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Adams' NFL Ties Beneficial to WVU
April 14, 2016 01:50 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The research started immediately for Blue Adams when the possibility existed that he could fill the open secondary position on Dana Holgorsen’s defensive coaching staff.
“I wanted to see who was leaving and who’s coming back," Adams said recently.
What he discovered certainly didn’t scare him away from the job, although he must find two new starting corners among a current pool of players that consists of just five scholarship guys for the spring.
That group includes senior Rasul Douglas, junior Nana Kyeremeh, senior Miami transfer Antonio Crawford and freshmen Jordan Adams, Jacquez Adams.
Unless you are a rabid, dyed-in-wool Mountaineer football fan, these are not necessarily recognizable names right now.
“Every guy has some goods and every guy has some bad. It’s just a matter of getting those guys to continue to grind,” Adams explained. “As far as right now, I can’t say ‘this is my guy, this is my guy and this is my guy.’ We’re in a moment where we’re just building these guys up and we’re going to continue to build them up and build them up until it’s time to make a decision as far as who is going to roll out there first.
“Regardless of whether you are the first guy or the third guy, or the first guy or the last guy, that movement should stay pure,” he added. “That movement of what we’re doing on a day-to-day basis is what I’m chasing, so there should be no drop off and if there is then we’ve got to go back to those fundamentals again.”
In the 20 minutes or so Adams recently talked to reporters for the first time this spring, the words “fundamentals” and “technique” kept popping up in his answers to questions.
Those are his core principles as a football coach - concepts drilled into his brain from the time he was a collegiate defensive back playing for the Cincinnati Bearcats.
“It’s just basic movements that any DB in America should have - the backpedaling, the opening of hips, the changing of direction, the explosiveness - those things are all important for our position,” Adams explained.
The Miami native turned what he learned playing for veteran DB coach Charles McMillan at Cincinnati into an eight-year professional career playing in NFL Europe, the Canadian Football League and the NFL. Adams spent time in Detroit, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Cincinnati and Atlanta as an NFL player, and he later returned to the league as an assistant cornerbacks coach with the Miami Dolphins.
Consequently, a lot of the coaches who had the biggest influences on him are rooted in the pro game - recognizable names such as Jon Gruden and Mike Tomlin, Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle, Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator George Edwards and Hall of Famer Emmitt Thomas.
Being around those guys, learning the game from them, and now relaying that knowledge to West Virginia’s cornerbacks is going to be very beneficial to the Mountaineer defense - not only on the field but also when the coaches go out on the road recruiting corners who want to learn how to play like the pros.
West Virginia plays in a passing league in the Big 12, and the skill sets needed to defend the passing game translates very well to the pro game. Therefore, if you are an aspiring defensive back with dreams of one day playing in the league, sitting in Blue Adams’ meeting room is a not a bad place to be in order to get there.
“We won’t do drills just for the sake of doing drills,” Adams said. “I want to do drills that translate to the game. That way the movement stays pure and what we’re coaching and what we’re teaching they can see it on the grass. The more they see it, the more they have success with it, the more they start to believe in the system.”
Adams’ belief in Tony Gibson’s defensive system and his eagerness to be involved with the lives of young men was the prevailing reasons he decided to leave the NFL and return to the college game, where he spent a year at Purdue in 2010 and another year at Northern Iowa in 2011.
“It’s an opportunity to coach young men and develop young men,” Adams said. “That’s my calling and that’s what I enjoy doing. I love to develop young men on and off the grass. You’ve got to have it.”
If developing young men is his calling, then he picked the right place then because there is a lot of player developing in store for his immediate future at WVU, with what he has to work with right now and the corners he’s about to get this summer.
Four more corners are his way, including a pair of junior college standouts in Mike Daniels and Elijah Battle, so when his meeting room is full once again, Adams is going to have the tricky task of getting some of those new guys ready by the time the season opens on September 3 against Missouri.
“That in itself is going to be a challenge to get those guys caught up to speed without diluting the progression of those other guys,” Adams said. “I’ll get in the lab to come up with a great plan in order to get that done so at the end of the day, like an old coach once told me, ‘the stable will be full’ - which means I will have a stable of eight or nine guys that will be able to get the job done.”
Another tricky deal for Adams is getting used to the 20-hour rule to which college coaches must adhere. In the pros, coaches have all day to meet with players and go over things if necessary. That’s a luxury college coaches simply don’t have.
“That doggone 20-hour rule,” he laughed. “I love coaching ball and there are different aspects of the game that you need to work on to become great. I understand the 20-hour rule and I know why it’s there - I was a player as well and I’m screaming for the 20-hour rule as a player - but that is going to be my biggest adjustment of trying to narrow in on the techniques and the teachings I want my guys to have within that 20 hours.”
Adams said that means being as detailed as possible.
“Go through my cutups, go through my teaching progressions so that once we leave the meetings I’ve hit my points - I gave my guys the nourishment that they need in order to be successful,” he said.
Right now, Adams said he is just looking for consistent progress from the guys with whom he’s working.
“Every guy comes to work and that’s what I’m asking for - being competitive on a play-in, play-out basis, giving me a good, honest day’s work,” he said. “Now that has nothing to do with talent or skill, it has more to do with will and the want-to, because once you have the will and the want-to to get better, we can clean up everything else.
“So far, those guys are doing a great job of reporting to duty.”
And Blue Adams reporting to duty appears to be a good thing for West Virginia’s defense, too.
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