BUDDY BLOG: There's Something Very Special About Special Teams Coaches

‘I personally think it has to be the head coach.’ -- Urban Meyer If Billy Napier survives this gauntlet of three straight ranked opponents and manages to steal a win in Baton Rouge or Columbia, Mo., or knocks off unbeaten FSU at The Swamp, there won’t exactly be a parade down University Blvd., but there will be a big sigh of relief. Abject failure will be off the table. It may not sound like much, but you know what they say about beggars and choosers.

There is already so much water under the bridge, you’d think maybe the Mississippi River runs through Alachua County. Every sector of the fan base seems to have its own agenda for Napier that needs fixing. Get a new offensive coordinator. Hire somebody else to call plays. Or, of course, find a special teams coach that can count to 11 and knows when to dispatch the corrrect unit at the ready. These are all justifiable requests given recent events of discombobulation. Some kind of change seems imminent. So pick one. Me, I’m going with a new special teams coordinator on the same level of an offensive or defensive coordinator. Because it feels like special teams are an afterthought for Napier. You don’t believe me? Ask somebody to name Florida’s special teams coach. Give up? You won’t find him because there’s nobody with that title. The guy who is sort of in charge of special teams is Chris Couch, but that’s not his title. He’s called “GameChanger Coordinator," and he’s listed right there between the performance dietician and graduate assistant offense. Not exactly on the masthead or at the right hand of the head coach. So I took it upon myself to learn about the importance of a special teams coordinator from the guy who has excelled at it for three national championship teams and several other successful programs.

Nobody ever put more emphasis on special teams than Urban Meyer did at Florida, Ohio State or Utah. Urban started by telling his top recruits that the quickest way to secure a spot on the field was playing special teams and earning a battlefield promotion – including most all of his prized 5-star recruits and future high NFL draft picks (except quarterbacks). Then he went to work on “brainwashing them.”

There was only one guy with that kind of clout: Him.

“People don't go to college to play on kickoff (teams),” Meyer said. “You know, at Florida, Ohio State, or Alabama, these three, four, five-star athletes are not coming to Alabama or Florida to run down on kickoff, to be on kickoff return, to block for punt. They didn't do it in high school.”

I doubt the GameChanger coach has enough sway to convince them that getting your body wracked up while running fast down field as a gunner would be conducive to a long term future in football.

“So how do you convince a Joe Hayden or a Janoris Jenkins or a Chris Rainey or Jeff Demps to become elite special teams players?” Urban asked rhetorically. “You've got to brainwash them. They've got to really understand for us to win this game, ‘I need you.’ And it's part of our culture.

“And there's only one person that can do that. And with all due respect to special teams coaches out there, in college I think it's head coach. I don't think there's any other way. I've watched and listened and learned and there are some teams, very well special teams, or maybe the head coaches involved, but not many. The ones I know, the head coach has his hand on it.’

It’s too late to do much about it now, but discouraged fans and boosters would like to know he’s got a plan. Because with an 11-11 record at this juncture, and looking at the likelihood of three losses and a second straight losing season, Billy can’t exactly keep kicking cans down the road.

While I had his attention, I asked Urban how to prepare for these Take-No-Prisoner Novembers -- the kind Napier and the Gators are facing.

"You know, we did all kinds of leadership training," Meyer said. "You don't train for November in November. You know, that's something, when you're in a stretch run, you're a product of what you did the previous eight, nine months. That's why we spent so much time in the off-season program. I was very involved, our coaching staff was very involved, and I hired the best I could with Mickey Moratti, our strength coach.

"But our offseason was not about strength training. It was about leadership training. It was about building a bond in the team. It basically was Navy SEALs training, and I still believe in that. I mean, you are a product of your training. If you don't train hard, if you're not a close group, when you get to November, you fall apart. And we've had great Novembers and we've had a few not, most of them are pretty great. But we've also had a few that weren't and I go back to not to blame players, I don't blame staff, I blame myself that I did not do a good job of putting that team together in the off season. So remember this is much different than professional sports. These are college players. These are young people that need to be developed. How do you survive a storm? You prepare February, March, April, May, and throughout the summer to get ready for the storm of November."

There is also the onslaught of social media when your program starts slipping.

How do you train mentally for that as a coach?

"Yeah, that's something I didn't do very good at sometimes. I did later in my career because I just shut it out. I just, I basically quit. People ask me that, and I shut everything down. I'm basically still the same way."

Then there is the matter of winning close games

"And that's why we spend so much time on special teams. And when you're in an equally matched game, when you're in a game that's going to come down to a couple yards here and there, in my mind there's no greater place to find those extra yards than special teams.

"You think about the 2006 SEC Championship game, the fake punt to get another possession and flip the field. You talked about the South Carolina game, we had actually three blocked kicks in that game. And we don't win that game without obviously the final one but there was ones before that so I just think that you know when you start talking about championship runs in November and December talent becomes equated, games come down to the wire, you're looking for a yard here, three yards there, five yards there, in my mind there's no greater place to find those extra yards and field position than special teams.

"And again, you build that in the offseason. You don't all of a sudden in November and say, hey, special teams are important. It's got to be part of your DNA. And that our greatest teams were built around our special teams."

That sounds like good advice and hopefully Billy embraces it for future Novembers while he hangs on through this one.