With the season opener against the Brigham Young Cougars
quickly approaching, Washington State Head Coach Mike Leach held a conference
call over the weekend to discuss his Cougars’ season opening game at BYU.
Leach called BYU “a good team,” as well as a team that “plays
hard” and that is “well coached.” He recognized that BYU has a “great tradition,
great setting.” As a 1983 BYU alumni, no opposing coach on the BYU schedule should
know better than Leach that the blue Cougars are “a team that has a tradition
of winning for several decades.”
Although this game creates a unique situation for Leach
being against his alma mater and the fact that he “has been there several times,”
he doesn’t think it makes his job much different.
“The biggest thing is you go through town and then you are
in you routine, and then, once you do that, everybody presents you some
problems on the field that preoccupies your attention,” Leach explained. “Once
it comes to the coaching part, you are kind of occupied with your players and
the opponent. Once the game starts your attention is confined to the field and your
sideline.”
Leach, however, wasn’t shy to admit he had great memories
from his time at BYU. He recounted, at length how he met his wife while living
in the King Henry apartment complex. They became acquainted when his wife Sharon had a sister marry his roommate. A controversy over watching M*A*S*H versus Gun Smoke was one of the key pieces to their pre-marriage relationship that Leach remembers best.
While his relationship with his wife has lasted three
decades, Leach doesn’t have much of a relationship with BYU head coach Bronco
Mendenhall. When asked whether the “coaching fraternity” has enabled them to
develop a relationship, Leach’s responded, “Bronco’s a good guy. I’ve known him
over the years. I don’t know him real well. I have met him several times. … We
know quite a few people in common.”
Leach and Mendenhall do share one common non-football
interest: surfing.
“Probably one of the more interesting things about Bronco is
that he is a really good surfer. Getting some points of view from him on that
subject is interesting. … Bronco is an interesting guy who does some interesting
things. I’d be more interested in talking to him about surfing than football at
this point.”
Leach was prodded during the conference call to
talk about the Mendenhall-led BYU defense. Despite having watched all 13 games
from a year ago, Leach would only say, the BYU defense was a “good solid team,
well coached, well executed. They want to make you execute as many plays as
possible to score.”
The offensive guru was more willing to talk about the BYU
offense and what it might do to his Cougar defense.
“You always worry about explosives and big plays,” Leach
said. “You don’t want to put a bunch of good plays together on defense and then
have them get loose on you. We want to get turnovers and put pressure on the
quarterback. He moves his feet pretty good, I don’t know how fast he is, but he
moves his feet pretty good. He is a guy that can get out of the pocket, and
hurt you when you feel like you have him hemmed in a little bit.”
Leach thinks the important thing for his defense is to play
good, consistent, and steady.
What about his “air raid” offense and how implementing it has gone at
Washington State?
Leach said, “It went efficiently. I expected it to. Some of
our guys have emerged and stepped up in a quicker fashion than I expected.”
Several of those players could be true freshmen. Leach
expects some people to think he will play an “alarming” number of true freshmen
in the season opener. His philosophy, however, is that if a player is on the two-deep
depth chart, then he will find a way to play him. He does not have an “automatic
redshirt” policy for any player.
When trying to forecast how good this Washington State team
will be, it is common to want to use Leach’s first team at Texas Tech as the
baseline. As a coaching staff, Leach feels they are ahead of his first year in
Lubbock.
“We have a good cohesive staff,” Leach said. “I think our
teaching has been at a little higher level just for no other reason than I have
been a head coach before.”
Leach is uncertain how good his team will be.
“I have been asking myself that for over a month. I think
that we are pretty capable,” was his first reaction. “Where are we at? I don’t
know. We have had good, consistent practices. There is only one practice that I
can think of that we’ve had that I am really ticked off about. I mean, I can
think of a couple that maybe we were a little below average, but I have not had
a team that I can say that about where we have had the quality and consistent
level of practices that we’ve had. I feel good about it. I feel good about our
progress, but we haven’t played a game.”
No conference call with a head football coach and BYU
graduate from the 1980s would be complete without talking about BYU legend
LaVell Edwards. As you can imagine, Leach was very complimentary of Edwards.
“He is easily one of the greatest coaches who ever coached.
I think that is indisputable,” Leach said. I know him a little. I would like to
know him a lot better. He is one of those guys that is quiet enough that you
know there is a lot of wisdom in there that you would like to draw from. I
always thought of him as a great balancer. With all the forces from all the
different directions he was great at balancing things. He was a guy who never overacted,
didn’t panic, and just had faith in his system. He trusted good people, so in
the end it was a product and environment of trust and focus. I think it was a
foundation that still survives at BYU, to an extent. Football wise, it is very
hard to imagine what BYU would be like without LaVell Edwards. Also, football
in America what it would be like without LaVell Edwards. I am not the only guy
LaVell influenced on throwing the football. … He’s had an impressive legacy.”
The Editor appreciates all feedback. He can be reached via email at bluecougarfootball@gmail.com
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