QBs, Coaches Share Tales Of Papa Leachs Brilliant Football Mind

The next time you tune in, you'll see the Mike Leach effect. His students say this will be the coach's legacy.

Mike Leach's eclectic personality and interests can be seen off the field. From pirates to wedding tips and candy reviews. As viewers, we noticed his quirks little by little, while those around him specialized in them every single day. And in the week after Leach's death, those who trained and played with him filled the void with memories of the man they lost; In love, the sharp edges of nervousness soften and they think about the moments when they would be given something. to survive

Luke Falk wants to get you back in the Washington State QB briefing room, as many former players do. What he sticks with more than touches and shots are the little moments on stage. There are two people Falk would like to be with. One is "Papa Leach," Falk's nickname for his former coach at Washington, Texas Tech, and Mississippi State. The other is Falk's former QB drummer Tyler Hilinski, who passed away in 2018.

"He knew I didn't like Leach telling the same story over and over and I was late for practice," Falk says. "Lich never made it to a single meeting. And I always said, 'If you're on time, you'll be 10 minutes late. ' And I always wanted to train in time to be able to warm up at the Tom House.

“Tyler would look at me, wave at me, and then throw [Leach] cookies. Leach ran a mile and it felt like another hour. Then we were 30 minutes late for practice. I remember how many times I would run to insert my tampons, cursing under my breath.

No wonder a man who has worked as Leach found it more difficult than to transcend with the utilitarian rigor of the average football coach. Leach didn't believe in the kind of stretch you'd expect on a football team. Rows grouped by position are statically edited.

© Courtesy of Sports Illustrated. Leach trained wherever his QBs could fit in the air raid offense. Jordan Prater/USA Today Network

If Volk succeeds at the college coaching level, it will be another branch of Leach's famous coaching tree that includes head coaches Dave Aranda, Neil Brown, Sonny Dykes, Cliff Kingsbury, Josh Hubbell, Dana Holgarsen, Lincoln Riley, and more. and Eric Morris and Seth Littrell, as well as coordinators like USC's Alex Grinch and offensive line coach Clay McGuire. This list alone is a testament to Leach's influence on the field, which began when Leach and Hal Mam joined at Iowa Wesleyan in the late 1980s to form one of the most influential think tanks in modern football.

In a 1984 Ford Taurus, the couple drove to where the football fans were. For the first three years of their partnership, they charted plays on napkins and tablecloths to develop a system built around a passing strategy that was not just an extension of running, but a replacement for it. This is how the Air Raid Link was born.

My mom says they "stole the bones" at BYU. Leach was a student and played rugby there, while Mum dealt with the Cougars while training at UTEP. When Mumm got the head coach job at Iowa Wesleyan in 1989, he needed an offensive coach. So you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks a ball will bounce 50 times in a game. My mom needed a trainer who believed in the system, and Leach provided it.

"To be a good teacher, you need to be able to get attention," says Mom. “You can talk all day, but the people in the room can't hear you, it's just empty air. And Mike had a way of getting people, especially young people, in so many ways, most of them funny, some of them interesting.

While the plays take on the personalities of the trainers, Air Raid mirrors how a lich's mind works. This gives freedom of defense in an already loose structure. Moomin describes the system as more of a philosophy than a textbook. Yes, the signal caller must pass the read, but beyond that, the QB is tasked with finding an open space or catching weeds .

Senior athletes have a hard time progressing in training because they lack this aspect of training. Why can't an athlete do it like them? Great coaches make players think seriously. Leach has given his players the freedom to build from the ground up, fostering a mastery of order in the offseason that expands his inquisitive nature and interest in unconventional ideas. Freed from the rigors of casual drills, Leach's quarterbacks played a handful of plays, keeping it simple but maximizing Air Raid concepts.

"I was watching the movie in front of him," Falk says. “I said, ‘Hey, I think based on our revolutionary concept, we can really make an angle here. And he said, 'Then I hit him in the side. I said, 'Hey, that's it, that's it! ' That's it, we call it and we run 90 yards. It was one of those proud moments I thought it was so cool. How many coaches Who would listen to a kid who's never played and won a scholarship?

Lich has kept the cleanest version of the Air Raid system, while most of its defenders have added a speed attack or tweaked and improved things. Riley placed a physical traversal system on top of traversal concepts. Holgarsen added more of a passing game and a more regular running game. But Leach has stayed true to the system he created with Mumme, and the only real innovations over the years have been the addition of more weapons and the faster pace.

"As a young coach, you think you know everything," says McGuire. I asked Hal. Lincoln and I had all these ideas to go down the shallow road, and we're sitting there saying, 'Well, why don't we? It's the coolest thing in the world and blah blah blah we have to do it. I asked Hal one day and he said, “Clay and Mike and I, we were just like you. We were young and had the same ideas as you, and we had to do all of that — and figure out which ones worked and which ones didn't.”

At times, it seems hard to blame Leach and his crime. Washington State has only won the Apple Bowl once, and former Washington coach Jimmy Lake said the Huskies do the same thing every year on defense because it hasn't really changed. Leach's insistence on repeating minimal concepts over and over also meant that he didn't work from the moment he stepped onto campus, and it took a few years for the system to work as players, especially wide receivers and quarterbacks, became more comfortable. . And of course, there's the misnomer of lacking physicality that runs the ball too thinly (running backs are often QB checks at the line of scrimmage).

"Just because we ran the ball we wouldn't have been a soft team, and just because you run the ball every game doesn't mean you're a hard team," McGuire said. "I saw that on his teams. If you look at those O-lines, they were solid physical lines. We had a lot of physical runners struggling to pass the ball. One thing he was always [a source of pride] was that they blocked those openers so hard. They were unbelievable." On the ocean, because what we're doing in this crime is the ocean."

Leach had four losing seasons in 22 seasons at Lubbock, Pullman, and Starkville. Where he won is almost as important as who he won against. A revolving door of QBs like Falk is coming up, not a five-star talent under the control of an incredibly skilled offense. His recruiting courses were not first class; Custom players have them for a custom system. Players had to adapt and join the Lich.

What makes soccer at this level so special is that you can tune into it every Saturday and watch different types of teams get victory; The Lich team won the air raid, even when he was doing the training. College football needs football inspiration like Leach's. They make for an interesting game and offer contrasting patterns.

Leach was your favorite coach because he wasn't winning the places they used to. On any given Friday, Saturday or Sunday, whenever you watch a team score a field goal in the Super Bowl or a Y-cross game at the state championship game, the part of Mike Leach will be there. His influence will continue because of his success, and he did until the very end. Even his defenders were often late for training.

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