University of North Carolina Athletics
Behind The Scenes: Part One
October 26, 2016 | Football
By Jeff Greenberg
It's a Saturday evening in Chapel Hill. Kenan Stadium has emptied out, and there is a dwindling number of staff exiting the football center. I find myself sitting with family and friends around a couch and chairs watching some college football on the big screen in front of us. We're recapping the game we just witnessed and sharing stories like most families do when they gather together in their living rooms. Except, we're not in the living room, and I'm not with my family. The room we're in is actually the head coach's office at the University of North Carolina; and the kind folks I'm visiting with would be the family and friends of head coach Larry Fedora. They're taking advantage of some time to catch up with each other as we wait for coach Fedora to finish the last postgame obligations he has to handle as the head coach. It was at this moment I began thinking about the last three days I had just spent with the Tar Heel football program.
Saturday is like a holiday to college football fans. Delicious grill smoke fills the air of the tailgate lots. Sports bars fill up with people wearing the shirts and hats of the favorite teams. They're ready to cheer on their teams. They're ready to yell when things don't go their way. And they're ready to put their arm-chair quarterback hats on when they think they could do better than the coaches leading their favorite team. I wonder if they ever think about what it takes for those coaches to get their favorite team to the kick-off on Saturday. The only way to know for sure is to find out firsthand. I decided to find out for myself and go look behind the curtain of coach Fedora's football program as he and his staff prepare for their first home game.
Early Wake-Up Call: Thursday Morning
My alarm clock woke me up at 5:30 a.m. Correction. My phone woke me up. Does anybody even use alarm clocks anymore? Anyway, coach Fedora had told me to meet him at the UNC football offices at 6:30AM and I was not about to keep the man waiting. I arrived 15 minutes early just to be safe. I have known enough coaches over the years to know that sometimes being on time meant you were late, so just to be sure, I got there early. It was still dark out and I saw headlights rolling towards me. Coach Fedora pulled into the parking spot reserved for the head coach and he gave me a head nod. It was 6:30 a.m. on the dot. Not a second less, not a second more. That was the first of many moments over the next three days when it was clear to me that there was a schedule and every minute in the day was accounted for in that schedule. Every minute counts.
A coach had hitched a ride to the office with coach Fedora. Nothing like carpooling with the head coach. We walked up to the doors when I realized that coach Fedora was pulling out the keys to unlock the doors. It hit me that the guy in charge of the program was the person unlocking the doors and opening up the football building for the day. No security guards. No frills. Just the head coach unlocking the front door and turning on the lights. “Don't worry, we're not the only ones here,” he told me. “I'm sure coach Scott is already here getting his 4 a.m. workout in.” Obviously, somebody else's alarm went off long before mine did.
We made our way to the cafeteria where coach Fedora grabbed some milk for his morning shake. Then we headed up to the head coach's office suite where he turned on the coffee machine. I'm glad he did too, because from that moment on, there were no breaks for the rest of the day. Once we started, we didn't stop. I noticed, however, that he didn't drink any of the coffee, and although he's known for it, I didn't see him drink a single Red Bull all weekend. Coach Fedora began his morning with a devotional reading and then we went over what the Thursday schedule looked like.
I noticed that the day ended a bit earlier than I expected, at 6:30 p.m. He explained, “Thursday evening is the one night every week during the season that I actually eat dinner at home. That's it. It can be the one time during the week until after our game that I actually get to sit down and have some family time. Then on Friday morning I get to take my daughter to school because it's the one morning we're not getting in here at the crack of dawn. I need to make sure I get home tonight too because my mother just flew into town, and I only get to see her about once a year.”
After going over the schedule for the day, coach Fedora pulled up his laptop to review film on their special teams' units. Special teams can seem so vanilla to the casual fan, but the amount of detail and scenario work put into it by him and his coaches shined a new light on those plays for me. Coach Fedora is involved in punt return and wanted to make sure he had his notes ready for the special teams' meeting before the full staff meeting. It's obvious to me that there's a routine in place here, and it's one he doesn't need written down to know what's next.
Staff Meeting –Time To Get Started - 7:30 a.m.
I walked into the staff meeting room to find a spot to sit. I'm glad I was early too because once the coaches and staff all filtered into the room, it was a full house. All hands on deck for sure. Anybody affiliated with the team was in that room.
The first item on the agenda was standing for the Pledge of the Allegiance. No prompting needed. When coach Fedora entered the room, everybody stood and faced the flag.
Coach Fedora had each coach offer up what themes they had been discussing with their position groups throughout the week. Every coach has different areas of focus and points of emphasis they have their players concentrate on during the week to get ready for that week's opponent. Coach Fedora rolls these comments up into his own speech to give to the players. The other coaches' input basically serves as his “speech writer” and allows him to keep the message consistent for the players. The purpose of their process every week is to condition the players both physically and mentally so that when the whistle blows on Saturday, they are ready to go. Consistent schedules, routines, and messages are what help get the players get from Sunday to Saturday without a hitch.
The next person to speak was the head athletic trainer who went over every single injury, the status update on that injury, and the current action plan with each injured player. Coaches were able to ask questions, but it was clear to me that the one person in charge of deciding when a player is ready to resume activity was the medical staff and nobody else. Big time players were going to miss time, but like coach Fedora, I'm not about to go into details on that here. I preferred not to get sent home early.
Coach Fedora closed the meeting with the schedule for the next two days and then the coaches adjourned to their offensive and defensive staff meetings. All of the support staff scurried off to get started on their list of to-dos they had to get done before practice. I headed into the offensive staff room to see exactly how they operate one of the most dynamic units in the country.
Staff Meeting 2: Let's Talk Offense:
For the second time in three years, coach Fedora needed to replace his offensive coordinator. First, Blake Anderson departed to take the head coaching job at Arkansas State. Then Seth Littrell left at the end of last season to take the head coaching job at North Texas. This time around, Coach Fedora did not bring in a new coordinator. Instead, he promoted long-time assistant Chris Kapilovic and continued the team approach to the job. I was curious to see exactly how that worked.
The room we were in looked like the design room for a Madden Football video game. The walls were floor-to-ceiling white boards sectioned off into rectangles. Each rectangle had formations of X's and O's drawn into them. It was like the 'Wall-O-Playbook.' At this point in the week, plays they wanted to include in the game plan were listed out on these walls. I tried to study the board and decipher what it all meant. I failed. I felt like I was reading a foreign language; mainly because I was. Every team has its own football language they use to communicate with each other. The players and coaches alike know it like the back of their hand, and I wondered how long it took for somebody to pick up the terminology. What I realized over my three days with the program is that it is indeed like learning a new language and it takes a while to become immersed in it. If you use it every day you become fluent and if you don't you sound like I do trying to recall the Spanish I learned in high school.
The meeting consisted of watching film from Wednesday's practice. Each play was broken down by position. This is where you see the coaching come into the practice plan. The coaches gave their input on each play. If there needed to be a certain tweak made by a position, then that was added to the practice notes for later today. Scenarios were discussed on just about every play with some being meant for this week's game and some meant for future ideas on the play later in the season.
At one point wide receivers coach Gunter Brewer mentioned to the group, “They (opponents) all have film too. So how do we want to show it this week in order to have success with it later on this season?”
I took notice of him saying “this week” and what that meant in relation to the plays we were watching on film. There are no wasted reps in practice during the week. The plays they run in practice are the exact plays they plan on running in the game that week. What these meetings are for is to determine what plays stay in the plan, what they need to change in how they run the play, or maybe if they need to remove the play from the game plan. That's what I took away from this meeting was that it is a collaborative effort with a group of guys that are on the same page in how they want to run their offense.
One play, in particular, stuck out to me. It was a gadget play that I will refer to as “Special XYZ,” which is nowhere near the real name. The play looked right out of a backyard football game. Since it was run in practice and analyzed on film, I had to ask, “Are you guys really going to run this play this week?”
Kapilovic answered, “Absolutely. If we get the look we want for it, we're running 'Special XYZ.'” I marked this play down in my notes for later.
Staff Meeting 3: A Look At The Defense:
When I walked into the room, defensive coordinator Gene Chizik, welcomed me in and we jumped right into watching practice film, similar to what we were doing in the offense meeting. Right away, I could tell they were using a different language from the offense, and right away I could tell I was behind the eight-ball again in trying to decipher it all. Coach Chizik and his crew were efficient in their film study. There was little wasted energy or talking. Everything they said had a purpose and moved their discussion forward. When coach Chizik wanted to gain clarity from the group he may walk to the white board to draw it up. Once the answer was found, they moved on to the next play. Part of the efficiency in this room, and what makes it unique, is that two of the other coaches, John Papuchis and Charlton Warren, were defensive coordinators prior to their arrival at UNC. That experience was important to coach Chizik and coach Fedora when they put this staff together, knowing that they had a big job in rebuilding the Tar Heel defense.
“Nothing is ever settled in the first practice or even in the first game," explained Chizik. "It's a process to get better each week. Really it's a process in trying to get our guys to be better each play. On defense, if one guy is out of place, the whole thing can break down. We're trying to show our guys every week where they need to be. Once they're in that position now it's time to go and make a play.”
LUNCH …briefly:
I met coach Fedora in the lunch area. He was sitting with some of the players and talking about the day. When they got up to go get ready for meetings, I noticed no other players came in to sit at our table. I asked him if players usually sit with him.
He answered, “It all depends on who, where, and what's going on that day. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I'm usually only in here for about 15 minutes anyway.”
He wasn't lying about this. I noticed my talking had prevented me from eating while he was done eating in the 15 minutes he mentioned so he went on to meet with some players in his office. I sat and ate alone before heading off to the quarterbacks' meeting. Since they didn't sit with coach Fedora either, I didn't feel bad that the players coming in to eat avoided my table.
I also wondered where the other coaches were for lunch. Coach Heckendorf informed me later that today was “Five Guys Thursday.”
He explained that, “We're a tad superstitious. We get Five Guys for lunch every Thursday. Last season we went to Chipotle before the South Carolina game. Well, we lost. No more Chipotle. We switched to getting food from Merritt's here in town. Well, we started winning and won 11 straight games. They even opened up the place for us to get food on Thanksgiving day before the State game. So this year we went back to Merritt's before the Georgia game. Well, we lost. So on to Five Guys we went and we won at Illinois. I'm hoping for a long stretch of Five Guys from here on out.”
PRACTICE – Let's hit the field:
I thought I would get a jump on heading over to practice by getting to Coach Fedora's golf cart early. As the clock ticked closer and closer to 4:20 p.m., I realized I might be in the wrong place. One thing I learned is that Coach Fedora is never late to anything. At that point I made the executive decision to run over to the practice field, where indeed I realized I was the last one to arrive onto the practice fields. A part of me thought that maybe Coach Fedora didn't notice I was late. The more honest part of me knew he never missed a detail; so instead of heading his way, I headed the opposite way towards the defense.
If I had one word to describe their practice it would be precision. Watching this team practice was different than what I expected. First, you notice the loud music playing. I was told the music is there to get the players practicing in an environment where distractions are present, because during games there are distractions everywhere and you have to be able to block them out. The next thing you notice is a clock that times each section of their practice. Coach Heckendorf mentioned earlier that they only have so much time to practice during the week. As a result, every minute of practice matters and there is no time to waste. There is a detailed practice schedule and the clock is there to keep them on that schedule. However, they practice the same way every week; and you can tell they do because it doesn't seem the players need much direction in what drill is next and where they need to be.
What was interesting to observe was how the coaches transferred what was discussed in film study to what they do on the field. The tweaks and adjustments to alignment, technique and coverages that were discussed in the meeting room were put into action on the field. It was the Thursday practice and like Coach Heckendorf explained, that's the day to polish everything up and get it down to how they want it to happen on Saturday in the game. Every repetition had a purpose. Again, every minute counts. And while I still couldn't speak the language, I was starting to recognize the plays they were running based on what I observed on film. I took that as a minor victory.
At the conclusion of practice the team huddled at midfield. Coach Fedora gave them some logistical reminders for Friday and then came time for some recognition. But not the recognition you may be thinking about. Those players had reached the level of “compelled” for their academic work were rewarded with a giant box of cookies. Their teammates cheered loudly and then quickly did their best negotiation tactics to get some of those cookies.
Coach Fedora's wife and youngest daughter, Hallie, had delivered the cookies personally, and I was reminded that was basically the first time he got to talk with his daughter since Sunday. So with that, I left him to go spend his evening with his family and out-of-town guests. Like he said earlier, it's the one night he gets to eat at home with his family. So I decided to do the same and go take my mother out for dinner as I looked forward to what day two would bring with the Tar Heels. My mind was still playing catch-up to what they tried to teach me throughout the day.
