North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: O'Brien Instills Discipline -- And a Litte Fear
7/22/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
PINEHURST, N.C. At 6-3 and nearly 300 pounds, NC State senior defensive tackle DeMario Pressley isn't afraid of many things. But new Wolfpack head coach Tom O’Brien is one of them.
“I fear him,” Pressley admitted as he talked about his team's new coach during the first day of the 36th annual ACC Football Kickoff. “I am scared of him.”
Just a few minutes later, Pressley offered a minor reassessment of his view of O'Brien, a man of few words but many expectations.
“It’s not really that you are afraid of him, but you are afraid of letting him down,” Pressley said. “I think that’s the way most players feel that they don’t want to let him down. That’s the kind of coach that makes an impact.”
Both Pressley and fellow senior Darrell Blackman represented the Wolfpack Sunday afternoon as more than 400 national, regional and state media gathered at the Pinehurst Resort to begin talking about the upcoming college football season.
The Wolfpack players also got input from two of O’Brien’s former players, senior quarterback Matt Ryan and senior linebacker Jolonn Dunbar. They talked about O’Brien’s legendary focus that sometimes causes him to walk right past players without acknowledging their presence. The talked about the coach’s love of discipline and of the expectation of keeping everything shipshape for the former Marine officer and Naval Academy graduate.
“We know that whenever you mess up, you have to pay the consequences,” Pressley said. “He lets you know that you have not only disappointed him, but that you have let your teammates down. People need that sometimes.”
Among some of the new disciplinary tactics that O’Brien instituted in the spring included post-practice sprints for O’Brien and up-downs with their position coaches. There were a few early morning workouts for minor offenses, such as not arriving early enough for team meetings and functions. And an overall expectation that players would be responsible and accountable for every misstep.
But there are some things the players have learned to like: there are no more long meetings or post-practice lectures that were common in recent years. O’Brien is short on words, and long on getting the team’s business done as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Pressley remembers the team’s first meeting with O’Brien. They thought they were going to get a detailed introduction to their new coach, a long briefing that outlined the dos and don’ts and
“We were all expecting him to come in and tell us about himself and talk for about an hour,” Pressley said. “He told us about himself, but it only took about five minutes.”
Blackman said the team has replaced the lectures and rah-rah speeches for more stretching prior to practices, which seemed to reduce injuries during spring practice.
“He is a man of few words,” Blackman said. “He really gets the point across in the very few words that he does use. It’s a lot different than it used to be. We used to talk about things that were expected of us, but it was kind of redundant because we kept going over the same thing, the same thing, the same thing. After a while, it seemed like people lost focus in the meetings.
“With Coach O’Brien, he gets straight to the point. There is no beating around the bush. He tells you what he wants, how he wants it done, now let’s go do it. People don’t get tired of that because they know we are going to get in, get out and get to work. After the meetings, we get to the fun part, which is playing football. I think people are a lot more energized to get things done.”
Positional meetings are no more than fifteen minutes long, as opposed to 30-45 minutes, and post-practice lectures are five minutes at the most, a style that seems to resonate with the Wolfpack players.
“It’s like anything, after a while, if someone is beating a dead horse, people eventually start to lose interest and get sleepy, especially after a long practice,” Blackman said. “After a long practice, you sit there and your muscles are getting tight and you are tired and hungry, and then you don’t want to have to sit there for another 45 minutes to listen to a coach lecture you. Coach O’Brien wants to get you in and get you out and not hold you up all night on the field.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
