1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Mark Whipple offense: June 16th, 10:25am

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

What did Whipple do to benefit Pitt and Pickett and what will he do here?Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Back to one-on-one with D.P. Sponsored by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul on 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. A little fire. A little fire. Baseline. Y'all can go ahead and dance. I'm going to tell you, boss. I will not tell you boss. Go ahead and do your thing.

You in the car. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, let's bring back Barry Thompson. Fairfrey football, Kevin B.T. Come on, man. Come on, man.

I mean, Ohio, people may not realize that you think of funk, you know, being an urban-type city thing, and only the people from there were really understanding how much of this stuff that we call funk and those funky baseball lines came out of the great state of Ohio. And specifically, when you drill down, there was something going on in Dayton, that, Dayton, Ohio, which was given birth to this music that spread out all over the place. And for about, gosh, a decade, easily a decade, that style of music dominated a certain, you know, a lot of it. And there were so many musicians that were involved in playing that's not just people formative,

but musicians that were involved in doing that, that their music still makes your head nod and your toes tap. what 60 years later it's unbelievable. Yeah and I mean the tree follows right that it's parliament and Bootsie and high players and tower of power and all of that through that place so it was good stuff. BT

you are exceptional at the breakdown the breakdown the breakdown so here's what I'm pondering with you you're really good at breaking to help me decipher some things that I was missing when it came to Logan Smothers, when it came to

blocking schemes, when it came to run scheme sets and philosophy, philosophy. Like what were they thinking? Because I'll ask Barry this question, like, what are they trying to accomplish here? And it'll be interesting this year because I think that Nebraska's change of coaching personnel and philosophy means it's a change in scheme. which means a change in production from the players that they're going to put in space. So from what you watch, so if I gave you spring game, right, which is a quick flash, it's a view from 10,000 feet and not much depth or detail. But when you talk about Nebraska offensively, Mark Whipple, and you go into Pittsburgh's

playbook from a year ago, what do you think happens? What did Mark Whipple do to make? picket, a Heisman candidate, and for Pitt to have the offensive success that they had? Well, the simplest thing is he got Kenny to hold on to the ball a bit longer. And so when you do that, right, that's got to be tied to how you're protecting up front. Right? And he, and so he had an eye to kind of, you know, I'm not. in his playbook, but when you see those plays, the ones with Kenny was extending plays,

and actually one of the criticisms, right, everybody has, you know, everybody's a critic. First you play the season, it's like, oh, my gosh, can't wait, this guy's going to leave him to a Super Bowl, but then you get to that draft here, and all of a sudden he's only got three fingers, he walks with a limp, and, you know, he holds the ball too long. Right. Well, one of the criticisms was, oh, he'll never be able to hold the ball that long in the NFL, and I kind of thought, well, the NFL would probably never ask him to hold the ball. that long.

Right? So it must have been part of the design of their offense that there were times when he was holding the ball. They were running deeper routes, right? And not to make fun of it, but the Raiders back in the day, that's why their vertical game, you know, the same vertical game, because the longer that you are able to hold on to the football, the deeper those patterns become, the more those zones or whatever traps or they get exposed

and the defense gets distorted, right? And it is susceptible. That's why when you look at defenses now, they're kind of winning that game in terms of, hey, you've only got 1.28 seconds to get the ball out. And so as a result, they're kind of winning that battle. But what you saw in Pittsburgh, they kind of flipped it, right? And they were able.

So those offensive linemen at Pitt didn't get enough credit for what Kenny was able to do. Again, go back to the Raiders. When they were playing that, you almost knew all of their linemen, right? Because they were famous, Archel, right? Because they were doing yomas.

They might have been cheating or whatever linemen do up there. But you go back and they had tons of time to look at that. So that's what I saw. Barry. They were able to stretch clock. Go ahead.

Let me ask you that. Because I think we miss we bury the lead in this thing, that the line play is vital in that no matter what you want to do offensively in the passing game, you better have your ducks covered. So what do you concede? What do you have to concede?

If you're not sure that your five can carry the mail, what can you do to help, to allow Casey Thompson to have as much? how much times he's going to need? Well, we talked about this, and I'm sorry for your listeners, but deep enough kind of jump streams all the time to talk, but let's flip to basketball things to make the point. A lot of times when you'll hear guys on TV,

hey, that's a small lineup or that's a big lineup, and that's a small lineup. Well, I'm always the thought, okay, I may have a small lineup, but that means the big guys have to guard my small guy. When they talk about digging and say, oh, well, they got a rebound advantage. Well, I'm like, you know, those big guys have to go on the other end and cover these small quick guys too. So if I'm gaining efficiency out of it, then what does it matter if it's big or small?

So now let's bring to football. There's a game going on, right? So can you manage, let's say you're going to leave five to tech, six-man protection with a check release, right? So do you have enough to manage them? Can you manage that deficiency enough that it begins to put the defense back on their heels. You know, if a defense knows that you're coming in the game,

that when you throw, you're averaging 15, 18, 20 yards of completion. Okay, if that's what you're averaging, then they've only got a couple of ways to get at solving that problem. They'll say, well, hey, I'll put pressure on them, and they won't have that time to throw. And then all of a sudden, your quarterback's defeating the ball. he's throwing short, he's got a 15-yard game. Well, then now the defensive coordinator's got to adjust.

Right now he's back to, okay, how do I solve them, you know, holding the ball that long? How can I get my guy to cover that long? What type of zone do I want to play? What is it that I want to give up? So it's just a matter of whether you can defeat that major tactic or not. Can you protect enough? It's just something in your scheme that when they come, all right, All right, you got me, but I know exactly where to go, and this is what's going to happen.

So I don't know I answered it, but that is the game. They're betting that they can force you to throw the ball sooner than you want, and then you've got to start doing some things to say, hey, even if you think you force me to throw the ball, I'm going to hit you in a really weak spot. I'm going to hit you in a bad matchup. You know, a few years ago, you're telling war stories, it's less common now, but a few.

few years ago in high school football. It was real popular to play six people in the box, four down linemen and two backers. And I was at Woodbury, and I'm like, what are we doing keeping the back end? They said, well, we need six-man protection. All six of them aren't rushing. And I said, by the way, if they do come, then they only got a couple choices to cover this back that's ran for 50 yards. One, they can peel the defensive end, which I love that match up.

Or two, this backer that's way wide has to fly out to the front. flat to get them. I like their chances. Let's get them out of the back. And you start doing that and, you know, it's changed. Now that's a few years ago. Now they're different, right? But I still think backs out of the back, Bill, maybe even splitbacks is a way to kind of defeat that. If you think about split backs, let's say you go two by one, right, in terms of receivers,

two on one side, one on the other. If you are split backs, you're essentially trips to one side, double. doubles to the other. Right. So defensively, how are they going to line up? Are they really treating that as trips? Are they accounting for a third receiver? Or are they just manned over there and they're not really counting for the back?

And if they're there, if they like to play four over three the trips, then who's matching up on the back side? You know, so there's things like that that they can do. Yeah, you're in the space, right? That if you're Mark Whipple, your Mickey Joseph and you have athletes, athletic receivers, but you're not sure what the win rate is going to be. So we put them in route combinations where wins have to be acquired rather than you putting them in space that are easy to throw to and having playmakers be playmakers. For you, if you don't know that you have route runners, then you need playmakers.

You need to put playmakers in space. So get in Mickey Joseph's head. you've got little doos, big doos, and in-between dudes, right? You're not sure if they're going to win the one-on-ones. How do you help them? Well, doing things like I said. So, for instance, let's say, you know, some defenses, they like that it's common. I'm seeing, look, I don't have Big Ten tape, but let me just tell you what I've seen in the high school.

They like to do a lot of four over three. So just for, if there's a list of out that doesn't understand. football is a lot about equating numbers. So if I put three receivers out there, you can put three defenders out there, or you can slide a fourth guy in, and so now you outnumbered. So I could do all these combinations, but they're going to be really tough. It's going to be really limited because simply you have more people in that space than I have. But when you do that, it's leaving you a little short on the other side.

So now, even if I have a single receiver, if I get that back into action, Now I've got enough to put one of those defenders in conflict. Now, you can adjust and start to take one of the safety's play kind of hedging over the top, but now you're, you know, you're widened the box and you're widening the middle of field, and now there's stuff that I can do with my number three receiver as he crosses over from one side to the other. So there's a lot of things. I was just on the field doing this Saturday because that's what they were doing. So, you know, those types of things, informational things will get the ball in the hands of your playmakers.

You can, you know, you can line these guys up certain ways. And then through formations, you can, you, let me make it simple. I could draw up the best play. Like, what I'm saying may sound really intelligent, but you want to know how it's really good, is that my three best players are involved running the same play. then my chances are then my chances are the ball's going to get to somebody

you can do something so that's what's really important there's an adage in football that says there are X's and O's and there are Jimis and Joe's and you should never draw an X or an O without thinking about a Jimmy

or a Joe right so I could come up with these great formations and I could draw a play but then I'm going to look at that play and say who are the people that are involved in that thing. And I can make that play better if my three best players are involved in that play. That way, whether it goes to one, two, or three,

I'm going to be really happy. This is exactly where I walked in this space. That when you look at Nebraska's roster, they brought in a whole lot of talent. They brought a whole lot of talent at the running back position. They brought in a whole lot of talent at the receiver position. And you brought in two quarterbacks that you thought could help you move the ball around.

But then you get into the X's and O's and the Jeeves and Joe's. And the question becomes, if you're not sure what Trey Palmer gives you or what these receivers are going to give you in this space, then it becomes a scheme thing. And how do you scheme if you're not preparing for Omeran and getting the ball in space against a little dude? Or getting, you know, Grant out of the backfield.

Or do I want Yant with his oversized on a, a small dirt. You have to have a plan. And that's why I'm interested in the next two months. Because we won't get to know or get to see these guys quite yet. And we don't know what this staff is going to do with it. Yeah, well, the good thing about bringing in a bunch of them, as you described, is that's the easiest way to find out who wants to be the alpha.

You know, forget your analysis. take a bunch of people who you think are really good, put them in a space and tell them, I'm choosing two. You make up your mom and watch what happened. Right. Watch what happens. They'll make decisions for you.

Right. They will make decisions for it because there's going to be some in that group that, you know, as talented. What I see, there are a lot of people that are capable of things, but there are only so many people who are willing to do things. And so when you put, There's talent together.

Hopefully the volume of the talent, you're putting together people who are capable, right? You don't choose them if they're not capable. They're capable. But by adding too many people for two few chairs, now you get a chance to find out who's willing. Who's willing? I heard Mickey Joseph's talk.

He's not talking about being average. He's talking about being great. right and not everybody is willing to do those types of things to be great some people are just afraid of hey i you know i don't want to see them air whatever it is and hold them back but there are some in that group hopefully who are sitting there and they go oh yeah i'm going to show this whole conference what's up i hope for nebraska's family and sick that among that group that there's three or four guys that are rubbing their hands and they're saying, yeah, the conference better watch out for me.

That they're not thinking about, I'm up beat this. That's already done. The conference better watch out for me. Ohio State, you passed on me. That's your bad, right? Yep. You passed on me. That's your bad.

Wisconsin. I can't wait to play you. I want to play you twice because of what I'm going to do to you. A story real quick, just how those brainsop operate. This is Kobe Bryant-Michael Jordan story. And there was when people were kind of giving Kobe, you know, crap for copy, Michael, we already sucked. So Michael, they were playing in the game. And Michael looked down.

He saw that Kobe had, you know, whatever shoe was on. And then late in the game, the Bulls won by one. Michael at the end said to Kobe, you can wear those shoes, but you'll never be able to fill. Kobe, according to the way, the stories, and for the next two weeks, Kobe didn't talk to nobody. Nobody. Like, didn't talk to his teammates,

didn't talk to anybody. They got back to the Bulls, Kobe hit him up for 55 and won the game. That's the mindset that you're looking for out of these guys. There's got to be some guy who approached that. Not everybody can be Kobe, but there's going to be a guy there with that kind of mindset, right? That's what you're looking for.

Not just the capable guys. but you're looking for the willing guys. The guys are willing to be great. I can tell this story that sitting at the old Georgetown practice facility, John Thompson yelling at a player that folks would know the name of, and asking him, son, I brought you here because you're talented, because also I thought at some point you would resist getting your tail kicked every day. He said, I'm still waiting for the day when you get sick and damn tired of getting your tail kicked.

I keep, I'm looking at the Nebraska roster and I want to know. All I want to know about this Husker team is, are you sick and damn tired of getting your tail kicked? It speaks volume. It speaks. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, it's me. You get me excited.

But here's the beautiful thing about that. It is in every one of those players. It is in them. It is in every one of those players that are there right now. The stuff that we're talking about is inside every one of those players on that team. Put it on the shirt. They just have to make the decision that I'm going to bring this out. I, it's that thing.

We said, I don't want to get back. I don't want to get even. I want to get back. I would hope that there are a list of names of Big Ten schools that the players in this roster have not had success against, who they've taken losses from. And then on that board, each one is circled, it's highlighted, it's double traced, and it's purposeful. We're sick. and damn tired of getting beat because then the work begins.

That's what I'm hoping for. We'll throw it to break. We'll come back. We'll close out. We'll find out what Barry Thompson's eating when we return. Download our app by searching 93.7. The ticket in your app store. You're listening to one-on-one with DP on 937 the ticket

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