North Carolina State University Athletics
Galbraith Ready to get Offensive
4/12/2001 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
By Tony Haynes
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Moments after NC State's Red/White spring scrimmage had ended on April 7, an eager member of the local media asked Marty Galbraith to elaborate on the difficulties of being both an offensive coordinator and an offensive line coach at the same time.
As much as he tried to stop himself, Galbraith couldn't help but giggle. You see, we're talking about someone who has seen just about everything there is to see in the sport of football. Since 1974, Galbraith has coached at every level of football imaginable. There were three different high school jobs, two stints in the USFL with the Tampa Bay Bandits and Arizona Outlaws, a season in the NFL with the Kansas City Chiefs, and jobs with eight different college teams. Along the way, he's been an offensive coordinator, an offensive line coach, a tight ends coach, a special teams coach, a receivers coach, a defensive coordinator, a secondary coach and a high school head coach.
He's done all of those things without ever staying at a Holiday Inn Express. Imagine that.
The thought of inheriting the offensive coordinator duties from the highly popular Norm Chow, who left to take a similar job with Southern Cal., doesn't even faze Galbraith.
"This is the third time I've been the coordinator and the line coach, so it's not really that unusual for me," Galbraith said. "Instead of coaching the quarterbacks, I'll just handle the five guys on the line. That's the easier thing for us to do."
And while Galbraith will take over Chow's old coordinator duties, the newest addition to Chuck Amato's staff, Mike Canales, has inherited the enviable duty of coaching ACC Rookie of the Year Philip Rivers and the other quarterbacks.
One thing that won't be different is an offensive scheme that produced an average of 31 points and 396 yards per game during last year's 8-4 campaign.
"We've got a lot of guys on the offensive staff that have input," said Galbraith, who was the offensive coordinator and line coach at Marshall in 1999. "We set the game plan up together, so there's not any extra pressure on me. The pressure is to win whether you're the coordinator or not. The only difference is that people are going to blame me if things don't go well, but that ok."
Of course, most coaches will tell you that they're only as good as the talent they're able to put on the field. And for an offensive coordinator, it all starts at the quarterback position. With that in mind, Galbraith figures he'll have a pretty good chance to succeed as long as Philip Rivers is wearing the Red & White.
"Anytime you've got a quarterback like our quarterback, you've got a chance," Galbraith said. "I came here from Marshall and we had a really good quarterback (Chad Pennington) there. Philip kind of does the same things for us here.
Wearing his other hat, that of offensive line coach, Galbraith has some concerns. Center Keegan Weir (leg) and tackle Scott Kooistra (knee) weren't able to do very much during the spring. Senior Reggie Poole, a starter at right guard last season, saw time at tackle in spring drills. Chris Colmer, who worked at both guard and tackle last fall, will be moved the left tackle spot that's been vacated by Jarvis Borum. Kooistra could man the right tackle position-assuming he's able to make a healthy return from knee surgery.
"We're planning on him coming back," Galbraith said. "He's a big guy (6-6, 300) and a tough guy. He really makes one edge solid for us. He's a bigger guy, and in our league you need bigger, long-armed guys to play tackle. A guy like Reggie is a little more athletic, so he really needs to be a guard where he can pull and down-block and things like that."
Sounds like this guy knows a little something about football. For some, sharing the offensive coordinator and offensive line coaching duties would be an awful lot to handle. But for Marty Galbraith, it's a piece of cake.
