.

Both the Green Bay Pay Packers, led by Walsh disciple Mike Holmgren, and the Denver Broncos, coached by former 49er offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan, will use a variation of the West Coast offense in Sunday’s Super Bowl.

But Walsh doesn’t see any great innovations in the game as we head into the next century.

“Football is always evolving,” Walsh said. “But I don’t see anything dramatic ahead. If anything, we may see offenses becoming a little more conservative. I think the defenses have the edge now with the corner blitzes and zone blitzes. I think the offenses will have to become more conservative and run more.”

If there is a trend developing, Walsh believes it may be that the quarterbacks of the future will be selected as much for the speed in their legs as the strength in their arms.

“The emergence of running quarterbacks like Kordell Stewart, and Steve Young before him might eventually make the biggest single difference in the game,” Walsh said.

The game is changing in other ways. Denver mixes the old with the new, installing the shotgun in the West Coast offense. All teams make heavy use of substitution patterns to a degree not imagined in the past. Blitzes now come from any angles at any time. Teams often pass on first down.

Whatever trends evolve, the same names keep coming up as the prime candidates to implement them as future stars on the sidelines: Tony Dungy, who has already produced dramatic results in Tampa Bay; Denver offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak, a strong candidate for the vacant Dallas Cowboy coaching job; Green Bay offensive coordinator Sherman Lewis, long overdue for a head job; Philadelphia Eagle offensive coordinator Jon Gruden, who could wind up as coach of the Oakland Raiders, and UCLA Coach Bob Toledo, whose wide-open offense has drawn praise in the collegiate ranks.

But, Levy stresses, it still comes down to the talent.

“When Doug Williams took over for Eddie Robinson at Grambling,” Levy said, “Robinson told him, ‘If you are going to be a great coach, you have to surround yourself with great players.’

“I don’t think anybody is that much better than anybody else in Xs and O’s. It’s how you handle your personnel. How you teach. Good teachers are good coaches.”

No argument from former coach Chuck Knox, who won divisional titles with the then-Los Angeles Rams, Bills and Seattle Seahawks.

“What many coaches are doing now is refining what has already been done while putting a new wrinkle here and a new wrinkle there,” Knox said. “The football field has to be an extension of the classroom. It’s like teaching a lesson. You know what you want to get done. But you have to show how to get it done. You have to teach it.

“Any situations that could come up in a game have got to be covered in practice. You’d better have hand signals ready in case the microphone in the quarterback’s helmet doesn’t work. You even have to remind the quarterback that he doesn’t spike the ball on fourth down.

“Chance favors the prepared mind. You have to give your players a chance to win the football game.

And that also means, Knox said, coming up with a game plan that fits your personnel.

“If there was one way to win, everybody would do it,” he said.

The great coaches are always looking for new angles. When Bear Bryant was in the latter stages of his great career, his Alabama team played UCLA. Terry Donahue, then a young coach starting out, had his Bruins run a play that impressed Bryant.

The next off-season, Donahue was invited to Alabama to take part in a clinic run by Bryant. Once there, Donahue found himself a luncheon guest of Bryant’s. Eventually, Bryant steered the conversation around to the play the Bruins had run, asking Donahue about it in detail.

Only then did it dawn on Donahue that Bryant, obsessed with learning something he could use for his own team, had gone to great lengths simply to pull the information out of Donahue.

That endless search for new plays, even after decades of coaching, was what made Bryant so great.

But, Knox concedes, sharp coaching minds can sometimes out-think themselves.

“You can get paralysis through analysis,” Knox said. “You can concede to an opponent something he hasn’t earned.

“For example, if you have a great running back and you decide to throw to set up the run, you may throw an interception or two and fall behind. Then, you have lost one of your main staples because you no longer can run.

“It’s one thing to underestimate an opponent. But maybe the worst thing is to overestimate. You always play to your strengths. But that doesn’t mean that you become predictable.”

What it means is that, if you have Barry Sanders, you run the ball a lot. And if you have Brett Favre, you throw the ball a lot. But you also do some of the unexpected to keep the opposition off balance.

To George Allen, the late coach of the Rams and Washington Redskins, the key to being a great coach was simply hard work.

“I used to call the opposing coach’s office at 10 o’clock on Wednesday night,” Allen once said. “If nobody answered, I knew we would win the game.”