For 33 years, David Cutcliffe has worked as an offensive football coach, rising through the ranks because of his everlasting creativity and thorough knowledge of the sport. He's an all-business, all-the-time man, but just ask him to draw up some plays, and he'll show you the little boy still inside that fell in love with the game so long ago."Oh Lord, [I knew I wanted to coach football] when I was about 14 years old," Cutcliffe says. "I love the X's and O's and love to talk offense."
So he draws out one of his favorite passing plays like he's done thousands of times before.
"This is an option route, he can go either way," he explains as he goes. "This is what we call a bend. This is a post-curl, and this is a checkout.... That's spreading the field right there. That's a bunch of [defenders] right there having to deploy."
Like a chess grandmaster, he moves his pieces across the lined paper to their appropriate places, diagramming the same plays that gave us the Mannings, produced a national championship at Tennessee and have "terrorized people for a long time," as he says. Now, he's trying to add the remarkable rejuvenation of one of the nation's historically worst programs to his list of accomplishments.
Quarterback Thaddeus Lewis is playing with his third offensive coordinator in as many years, but has shown why Cutcliffe calls him a "really bright guy" through his solid understanding of the new playbook-even though Lewis freely admits he has more to master. Like his mentor, Lewis loves the X's and O's, too.
As he traces his own favorite play, he explains his pre-snap protection calls, his pass progressions and when he calls for a hot route. He scribbles two safeties and describes why they are the key to discerning what coverage the opponent has called. In just the first step of his dropback, Lewis says the safeties tell him whether the defense is in cover two, three, four or eight. He shrugs his shoulders and, sounding quite coach-like, says, "The defense is showing their hand, so [the receivers] have a pretty good idea where I'll throw the ball."
And he'll be working with a group of experienced skill players that should help Duke at least flirt with their coach's prediction of scoring 30 points per game. With wideouts as varied as the big and strong Eron Riley, who can torch defenses for a long bomb, and the agile and explosive Johnny Williams, who could see more time than any other freshman on the team, Duke should have considerable success against opposing secondaries. After all, Cutcliffe is well known for utilizing and maximizing each individual's skills.
"One of my favorite sayings is, 'Think players, not plays,'" Cutcliffe says. "It's just getting the ball in the right people's hands. It's kind of like when you're in the backyard. You used to figure out who to get the ball to if you wanted to win the game. You hoped you were one of those guys, and then you had a lot of fun."
Now that the backyard is Wallace Wade Stadium, though, Duke's trouble lies in getting all it's players on the same page.
"We are very much a rhythm throwing team, and they've struggled with that," he says. "Our throwing and catching was really what I would call poor. It has now reached a point where it's much better. Again, a little too inconsistent for what I like. But I'm pleased with the progress."
Football fans are familiar with offensive strategies like the triple option, West Coast, pro-style and the spread. Football coaches, however, know it's much more complicated than that, as each team operates within its own shades of gray. When asked to categorize his own offense, Cutcliffe first answered pro-style, but it wasn't long before he expanded on his definition.
"We use and have used principles of what people refer to as the spread," Cutcliffe says. "Some kind of four wides or three wides and a tight end-shotgun. That's been around for a long time. If people would really study the game and see... it's not all that new. People have come up with wrinkles.
"I think what you see is you're either a well-coached football team, or you're not."
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