North Carolina State University Athletics
Tony Haynes: O?Brien Keeps It Organized
6/19/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
By Tony Haynes
When asked to describe Tom O’Brien, those who have worked alongside NC State’s first-year football coach the longest will almost always use the word “organized” when formulating the opening sentence of their answer. It should be no surprise then that when O’Brien released a mid-summer depth chart last week, he referred to it as an “organizational chart.”
But really, what would you expect from a proud graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy?
“This is how we will start fall practice,” O’Brien said. “The depth chart will be made the Sunday before we play
In other words, there will be plenty of competition for starting spots at a number of positions throughout fall camp. Competition is a wonderful thing. Not only does it provide incentive for players to work hard and fight for playing time, it also give coaches a tool to identify the players who display enough mental toughness to ultimately survive a struggle.
From that standpoint, O’Brien and his staff haven’t yet been around long enough to truly separate the contenders from the pretenders.
Only a Navy guy would say “we have to figure out which guys are going to stay in the boat and which guys are going to jump out of the boat.”
And while O’Brien welcomes competition at most spots, he has already confessed that he’d feel more comfortable if there was actually less of it at the most crucial position for any football team. When he was about to start fall camp at
That is a luxury, however, he will not have this August. The current depth chart...I mean...organization chart...lists Daniel Evans OR Harrison Beck OR Justin Burke. And based on O’Brien’s comments coming out of spring practice, OR’ may not be removed until the final week of preseason practice.
Evans, Beck and Burke all had their moments during the spring, but O’Brien and Bible concluded that there had not been enough separation to name a definitive starter going into camp. Although six weeks remain before the start of preseason drills, the competition has already begun. All three signal callers will be held accountable for their dedication and commitment between now and early August.
“I think what they have to do is get into the film room and spend a lot of time looking at the spring tape,” O’Brien said. “They can go back and look at a lot of our B.C. tape and understand what coach Bible is trying to get them to do. They’re smart kids, they work hard at it and it’s very important to them. If it wasn’t important to them, they wouldn’t be working as hard as they are.”
Since the Philip Rivers era ended three years ago, NC State’s offensive production has plummeted primarily because the Wolfpack has not been able to find reliable, consistent production from the quarterback position. Jay Davis tried. So did Marcus Stone. Thrown into the fire unexpectedly as a redshirt sophomore last fall, Evans endured the normal trials and tribulations most associated with young quarterbacks.
In 2006, the Pack ranked last in the 12-team ACC in pass efficiency and 10th in scoring offense, numbers that contributed mightily to a 3-9 mark that included a seven-game losing skid that ultimately ended the coaching tenure of Chuck Amato. While all that was going on, O’Brien and Bible were orchestrating an attack at
Of course, the Eagles also were No. 1 in what is usually the most telling of all football statistics: turnover margin. And NC State? The Pack had the league’s worst turnover margin, finishing up at minus-11.
“You coach hard not to fumble the football,” said O’Brien, whose last
But forcing more turnovers will also be a major priority with this new staff. In spite of the fact that NC State has played very good defense the last three years, it has not been a team that took the ball away very much. It’s a fact that teams that play more man-to-man coverage, as the Wolfpack did under the previous regime, generally do not intercept as many passes as teams that play more zone. O’Brien and new defensive coordinator Mike Archer expect the interception numbers to rise this year with the implementation of more zone schemes, which put linebackers and defensive backs in a better position to face the quarterback and break on the ball.
Last year’s NC State defense picked off only seven passes, while B.C. was second only to league champion Wake Forest with 21 interceptions. The Eagles also forced an ACC-best 16 fumbles.
A longtime George Welsh assistant at Navy and Virginia, O’Brien continues to fall back on the wily coaching wisdom of one of his mentors.
“Coach Welsh used to have a saying that if you want to learn how to do something, make a drill for it,” O’Brien said. “We’ve created a drill that we call the circuit. It’s about stripping balls, causing fumbles and knocking the ball out. Since we did that, as years went on, we got much better on defense in creating turnovers.”
The Eagles created turnovers and, as a result, won a lot of games. Now, Tom O’Brien is ready to bring the same organizational touch to NC State.
