The impact of an assistant coach

[Mr. Scot]

Albert Breer talks about retiring Patriots OL Coach Dante Scarnecchia in his Super Bowl MMQB article (link)

I've long thought that one of the more underrated aspects of Bill Belichick's success is that he tends to pick assistant coaches that often turn out to be among the best in the league. That was an area where Ron Rivera was lacking. Rivera's  talent evaluation skills when it came to coaches weren't appreciably better then his skills at evaluating players, especially with regard to offensive coaches.

How good is Matt Rhule at this? Unknown. We'll find out. Again, given his stated philosophy of not firing assistants, we'd probably better hope it's good.

Bottom Line: Coaching matters. Read below to see a prime example.

The moment for Dan Koppen didn’t come until his second training camp. The Patriots were having their annual season-ticket-holder practice inside Gillette Stadium, and the reigning champions’ starting center had no idea what was waiting for him. He didn’t think he’d lagged much that night and, with the team in the dog days of summer, all the work was starting to run together anyway.

But afterward he got an earful from his position coach. “After that practice, he gathered the offensive line and got that last word in—and it was for me,” Koppen said on Sunday morning. “He said everything you could imagine under the sun, right in my face. And I’m not taking it personally, but he’s telling me this sucked and that sucked. He called me out right in front of my teammates. And you know what? It was warranted. … He wasn’t trying to hurt feelings, it wasn’t because he likes to yell. He did it because he was trying to get the most out of me.”

That was Dante Scarnecchia, in a nutshell: tough, unrelenting and brutally honest.

The 72-year-old offensive line coach, a position coach Bill Belichick found so valuable that he saw fit to lure him from retirement four years ago, called it quits for the second time this week. And assuming this is it, Scarnecchia will go down as an impact player in perhaps the greatest NFL dynasty of them all.

Proof? Consider the group he coached in 2004, one that helped win the Patriots’ third title, and paved the way to a 1,635-yard season from Corey Dillon. The left tackle [Matt Light] was a second-round pick. The center [Koppen] was a fifth-rounder. The right guard [Stephen Neal] was a college wrestler. The left guard [Joe Andruzzi] was a free agent signed after being released by the Packers, a former undrafted free agent, and an NFL Europe alum. The right tackle [Brandon Gorin was a seventh-round pick in 2001 who didn’t make the Chargers’ roster in ’02.

Scarnechhia could always find a way to make it work, which gave Belichick flexibility in how he built his teams. And he could always find a way to work because he was a complete coach: able to teach fundamentals and scheme, developing players individually and collectively getting them ready for game.

“The way he taught, the fundamentals out on the field, or the scheme in meetings, whether it was basic concepts or complicated ones, he had a way of teaching that everyone could understand, regardless of what level,” Koppen said. “He always had something new for you. There are a lot of coaches, they can show you, but they can’t explain it. Or they can put in on the screen, but on the field, it’s not as easy for them.

“He was one of the guys where whatever he had to coach, in practice, making an adjustment in-game, he was able to communicate it, he was able to coach it.”

In turn, it did take a certain kind of guy to play for him—one who could take the kind chewing out that Koppen got on the summer night in 2004, and one who was smart enough to take the hard coaching they got from a guy who would be seen running gassers by himself after a camp practices.

“You had to be smart, you had to be able to work well with those guys around you,” Koppen said. “He always had goals for the offensive line up in the meeting room, and one was for everyone to see the game through the same set of eyes. You had to work with each other, you had to be smart. The other thing—you had to be tough. It was a grind. It’s not like during an offensive period or special teams period, you got a break. There was no off period.

“There was no down time with Scar. You were always doing something, physically or mentally, out on field. He made us tough. And we were in shape too. We saw a lot of people get tired at the end of games.”

Which may be one more reason why Scarnecchia was a part of making the Patriots their best when it mattered most.

[4Corners]

21 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

 

Bottom Line: Coaching matters. 

 

 

[bigpoppa]

4 minutes ago, 4Corners said:

FIFY

[Mr. Scot]

FYI: The OL coach I was hoping we'd hire went to the Chargers.