Bear, as big as Woody Hayes or Bobby Dodd. I had forgotten Rip’s lesson: ‘It’s not our team. It’s their team.’
“And so, that first year I was acting like a coach. I had watched the great coaches closely, and I was doing things the way I thought they did them. I wasn’t a dumb kid, you know? I was almost forty years old, and I knew a lot about football. I knew how to win. But I didn’t know how to infuse that into the players. I had a lot of doubt, my coaches had a lot of doubt, it all trickled down.
“A good coach, a good manager, a good leader of any kind shows no doubt. And they can make players understand that the greatest thing in the world is to lose yourself to something bigger. How could I ask my players to do that when I wasn’t willing to do it? I kept thinking of it as my team. But it wasn’t my team. That’s not a bad title for your book: ‘It Was Never My Team.’ ”
THE OTHER THING WAS PATERNO’S strategic plan to prove that he was a great coach. To everyone. To himself. It was nothing less than his attempt to reinvent the game of football.
Though Paterno had achieved much of his playing success as a quarterback and his greatest coaching success as a molder of quarterbacks, he had come to believe that the best way to win football games was with a great defense. This was something many football coaches believed, but for Paterno it would become a guiding philosophy. Years later, he would scribble a fascinating little note to himself, sort of a miniature Socratic discussion about how to win:
There are two ways to build a football team.
1. Solid kicking.
Dominant defense.
Limited offense that doesn’t take chances because it doesn’t have to.
OR
2. Solid kicking.
An offense that is all over the place—big plays—deep passes—take chances because they can, but have to take chances because the defense is going to give up points.
You won’t win all of your games playing that second way. You have a bad game throwing it. You fall behind and never catch up. You have to go the length of the field.
It is rare to go to a Rose Bowl and win a national championship without a great defense. The only way to control a game is with a great defense.
After the 1966 season, Paterno felt certain the way to make Penn State a great football program was to build that great defense. He shut himself into that upstairs office, shut the door, sat at that thirteen-dollar desk, and worked on designing a defense that had never been seen before. That was The Other Thing, a new kind of defense, and to build it Paterno would have to go deeper inside himself than he ever had in his life.
THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFICULTY WITH COACHING defense is this: You don’t know what the offense will try to do. That may sound obvious and simple, but this is the challenge that has baffled and inspired defensive football coaches since the game was invented.
The offensive team calls a play, and all eleven players know the play. They know what they want to do. They know where they are supposed to go. They act.
Defensive players must react. “On offense, you only think about one play, the play you’re running,” Paterno explained. “On defense, you have to think about a lot of plays. You have to be ready for anything.”
The struggles of the 1966 season convinced Paterno of two things. First, he wanted his best athletes playing defense. This would become a Paterno staple; for the rest of his career he would take great offensive players from high school and put them on defense. There is example after example; he even put one of his greatest offensive players, Heisman Trophy winner John Cappelletti, on defense for a while. Perhaps the most extreme example happened when Paterno tried to recruit a brilliant high school quarterback named Jim Kelly. Paterno wanted him to play linebacker. Kelly wanted to stay at quarterback. He became a star at the University of Miami, led the Buffalo Bills to four Super Bowls, and was inducted
“And so, that first year I was acting like a coach. I had watched the great coaches closely, and I was doing things the way I thought they did them. I wasn’t a dumb kid, you know? I was almost forty years old, and I knew a lot about football. I knew how to win. But I didn’t know how to infuse that into the players. I had a lot of doubt, my coaches had a lot of doubt, it all trickled down.
“A good coach, a good manager, a good leader of any kind shows no doubt. And they can make players understand that the greatest thing in the world is to lose yourself to something bigger. How could I ask my players to do that when I wasn’t willing to do it? I kept thinking of it as my team. But it wasn’t my team. That’s not a bad title for your book: ‘It Was Never My Team.’ ”
THE OTHER THING WAS PATERNO’S strategic plan to prove that he was a great coach. To everyone. To himself. It was nothing less than his attempt to reinvent the game of football.
Though Paterno had achieved much of his playing success as a quarterback and his greatest coaching success as a molder of quarterbacks, he had come to believe that the best way to win football games was with a great defense. This was something many football coaches believed, but for Paterno it would become a guiding philosophy. Years later, he would scribble a fascinating little note to himself, sort of a miniature Socratic discussion about how to win:
There are two ways to build a football team.
1. Solid kicking.
Dominant defense.
Limited offense that doesn’t take chances because it doesn’t have to.
OR
2. Solid kicking.
An offense that is all over the place—big plays—deep passes—take chances because they can, but have to take chances because the defense is going to give up points.
You won’t win all of your games playing that second way. You have a bad game throwing it. You fall behind and never catch up. You have to go the length of the field.
It is rare to go to a Rose Bowl and win a national championship without a great defense. The only way to control a game is with a great defense.
After the 1966 season, Paterno felt certain the way to make Penn State a great football program was to build that great defense. He shut himself into that upstairs office, shut the door, sat at that thirteen-dollar desk, and worked on designing a defense that had never been seen before. That was The Other Thing, a new kind of defense, and to build it Paterno would have to go deeper inside himself than he ever had in his life.
THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFICULTY WITH COACHING defense is this: You don’t know what the offense will try to do. That may sound obvious and simple, but this is the challenge that has baffled and inspired defensive football coaches since the game was invented.
The offensive team calls a play, and all eleven players know the play. They know what they want to do. They know where they are supposed to go. They act.
Defensive players must react. “On offense, you only think about one play, the play you’re running,” Paterno explained. “On defense, you have to think about a lot of plays. You have to be ready for anything.”
The struggles of the 1966 season convinced Paterno of two things. First, he wanted his best athletes playing defense. This would become a Paterno staple; for the rest of his career he would take great offensive players from high school and put them on defense. There is example after example; he even put one of his greatest offensive players, Heisman Trophy winner John Cappelletti, on defense for a while. Perhaps the most extreme example happened when Paterno tried to recruit a brilliant high school quarterback named Jim Kelly. Paterno wanted him to play linebacker. Kelly wanted to stay at quarterback. He became a star at the University of Miami, led the Buffalo Bills to four Super Bowls, and was inducted
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