Cutcliffe making most of new opportunity

Three years after being fired as the head football coach at Ole Miss, David Cutcliffe must have wondered if he’d ever get another chance.
After all, he had guided the Rebels to winning seasons in five of his six years there. Phil Fulmer was quick to invite him back as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator in 2006 and 2007 after Cutcliffe sat out the ’05 season for health reasons, resigning a position with Notre Dame.
Then one day last December, out of the clear blue, Cutcliffe received a call from Duke. The Blue Devils were looking for a head football coach and believed that he was their man.
Cutcliffe likes to joke that he told Duke officials that instead of flying to Durham, that he would make the five-hour long drive from Knoxville so that just in case he wanted to turn around halfway, he could.
He had a lot of time to think about things on the drive. Before he reported for the interview, he walked the Duke campus, pre-dawn, and developed a good feeling for things.
Having a blast
He’s glad he didn’t turn around midway. Instead, Cutcliffe, a Southern boy all the way (he graduated from Alabama in 1976 and still quotes Bear Bryant religiously), said he has had more fun at Duke than any job he’s ever had.
“I told our players to compete and have fun playing football and let me worry about the scoreboard,” Cutcliffe said.
So far, so good.
Duke, which has been the doormat of the ACC for quite some time, is 2-1 and a seven-point favorite to end its 24-game losing streak this weekend against Virginia.
Should the Devils win as an extremely rare favorite, it could be a defining moment for Cutcliffe, who has created more excitement about Duke’s football program than anyone since Steve Spurrier in the late 1980’s.
Wallace Whackos?
The stagnant atmosphere that UVa’s George Welsh used to bark about at Duke’s then-near empty Wallace Wade Stadium has changed. Cutcliffe visits various parts of campus throughout the week in an attempt to lure the enthusiasm displayed by the Cameron Crazies to the football arena.
That’s just one of the many ideas he has implemented in trying to breathe life back into the program.
“I’ve got two notebooks going,” Cutcliffe said. “One is for thinking long-term and one is what can we do right now to change our program…because if we can’t change it right now, we weren’t worth hiring.”
The biggest item on the short list was strength and conditioning. His team has lost a collective 500 pounds and increased lean muscle mass. They’re quicker and work harder, practicing in the mornings before classes, and often having to lug around concrete blocks up and down the stadium steps.
Most of Duke’s players say they haven’t worked so hard in their life, but they’re not complaining because they see the results.
Perhaps they get some of their work ethic from Cutcliffe, who was brought up that way. He’s taking better care of himself and works long hours. They might spot him at 5 a.m. picking up trash around the football facility, not because it’s part of his job description, but rather because he has always been taught to take care of what you’ve got, a value he is trying to instill to his players.
All that aside, Cutcliffe is a football coach and has been described as a brilliant offensive mind. Just ask Peyton and Eli Manning, both of which were groomed by Cutcliffe at Tennessee and Ole Miss, respectively.
He definitely has formed a philosophy on coaching quarterbacks over the years, as evidenced by current Duke QB Thaddeus Lewis, who leads the ACC in yards passing per game (238.0, five touchdowns, no picks).
“Two things you do with quarterbacks: you put them in every situation in practice over and over and over again. You drill it,” Cutcliffe said. “People don’t understand how we coach quarterbacks, but we coach them like we coaching left tackles…it’s not always real friendly.
“I try to apply more pressure on them in practice than they could ever dream existed with two minutes to go in a ball game,” Cutcliffe said about his quarterbacks. “If they can deal with me, then they can deal with most anything.”
One of the things he has done against Duke’s first three opponents — James Madison, Northwestern, and Navy — is spread the field as wide as it can go. Cutcliffe believes that you can’t play offense in a box because defensive players are so big and fast that they’ll consume you.
Thusly, the spread, something that Virginia coach Al Groh defined earlier this week as “basketball on grass ... they’re running the fast break.”
“The field is smaller than it was when I started coaching,” Cutcliffe said. “You have to use the width of the field. It has always been our philosophy, whether we do it inside-out or outside-in, is that we try to see how people defend the flats in every game. I can promise that we’re going to make them defend the width of the field.”
While he may not be “The Bear” reincarnate, he does carry out a lot of the principles that made Bryant a legend. He has a plan for everything, he believes in his philosophy and sticks to it, he has a good handle on the psychology of football and how to deal with players.
He also won’t put up with any bunk.
“I tell them all the time, either you’re going to be physical or you’re not,” Cutcliffe said. “I don’t need a 19-year-old telling me he’s going to be physical. I’ve been doing this 33 years and either you do or you don’t.
“Never be satisfied,” he continued. “I have a theory that you comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I’m about that afflicting a lot.”
Another item in his short notebook is to afflict Virginia come Saturday at high noon. He has convinced his players that they will end their ACC losing streak against the Cavaliers.
UVa had better be ready.