NEW QB COACH GREAT FIT
August 19, 2011 11:23 AM | General
Dana Holgorsen probably sees a lot of himself in new quarterbacks coach Jake Spavital.
Spavital, like Holgorsen, played small college football and then got into the coaching business by hitching his wagon onto a hot-shot offensive coordinator. Holgorsen latched on to Mike Leach at Texas Tech while Spavital later hooked up with Holgorsen at the University of Houston.
Spavital said he actually got his start in the profession with Pitt coach Todd Graham when he was at Tulsa before discovering Holgorsen.
“My brother is the secondary coach at the University of Houston and that was my connection to Dana,” Spavital said. “I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ My brother was like, ‘He’s a brilliant coach. You need to come down here and learn under him.’ I went from spot to spot and I’ve pretty much sold my soul to him.”
That is pretty much what Holgorsen did when he joined Mike Leach’s Texas Tech staff a decade ago. Holgorsen became Leach’s second pair of eyes and ears, capable of assembling game scripts just the way Leach would prepare them because he knew Leach so well. Spavital is getting to be the same way with Holgorsen.
“It goes along the same lines of how I got hired at Tech,” Holgorsen said. “I did that stuff for Leach for two or three years and then when Leach got his job he hired me. That’s just how this profession works. You have guys underneath you that understand how you do it.”
Spavital comes from an impressive football family, his grandfather playing pro ball and his dad (Steve) now coaching one of the biggest high school programs in the state of Oklahoma in Tulsa.
“He’s just been around it forever,” Holgorsen said of his QB coach. “He does a good job. At Houston he worked with Kliff Kingsbury, who is a very good friend of mine and who is a great quarterback coach. He was underneath him working with the quarterbacks for a year, so he learned the schematic stuff from me and how I script and how I call plays and set practice schedules and do practices.
“He’s young, but he’s already paid his dues.”
Spavital has been with Holgorsen long enough to witness the evolution of his offense from the stuff Mike Leach was running at Texas Tech to what Holgorsen is about to put on the field at West Virginia, which is entirely his own.
“Houston was the first time Dana called plays, so he took the Mike Leach stuff and tweaked it to his own,” Spavital said. “And when we went to Oklahoma State we just made it simpler and tweaked it even more. When we came to West Virginia he tweaked it even more. This offense will keep evolving.”
Evolution in Holgorsen terms usually means fewer plays. Why junk up your call sheet with a bunch of bad plays, Holgorsen reasons? Eliminate the bad ones and get better at the good ones.
“We don’t have that many plays to begin with; we cut out plays at each stop,” Spavital said. “Say we practice a play for an entire year and we only ran it four times in a game, what’s the point of actually practicing that every single day?”
Good point.
Even with limited access to practice, you can see right away the synergy between all of the offensive coaches. Many times there are few words spoken, just a wink or a nod, and they know exactly what to do. Spavital, Shannon Dawson, Robert Gillespie, Bill Bedenbaugh and Daron Roberts know Holgorsen well enough right now to complete most of his sentences.
On the field, Jake is the guy at practice usually located directly behind the quarterbacks. Holgorsen wants him there to make sure his QBs understand their communication system without having to rely on the head coach explaining things to them all of the time. Sometimes those guys have to figure things out on their own.
“Coach Holgorsen will signal the play and we will lead (the quarterback) into the direction that he wants him to look, but at any time Geno (Smith) is willing and capable of changing that play into something he likes,” Spavital explained. “I always tell him it’s your game. You are out there on the field, we’re not, and you have a better feel for things, so if you see something you like, go for it.”
What Spavital is working on with Geno right now is taking exactly what is there and not forcing things that aren’t.
“Sometimes he gets a little greedy,” Spavital said. “Sometimes I would like him to run the ball and Geno will check into a pass play, but that’s just a learning situation. That is an important part of our offense – knowing the situation. You teach him the game and teach him the situations in the game.”
What makes Spavital’s role on the coaching staff so vital is that he is working with the guy who is the centerpiece of Holgorsen’s offense. Everything that happens must first run through the quarterback.
“He’s got to communicate to the receivers, to the O-line and to the running backs; he’s got to manage the tempo of the game and he’s got to know the situation of the game. If he needs to check he needs to check," Spavital explained.
“We throw a lot at them in our first three days of installation, and they will make a lot of communication errors and that’s part of the reason Coach Holgorsen is on the sidelines and I am right up there listening to everything they say because there is a lot of communication with the quarterback.”
And that is precisely why Holgorsen hired another set of eyes and ears to help him on the football field.
Spavital, like Holgorsen, played small college football and then got into the coaching business by hitching his wagon onto a hot-shot offensive coordinator. Holgorsen latched on to Mike Leach at Texas Tech while Spavital later hooked up with Holgorsen at the University of Houston.
Spavital said he actually got his start in the profession with Pitt coach Todd Graham when he was at Tulsa before discovering Holgorsen.
“My brother is the secondary coach at the University of Houston and that was my connection to Dana,” Spavital said. “I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ My brother was like, ‘He’s a brilliant coach. You need to come down here and learn under him.’ I went from spot to spot and I’ve pretty much sold my soul to him.”
That is pretty much what Holgorsen did when he joined Mike Leach’s Texas Tech staff a decade ago. Holgorsen became Leach’s second pair of eyes and ears, capable of assembling game scripts just the way Leach would prepare them because he knew Leach so well. Spavital is getting to be the same way with Holgorsen.
“It goes along the same lines of how I got hired at Tech,” Holgorsen said. “I did that stuff for Leach for two or three years and then when Leach got his job he hired me. That’s just how this profession works. You have guys underneath you that understand how you do it.”
Spavital comes from an impressive football family, his grandfather playing pro ball and his dad (Steve) now coaching one of the biggest high school programs in the state of Oklahoma in Tulsa.
“He’s just been around it forever,” Holgorsen said of his QB coach. “He does a good job. At Houston he worked with Kliff Kingsbury, who is a very good friend of mine and who is a great quarterback coach. He was underneath him working with the quarterbacks for a year, so he learned the schematic stuff from me and how I script and how I call plays and set practice schedules and do practices.
“He’s young, but he’s already paid his dues.”
Spavital has been with Holgorsen long enough to witness the evolution of his offense from the stuff Mike Leach was running at Texas Tech to what Holgorsen is about to put on the field at West Virginia, which is entirely his own.
“Houston was the first time Dana called plays, so he took the Mike Leach stuff and tweaked it to his own,” Spavital said. “And when we went to Oklahoma State we just made it simpler and tweaked it even more. When we came to West Virginia he tweaked it even more. This offense will keep evolving.”
Evolution in Holgorsen terms usually means fewer plays. Why junk up your call sheet with a bunch of bad plays, Holgorsen reasons? Eliminate the bad ones and get better at the good ones.
“We don’t have that many plays to begin with; we cut out plays at each stop,” Spavital said. “Say we practice a play for an entire year and we only ran it four times in a game, what’s the point of actually practicing that every single day?”
Good point.
Even with limited access to practice, you can see right away the synergy between all of the offensive coaches. Many times there are few words spoken, just a wink or a nod, and they know exactly what to do. Spavital, Shannon Dawson, Robert Gillespie, Bill Bedenbaugh and Daron Roberts know Holgorsen well enough right now to complete most of his sentences.
On the field, Jake is the guy at practice usually located directly behind the quarterbacks. Holgorsen wants him there to make sure his QBs understand their communication system without having to rely on the head coach explaining things to them all of the time. Sometimes those guys have to figure things out on their own.
“Coach Holgorsen will signal the play and we will lead (the quarterback) into the direction that he wants him to look, but at any time Geno (Smith) is willing and capable of changing that play into something he likes,” Spavital explained. “I always tell him it’s your game. You are out there on the field, we’re not, and you have a better feel for things, so if you see something you like, go for it.”
What Spavital is working on with Geno right now is taking exactly what is there and not forcing things that aren’t.
“Sometimes he gets a little greedy,” Spavital said. “Sometimes I would like him to run the ball and Geno will check into a pass play, but that’s just a learning situation. That is an important part of our offense – knowing the situation. You teach him the game and teach him the situations in the game.”
What makes Spavital’s role on the coaching staff so vital is that he is working with the guy who is the centerpiece of Holgorsen’s offense. Everything that happens must first run through the quarterback.
“He’s got to communicate to the receivers, to the O-line and to the running backs; he’s got to manage the tempo of the game and he’s got to know the situation of the game. If he needs to check he needs to check," Spavital explained.
“We throw a lot at them in our first three days of installation, and they will make a lot of communication errors and that’s part of the reason Coach Holgorsen is on the sidelines and I am right up there listening to everything they say because there is a lot of communication with the quarterback.”
And that is precisely why Holgorsen hired another set of eyes and ears to help him on the football field.
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