Monday Morning QB - When The Iron Is Hot

Jim Leavitt didn't want to give his team a chance to win in the fourth quarter. He wanted the South Florida Bulls to believe in themselves on every snap and series. More on emotional intelligence and properly-chosen openings, this week in the latest edition of the Monday Morning Quarterback.

By Matthew Zemek
 
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When the Iron Is Hot: Feel, Flow, and The Fight Against Failure

The single best coaching move of the whole weekend came before a single scrimmage play had begun on Saturday. On Friday night in Tampa, midway through the first quarter of South Florida's game against West Virginia, a coach earned his keep and--in a rare development--became the man most centrally responsible for his team's victory. That's not often said in a sport with three distinct phases, 11 players to a side, and very large rosters in general, but once in a while, such a scenario unfolds.

Let's briefly outline the circumstances that confronted South Florida boss Jim Leavitt, less than 10 minutes into the USF-West Virginia game. After the visiting Mountaineers silenced the Raymond James Stadium crowd with a first-drive touchdown, Leavitt's Bulls trailed, 7-0, and faced a 4th and 1 on their opening drive at the USF 49.

If you took an informal poll of the nation's 120 FBS coaches, it's quite likely that at least 100 of them would punt the ball in such a situation. Moreover, among the 20 who might buck conventions in this case, not all of them would likely pursue a first down if certain elements of their team's situation were different. Leavitt himself could very well be a member of that group; he's coached freewheeling quarterbacks over the years (Matt Grothe and now B.J. Daniels), but his teams adopt a generally defense-first leaning.

Some coaches are generalists, while others have a preference for overseeing one side of the ball, but regardless of a man's unique football methodology, one thing can be said about great sideline sultans: They know when to make different kinds of decisions. In this case, Leavitt managed to make the choice that was appropriate for his team at the time.

Leavitt went for that first down on 4th and 1, just half a quarter into a Big East battle. South Florida moved the sticks and, just moments later, hit a home run on a 49-yard touchdown pass from Daniels to receiver Carlton Mitchell. After that moment, the Bulls became an entirely different outfit.

A defense that lay dormant on West Virginia's opening-drive touchdown march suddenly swarmed to the ball and prevented WVU quarterback Jarrett Brown from getting outside the pocket on most occasions. USF's offense, emboldened by its successful navigation of a high-pressure play on its first series, continued to produce game-changing bombs and backbreaking scrambles as the evening unfolded.

Daniels, who has done quite well as Matt Grothe's backup--certainly better than Bulls fans had a right to expect--walked tall in the huddle and stood even taller under pressure. South Florida served notice that a strong November, counter to the program's recent past, could be in the offing this season. The many elements of a happy narrative--culminating in a 30-19 South Florida victory over West Virginia--were all created by a coach's situational courage. A potentially significant win for a football family was made possible because its leader possessed an uncommon level of acute emotional intelligence.

It's worth asking, in the wake of Leavitt's unusual but successful decision: "Why would an overwhelming majority of coaches punt on 4th and 1 near midfield in the middle of the first quarter, down 7-0?" Moreover, why would an analyst such as ESPN2's Rod Gilmore so readily worry about the wisdom of the move? (An informal poll of broadcast analysts probably would have produced a ratio of responses similar to an informal poll of FBS head coaches.)

To say that most coaches are conservative is an explanation, but not quite an answer. One must attempt to discern why coaches are typically conservative by nature, making someone such as Mike Leach a distinct exception rather than a regular representation of what a coach is (or has become). A basic answer is that coaches know that the weeding out of mistakes and negative plays tremendously increases a team's chances of winning. Avoiding turnovers and massive losses of field position will indeed make a difference in a clash of relatively equal opponents. This is why coaches rightly fear the fallout from a failed fourth-down gamble.

There's still more to the issue, however. A lot more.

The less admirable (and less intellectually convincing) reason for the conservative nature of coaches is that they so often talk about "having a chance to win in the fourth quarter." Coaches are right to be very concerned about turnovers and negative plays, but they're wrong to think that extending a game into the fourth quarter is the gold standard of game management. More specifically, coaches are wrong to think that their teams will last a full four quarters if they play close to the vest and fail to take chances in the first three quarters of play.

Every game--and each team enmeshed in an unfolding gridiron drama--possesses its own flow, and therefore demands from the participating coaches a unique feel for the ups and downs of the action. This has been the overriding and central theme of the Monday Morning Quarterback in 2009.

So much of what's been written in this space this season points to the following cluster of truths: There will be some games in which a coach does need to play close to the vest and pray that his club can last into the final minutes, but it's just as apparent that on other nights at the stadium, a coach has to seize momentum early and not allow his players to lose heart, lest an opponent seize control of the proceedings.

Plainly put, South Florida--a program used to second-half-of-a-season swoons--had little life in the first seven minutes against West Virginia. When Jim Leavitt encountered that fateful 4th and 1, he knew his team needed a kick in the pants. He knew his boys needed a fire lit under their fannies. He knew he had to shake things up, even if it meant risking the fragile competitive balance of the game.

The prospect of conceding a 14-0 lead to the Mountaineers--and thereby losing the ability to remain even on the scoreboard into the fourth quarter--was worth the risk of going for the first down. There was a considerable downside to the gamble if it didn't work out, but because Leavitt's emotional instincts were accurate, a successful conversion brought a bountiful amount of benefits. By any clear and recognizable standard of evaluation, Leavitt's risk-reward calculus was wisely arrived at and sufficiently defined. His brother coaches hopefully noticed that for all the dangers inherent in first- or second-quarter fourth-down gambles, the rewards waiting to be reaped are often a lot more abundant.

We now shift to a different dimension of the same situation in the West Virginia-South Florida game, in order to flesh out the finer points of coaching decisions made in the heat of the moment.

To say that a 4th and 1 gamble was the right move for Jim Leavitt in the first quarter of a game on October 30, 2009, with his team at 5-2, does not mean that the same decision would have been wiser under different circumstances. This is part of the larger landscape coaches must always account for.

If South Florida entered this game 7-0 and had what was, by all accounts, a clearly superior club with an Alabama-level defense, the need to take a fourth-down risk so early in a game against a relatively talented opponent just wouldn't have existed... at least not at the level it did on Friday night. Because the Bulls stood at 5-2 and were staring at another late-season fade, Leavitt needed to put the brakes on a downslide. With a 7-0 mark, there wouldn't have been any subculture to change within his locker room; accordingly, a punt would have made a lot more sense.

Readers of the Weekly Affirmation (this column's companion, now published on Thursdays instead of the Monday slot it once occupied) might recall the "Subjective Heft Show" from the Oct. 22 column, which featured another examination of a given situation's very particular dimensions:

"UTEP, unofficially but genuinely the single most schizophrenic team in the United States at the FBS level of competition, drowned in a boatload of mistakes to fall behind a solid Tulsa team, 24-13, in the fourth quarter of Wednesday night's game at the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Tex. It was nearly impossible to imagine the Miners rebounding from several failed red zone trips--two of which ended on bad interceptions thrown by quarterback Trevor Vittatoe--plus a ream of dropped passes that fueled an ever-so-predictable third-quarter surge from the Golden Hurricane. When Tulsa grabbed that 24-13 lead, the Miners weren't just reeling from a psychological standpoint; their defense played more than 12 of the third quarter's 15 minutes. Mike Price was about to watch a strong first half go for naught... but then he summoned up some stones to bring his team back from the brink.

Down 24-13 and facing 4th and 4 at the Tulsa 13 with just under seven and a half minutes left in regulation, Price was confronted with a choice between mathematics and motivation. The math said he should kick a field goal to trail by only one score; the interests of motivation demanded that he light a fire under some fannies and get his team to believe in itself after a discouraging series of slip-ups. Price called his second timeout of the second half--a risky but needed gambit--sent his offense onto the field, watched Vittatoe complete a clutch five-yard pass to move the sticks, and then witnessed UTEP transform itself into a tidal wave of toughness that swamped Tulsa in the game's remaining seven-plus minutes. Two touchdowns, mostly built on the back of a revived running game, lifted the Miners to a mighty 28-24 win.

Those twin scores were partly the product of Price's effusive praise of his offensive linemen, clearly seen on ESPN cameras during the fourth quarter. It's not that the play calling was brilliant or the strategy in line with conventional wisdom; what was so impressive was Price's emotional intelligence, and his keen sense of his team's need to rediscover the confidence that's been so confoundingly elusive this season."

Xs and Os have their proper place in the realm of college football coaching decisions. So, too, do well-picked punts in situations that demand a reliance on defense and field position. However, rising above those somewhat more mechanical and mathematical considerations are the twin towers called "feel" and "flow"--the way those two F-words are treated represents the source of true Saturday success on the sidelines.