While Your in Hell Tell Art Briles I Said Hello
Interview with Art Briles.
six/two/2013.
Waco, Texas, in the offices of the Baylor football game program.
12:03 Key Fourth dimension.
Spencer Hall: Mike Leach said y'all have a pretty good power clean.
Art Briles: I used to.
SH: One-point-five times bodyweight?
AB: Naw, Leach is pumpin' information technology up. Just living every solar day, trying to be my best, just similar we enquire our players.
Briles is straight from cardinal casting for a Friday Night Lights reboot: tall, saddle-tan, and wearing able-bodied gear and a Nike middle monitor fitness watch on his wrist. His role is decorated with black comport iconography and the NFL jerseys of Baylor players and those he's coached elsewhere. A Kevin Kolb Eagles jersey sits just opposite him on the wall, and a small, curvilinear black conduct sculpture sits on the table between us.
He's got camp today and is clearly in some gear of coaching speed. Not high gear, but enough for him to have his Baylor baseball cap on already and to wolf down what appears to exist a turkey wrap (no fries) at the commencement of the interview. Like most football coaches, he can do this and carry on a conversation at the same time without effort or dropping a crumb. From fourth dimension to fourth dimension, his optics dart out to the office door to see who's passing past and to the big bay windows overlooking the practice field and indoor facility to notation arrivals.
SH: You coached at a lot of different levels. Where exercise yous starting time when yous are working with fewer resource than the other team every bit a head coach?
AB: The heed. Without question. Everything'southward about your mental attitude, and how y'all arroyo it, and how you get to where you lot wanna get. Y'all have to empathise that the field may not be equal from a lot of dissimilar standpoints — resources, facilities, support, fan support — but all those things, if yous allow them filter in, you lose sight of your focus. Our focus has always been that we're gonna be the standard, nosotros're gonna practice what we do and exercise it likewise equally anyone does information technology, and we're not gonna take any excuses or comparisons along the mode. That'south our motto: no excuses, no comparisons, and no compromises.
SH: How practise you get players to forget the previous downwardly?
AB: The neat thing almost young people is that they have brusque memories. They're living in the now, the moment. If they tin focus on a reality or a vision which is short-term, which might exist having a great practice, or improving their torso percentage, or making an advocacy in the weight room or the 40, and so that's a stride in a positive management. If 85 people are making positive steps, then we take a chance to take a pretty good football team.
We're but ever focused on the now. I've always said "the past is last." Nosotros don't care what happened yesterday, nosotros're gonna work towards what happens today and tomorrow and be the best nosotros can exist there. Information technology's just grinding and enjoying the journey and expecting smashing outcomes.
Have you ever listened to a coach become into his motivational talk? Have you ever noticed how at the same time your encephalon might recognize it as being wildly, even blindly optimistic? And maybe even noted how a lot of it sounds like cliché? And fifty-fifty despite that, you find yourself nodding along somewhere in your head, and thinking yeaaahhh, that's totally it, dude. Permit'south do THAT. Let'south Live. Art Briles does that affair actually, really well, which is probably 1 very big reason why he's paid to be a caput bus, and not just an offensive coordinator. It'due south zilch you haven't heard from a hundred coaches in a hundred postgame interviews, but it sounds great. Probably sounds even better to an 18-year-old who can run a 4.four and catch a dorsum-shoulder fade laissez passer effortlessly.
SH: When you were at Stephenville High Schoolhouse, you lot were i of the first coaches to brand a switch from the traditional run-first approach to a pass-first, spread criminal offense. You were running… was it the wishbone or wing-T?
Four country championships from 1988 to 1999, all done in a town of 15,000 located about an hr and a half exterior of Waco. Stephenville is between Fort Worth and Abilene on the east/due west axis, Fort Hood and Wichita Falls from north to due south, and is in the middle of nowhere in terms of theoretical football game power. Art Briles' whole career hasn't had much to do with what is theoretically possible.
AB: Split-back veer.
SH: A pretty conventional high school criminal offence. Why did you lot practise that? Did people call back you were crazy at the time?
AB: Actually, it started with my first higher football job coaching in Hamlin in '84-'85. My first year there, we had a groovy football squad, ran the split-back veer, went thirteen-0-i. In the second year, I saw that if you got deep in the playoffs, you're gonna confront people with talent just equally good or better than yours. So what I looked for was an edge, something different; so in '85 we went to the one-back, 4 wides and went 14-1.
When we got to Stephenville, we were ever kind of based out of a split-back veer look. I played at Houston, played in the Houston veer, sat in meetings with Jitney Yeoman. A lot of the terminology we use today is Houston veer-related, if you lot hear the verbiage.
At Stephenville, nosotros definitely had to practice something that gave ourselves a chance to get the opportunity to win football games. Nosotros weren't simply gonna line upwards and beat people. We had to exist a little unconventional, which we were. In 1990 nosotros had a guy throw for over 3,000 yards, and so had a 3,000-yard passer every yr over the adjacent 10 years. In '98 we actually gear up a national record for total offense.
8,664 yards, a 15-1 tape, and a land title. Poor, poor Joshua Loftier Schoolhouse.
SH: When y'all switched at Hamlin, was that based on Dennis Erickson's single-back stuff from the time?
AB: It's funny you say that. It'south just what nosotros came up with. We weren't watching TV and going to other schools and saying, "Why are you doing this?"
I've ever thought, you got who you got, so you meliorate find something that fits who you got. I can't watch what the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins do and say, "That looks practiced for us." It might wait proficient for them considering of the personnel they accept.
We did things out of a desire of necessity. I had skillful people in that location — we were gonna win anyway — but I was trying to win a state championship. At Stephenville, it was out of necessity. It wasn't something I wanted to do; information technology was something we needed to do.
SH: Is information technology weird to run into that kind of offense equally the standard in Texas?
AB: I retrieve information technology's encouraging, without question, because it got so many guys to play football. At Stephenville, I'd tell people, "I don't intendance if y'all block. Come up out and play take hold of. I tin can discover someone who can block. I need someone who can run and catch the ball. We'll worry about being tough subsequently; I need to go you on the field and meet if we got some talent."
SH: You call up that's changed the kind of athlete you see on a football field?
AB: Without question. Now, information technology's a infinite league. That's why Texas is the most-recruited state in America. Because you've got undoubtedly dandy skill players, and so y'all've got QBs who can throw the ball and backs who can make plays in space. And then the defense, on the flipside, they've all got to play in infinite, besides. So information technology's a infinite game. I like it.
SH: Concluding year, you did something unusual for those who've watched Baylor over the past few years. Against UCLA in the bowl game, with Nick Florence coming off a huge season, you passed the ball just 12 times.
Briles starts laughing the minute I say, "UCLA," because he knows where this is going already. He does that a lot -- not exactly cutting you off, but leaping a few steps ahead in the conversation because he knows where things are going, what you're going to say, and how to accost, counter, and contextualize information technology. In conversation information technology's helpful; he's engaged, and clearly involved in the flow of the conversation, and doesn't shy abroad from directly answers to direct questions. In playcalling, it has to be terrifying.
AB: Isn't that ridiculous?
SH: Was that only what was working?
AB: We felt going into that game that UCLA were the Pac-12 [Due south partition] champs, had lost to Stanford by three points, and were playing on their home court in San Diego. That'southward not Fort Worth. Nosotros're in their backyard. And they had a great national image. Our goal was to increase our national image out on the West Coast, because we're not out there much. Our goal was to get out there, play hard, exist physical, win the game, and get home. That's all anyone'due south gonna remember, is who won the game.
We got in a position early where nosotros got a skilful lead, and we sat on it, quite honestly. Nosotros sat on 49 points, but nosotros sabbatum on it. That'southward what that was all about. The only thing I feel bad about is that it cost Nick the No. 1 offensive leader in America. He was the leader all through the season, and he went to No. 2 after the bowl game.
SH: You lot went from Robert Griffin III to Nick Florence, and Florence'due south numbers were comparable or better than Griffin's.
AB: Yes, believe information technology or non.
SH: That kind of production goes back to Kevin Kolb, Instance Keenum, and your quarterbacks back through your loftier school level. That's a actually diverse grouping of guys, all with different skill sets. What's the thread that unites them physically and mentally? What do y'all look for first in a quarterback?
AB: Burn hot*, No. 1. You mentioned before being an underdog or having a fleck-on-your-shoulder deal. I beloved those guys, I dearest those situations. I want a guy that burns hot and wants to prove himself. So if they've got the right mentality of a tremendous corporeality of confidence, a tremendous amount of wanting to prove himself, and so we've got a take a chance to have a guy who can play if he's got the skill set to go with it.
There's a wide diverseness of skill sets. At that place'south a lot of means to become it right. Those people you merely mentioned? The common factor is that they all burn hot, they're all very competitive, they're all multi-sport guys, and they're all highly intelligent. That'southward something we never overlook.
* I tin can't really convey the depth of his emphasis here, merely "Texas as hell" comes shut. It comes out like "borne hawt." The word "skin" comes out like "skeeeeyun," and "paper" is a full "payypurr" in emphasis.
SH: Is there a trait others might think is mandatory that y'all're non and so big on?
AB: Arm strength is No. one there. We're virtually getting the brawl out of your hand and making good decisions.
SH: You lot coach in the Big 12. The SEC has seven BCS titles and leans a lot on defence and in particular the defensive line. With the success of Texas A&1000 in the SEC and the hire of Malzahn at Auburn, do y'all think that a scrap of that Large 12 mode of football is bleeding over into the SEC?
AB: That'south a situation where if I were sitting in the SEC, I'd say at that place'southward no reason to crack our blinds. What we're doing seems to be working pretty well. I don't think they're sitting as a conference and proverb, "Well, those guys are doing that, nosotros should practice a petty bit of that." I would exist thinking "Hey, what we're doing's working pretty well."
Now, I wasn't surprised A&G did well in their first year in the league. They're coming in with a different style of play, and the thing about being in a big league like that is there is a trend for anybody to be pretty much the same at the end of the day. They may have had a few variations, but A&M was different completely from commencement play to 85th play. They're gonna be a little bit different from their mentality to their formations to the philosophy standpoint.
That didn't shock me. Whether that continues with the adjustments fabricated in the league? We'll see. Malzahn has been in that location earlier. He was there with Cam. They won a national championship. It's such a fine line, though. They had a lot of things happen when they won it in [2010]. They had an overtime game, etc.
Same matter concluding year with Alabama. If Stanford doesn't upset Oregon, if we don't upset K-Land, there might not take been a championship for the SEC. I think there'due south a lot more than parity out at that place than is realized. With the playoff organization coming up in '14, it won't be a i-game victory.
SH: Do you think that's going to change the dynamics of how the organisation currently determines a champion? More variety, parity at the meridian?
AB: Well, at that place'll be four instead of two. I remember it'll exist different. I think the guy sitting at three like Auburn in 2004 stands a actually good risk in that format. I recall it volition convalesce some of the incertitude that's been created.
SH: When you await at an opponent when you lot're breaking downwards film, what are a few of the keys you look at --
AB: Oh, come on now.
SH: Okay, well ... if y'all're the coincidental fan, and you ... yous want to skip this question, don't you?
AB: The reason I would like to is that nosotros're a little bit unique in how we view film study from an opponent. We starting time in different areas than others, I think.
SH: I won't ask you lot to give abroad the visitor store.
AB: Thanks.
Phil Bennett, Briles' defensive coordinator and someone who'south coached with and confronting him on defense, didn't requite away the visitor store, either. He did accept a lot to say about working with a coach who's and then aggressive offensively:
"It's almost 100 pct nosotros're gonna take to play more snaps. We're gonna have to play more than guys. If Art can score 49 points, we tin can hold 'em to 39. That's the thing you wait at. On defense force you've gotta play good crimson zone, become some big takeaways, and exercise what nosotros do. I might not accept the numbers I had earlier in my career, but I'll win more than games than I ever did before."
He also said his wife, when she establish out he was interviewing with Briles, got excited and said, "Fine art will become for 4th down anywhere on the field!" Fifty-fifty defensive coaches' wives like Fine art Briles, this despite Briles being hot death for a lot of defensive coaches in the Big 12 and across.
SH: With RG3 in the pros, and with the way the NFL is currently adopting a lot of spread and zone-read concepts --
AB: 'Scuse me.
Briles ducks out to greet some visitors. There is schmoozing and accent and some backslapping and how's-your-mama'ing. If you spend plenty time in Briles' orbit, yous will get a nickname. Near of the Baylor football squad has one right now. A short list of those follows:
- RB Glasco Martin - "Drinking glass-pack"
- WR Clay Fuller - "RBI," thanks to his minor-league baseball feel
- LB Eddie Lackey - "Fast Eddie"
- QB Bryce Niggling - "Pettybone"
- WR Tevin Reese - "Spinmaster" and "Sweetness Anxiety"
- PK Aaron Jones - "Stork" (he has a long neck)
- CB Joe Williams - "Half dozen Iii" (because he's 5'eleven) and "Little Joe"
- S Sam Holl - "Thief" or "Sam T"
- TE Hashemite kingdom of jordan Najvar - "Big J" and "Navajo" and "Niveman"
- WR/PR Levi Norwood - "Piffling No-No"
- All-American OL Cyril Richardson - "C-Notation"
- WR Jay Lee - "Jay Leezie"
- CB Darius Jones - "Daddy D"
- DT Young man Blackshear - "Bo-Bo"
- LB Brody Trahan - "Bro"
He ducks back and picks up the conversation mid-sentence without a finish.
AB: You talking about RG3 running the zone read and all that?
SH: Yup.
AB: I think that's a tough question to answer. I think the departure betwixt college and the NFL is that as an owner, you're talking about franchise and longevity as a quarterback. Collegiately, you're talking about a two- to four-year window -- usually one to three, more realistically, for a QB. You lot tin survive in the curt term.
Whether yous tin practice it for a vii- to 10-year period, well, I remember and so you're looking differently at the mentality of your quarterbacks. Yous're not going to invest a whole lot of money in a guy and and so on tertiary-and-three get someone in there to run the zone read. You lot're not paying a guy $20 million a year to practise that.
I recollect time will tell. I'thousand interested considering I know our guy, I know RG3. I know he's very dynamic. One of the difficult things about that position that I mentioned earlier — and I talked to Robert about it earlier the season last year — I said you cannot let your competitive nature dictate how you lot play the game. The affair nigh the NFL is longevity and staying in the league for a long time. You're the face of the franchise, and for you to help that team yous've got to stay healthy.
That's a fine line. For those guys at that position, or whatever position actually, they're all ultra-competitive. And you put 'em in a stadium with people in the stands and yards that have to be made or stopped depending on what side of the brawl they're on, that's the first matter on their heed. It's not what'due south going to be happening in 2016, information technology'south what'south happening that second.
SH: He didn't even run the ball that much by college standards last twelvemonth. Merely he did do it a lot by NFL standards.
AB: That'southward a lot. I've always said, you wanna see grandmomma become out of her seat, sack the QB. On both sides. Quarterback's grandma and the linebacker's grandma, they're both hollerin', but for different things.
SH: When yous recruit at Baylor, what's the pitch?
AB: Our pitch now is just reality. We're centrally located in the all-time state in America for loftier school football. That'due south just a reality. We've got I-35, which carries 44 million people a year up and down information technology. It's one of the hottest highways in America from San Antonio to Dallas.*
Fact: we're putting a $235 million stadium on the Brazos River that 44 one thousand thousand people are going to come across a year that's gonna correspond Baylor University for generations to come up. We're i of the only schools in America to have a stadium on a river and on a major highway. Lot of people have cute stadiums, only you gotta drive to 'em. This one's in your face up. That's a fact.
And then nosotros have production on the field over the short contempo history, and the great matter nigh young people is that if they're 17 years old, and so what happened in 2012 is contempo. That's a good thing for us because our recent history is pretty doggone good. Nosotros deal with guys in the now. And we accept as skillful an academic institution as there is in the Us.
*In that location's always speculation about coaches like Briles leaving a smaller school — and in the Big 12, that's certainly Baylor — and going elsewhere, somewhere bigger off I-35 with larger budgets, a bigger national presence, and perchance an easier pull in terms of recruiting by proper name alone. I have no empirical evidence to back this statement up, but listening to Briles wax poetic most the power of I-35 and talking a bit further down about beef brisket, I don't ever see him leaving the state of Texas. He'due south likewise married to the country from an emotional perspective, not to mention the fit he himself helped develop between speedy Texas high school talent and the loftier-powered offenses in the state.
He could ever leave Baylor, sure, but it won't be for a schoolhouse exterior the Lone Star State's borders, and not anytime soon, judging from the looks of the construction cranes backside his shoulder beyond the Brazos River. This could all change in an instant, but that'due south certainly how it feels on June ii, 2013.
SH: How are you doing in learning the bend on being a coach in the Facebook/Twitter/Instagram era? How has that inverse things?
AB: I've learned to let some things get in i ear and out the other. I'k non e'er believing everything I run across or listening to everything I hear. Just like a 47-year-former man might get on the Internet and punch Send when they didn't mean to, don't think it'southward non happening to a sixteen- or 17-twelvemonth-old. I'thousand not going to overreact when I hear something that isn't gratis to them or to our university. I've never been a panic guy. Allow's get face to face with each other, shake hands, hug necks, and and so get on with information technology.
SH: Does Texas have the best barbecue in the nation?
AB: Everyone's wondering who's gonna be No. two.
SH: And brisket is the rex of barbecues?
AB: I'm a little biased, but yessir.
SH: And your favorite place?
AB: Now, that's where you might get me in problem*. That'south where social media'south gonna catch upwards with me. I've got many. If its last name is Texas, I'k eating there. Information technology's adept.
*This is the merely time in the interview Briles looks genuinely uncomfortable.
SH: Okay, well ... how most a sentimental favorite, or some identify that nigh people might not know almost?
AB: I'm trying to recall of ane in Houston that might get me off the hook.
SH: Name one fashion out in Westward Texas that won't go you lot in trouble.
AB: Joe Allen'due south Bar-B-Q in Treadway, Texas. At that place you lot get. If you want amend than good, that'south where yous go.
SH: You're non a sauce man?
AB: Yes I am. Leave the mild on the counter. Gimme the hot.
SH: Big Red soda with that?
AB: Not really a Big Crimson soda guy. Stains shirts.
SH: Big 12 stadium with the virtually intense atmosphere?
AB: Correct when you said it I thought Manhattan, Kansas. You lot want to stand up adjacent to someone and not exist able to hear them, walk your donkey into Manhattan, Kansas.
SH: Your non-Big 12 stadium environs you enjoyed the most? Yous've played Alabama, for example, in Bryant-Denny Stadium.
AB: Almost crush 'em, likewise. We're on their goal line, 27-21, and we're in no-dorsum and their linebacker, I mean, he'due south still got a slice of my wide receiver's skin lodged nether his fingernails. First place that comes to mind is Oregon. They're agile, and they're song. They're hungry.
SH: If I ask you about a play you can't forget or call back almost a lot?
AB: At that place's 4,000 of them. If I had to talk about 1, the laissez passer from RG3 to T-Dub sticks in my mind because it was then monumental. I mean, I could become on and on, but the thing I've always talked to our players most is that there are five plays in the kickoff half that determine the effect of the football. It doesn't have to be in the terminal 30 seconds of the football. That's the great thing about sports. That second-and-two end, or that 4th-and-short conversion at midfield in the 2d quarter win the game, as well.
SH: Last volume you read?
AB: A Neil Immature autobiography. I'm a big music fan. I like people who are lyrical, because for me that'southward creation. You're making something out of nothing.
SH: If I looked on your iPod --
AB: Whew. There's a lot of everything. Just a while agone I was playing "Always" by Stevie Wonder. I grew up on Motown and Earth, Wind & Fire, and so got into Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers, the Eagles. Now I'm kind of more than on a soft rock feel. I beloved Amos Lee. Seen him virtually six or vii times.
SH: Favorite moving-picture show?
AB: Not a huge moving-picture show guy. Don't really accept that kind of time. Some sometime Clint Eastwood flick, I don't know.
SH: TV show?
AB: Dateline, 48 Hours, everything that'due south real. I don't watch anything that isn't real.
SH: Practise you have a hobby? This is always a unsafe question for coaches. Most don't.
AB: Is sitting on my back porch with my married woman a hobby? When I get expressionless time that'due south all I do.
Briles hops up, shakes hands, and bounces out to the lobby, downwardly the elevator, and out into the sunshine of a Dominicus afternoon in June.
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