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Thursday, October 19, 2006
Gailey’s best handoff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You win with players, coaches may say, attempting either to be modest (not always genuinely), or to set the stage for failure by seeding the idea that when the inevitable hits their team, somebody other than the director should shoulder blame. It can be a lunge for exemption.
Tough to argue an axiom suggesting that nobody has a right to expect an Oscar from a great script if the actors stink. Coaches know that when their teams lose, it’s not the water boy’s fault. That leaves two potential culprits.
Tech’s head coach couldn’t swap out his roster, nor did he need to, and didn’t want to change but a pair of assistants. So Chan Gailey swapped out himself.
Formerly a director, he’s is a producer now, making his team better than when he exercised more control of those on screen.
Giving up act-by-act, scene-by-scene oversight by ceding play-calling — of his own volition — was no small thing.
Good thing folks on The Flats hired a man whose ego is bound-able because Gailey’s not having an easy go of it. “It’s not as fun, to be honest with you, as calling plays, but it’s best for the program,” he told The Touchdown Club of Atlanta on Monday. Gailey was understating for sure.
Tech’s winning, and with more moxie - whether on the road against a perennial national power (Virginia Tech), by leading from the get-go, breaking a late tie (Troy), or by coming from behind and holding on (Maryland) — for many reasons, none more relevant than the head coach.
He gave it up because he couldn’t keep up. (Don’t suggest he did this because of the heart attack he had last year. I’ve asked. He’s emphatically said no, and it was enough for me. Gailey’s many things, and believable is at the top of my list, which I can’t say for every coach I’ve dealt with in 19-plus years.)
The man’s said it before, and offered the explanation again Monday. Simply, he grew too busy to do his offseason homework, to set or even follow trends.
The result? Tech’s offense has moved into the modern age, and neo-play caller Patrick Nix’s playing cow sweeper on that train.
Gailey admits spreading the field works, helping create mismatches. And the presence of perhaps the land’s best college player, wide receiver Calvin Johnson, is one hell of a multiplying effect to boot.
That offense you keep seeing but not believing is not just about the shotgun, or spacing. It’s about players, too. But the former are big bullets, and Gailey gave away the gun. “I think the offense Patrick has put together really fits Reggie [Ball] very well,” he said.
Tech’s quarterback’s no more talented than before. But he’s utilized more wisely. That rides largely on the shoulders of Nix, who wouldn’t be in position to uplift Ball and others but for the humility of Gailey.
Players will always count plenty, but no more now than Gailey letting coaches coach, which he’s always done with uber-defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta anyway.
To hold office rather than rule, to delegate rather than dictate, is a larger move still when the officer chose wisely his delegates. Gailey has, saying, “My role now is to be the administrator, the organizer, look at the big picture and help in areas where I can.”
He won’t win an Oscar (perhaps ACC coach of the year?), but we’re seeing that it can be of seminal import when a director decides to step from behind the camera and instead make sure those in front of and directly behind it work their roles expertly.
College football has plenty of visionaries, so to speak, some who out-think themselves routinely, men who’ve no business manning the cameras. Gailey worked the machinery for years, and smartly at the college and NFL levels.
But as the style of the game took off, he left himself still holding a Polaroid. The coach looked through an ever-narrowing lens in recent years. He realized it, and moth-balled his camera.
That’s real vision.
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