Don’t believe all that you hear

The next time you’re watching a football game on TV and hear one of those brilliant talking heads make the observation that, “those coaches made some great adjustments at halftime,” beware.
In reality, any coach worth his salt will tell you that if he waits until halftime to make adjustments, then his team is probably so far behind that nothing would save them.
Such was the case last Saturday when Virginia coach Al Groh and his staff were constantly adjusting to Georgia Tech’s triple option offensive attack. Every time the defense came off the field, which wasn’t all that often, Groh would quiz the players about what they were seeing, whether or not their defensive schemes were working or not against what they were facing.
Getting confirmation
It’s a high-profile game of chess that the two head coaches and their staffs play for 60 minutes.
The halftime adjustment thing is highly overrated and a product, mostly, of TV analysts not really knowing what they’re talking about.
“Very frequently what happens at halftime is whatever adjustments that were made during the course of the first half are just confirmed and more clearly defined for the players,” Groh said Monday. “Frequently, those adjustments have to be made on the run, often in between or during the course of the series when you don’t have a chance to talk to the players.”
Groh and his staff were constantly getting feedback from players during the game, which is one reason why the Cavaliers defense held Georgia Tech to three yards or less on 48 plays. It’s those others that the Jackets broke for more significant gains in its ball control offense.
“Coach Groh is good at coming up with stuff on the sidelines, kind of on-the-run stuff,” said UVa linebacker Steve Greer of his mentor, who also doubles as the team’s defensive coordinator.
Player feedback
There’s only so much that coaches can see from the sidelines or even from the press box. Sometimes they don’t get a truly clear picture of what the opponent did until they break down film the following day.
“It was very important through the course of the game with Georgia Tech that we got good feedback as to how those patterns and those schemes were changing,” Groh said. “In grading the video [Sunday], for future reference, and just information on the game itself, I recorded all the schemes as well as the plays.”
“So, there might have been Play A, but there were one, two, three versions of it, and how we have to change up against that,” Groh added.
Virginia Tech went through the same drama a week ago in Atlanta when the Hokies lost to the Yellow Jackets. Georgia Tech changed its blocking schemes more than once, particularly in the second half, to confuse Virginia Tech’s defense.
Groh and his defense will be facing a similar situation this weekend when Duke’s pass-happy offense comes to town.
“Georgia Tech wanted to run certain plays or schemes and there will be certain coverages that Duke will want to run certain patterns against,” Groh said. “There is a sophistication in the schemes in which Georgia Tech runs because they know that when certain runs aren’t working, they’re not going to say, ‘OK, we’ve got to start passing more.’ They’re going to keep running.
“They’re going to either change the particular run patterns that they have or change the schemes around what they utilized the actual backfield action,” Groh said of Tech. “Duke is the same way in its fashion. When they have difficulty passing the ball, they don’t suddenly say, ‘OK, we’re going to run it 60 times in this game.’ They say we have to find some patterns that will get open better from the one that we’ve been running.”
Duke (2-1 ACC, 4-3 overall) will bring the league’s top passing attack to Scott Stadium on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN360.com) to face the league’s top pass defense. The Cavaliers are No. 1 in the ACC, but No. 5 nationally in pass defense, surrendering a mere 151.29 passing yards per game.
Groh said defenses normally must make more adjustments during a game than an offense.
“A lot of offenses will package their plays by series,” the coach explained. “A lot of game plans will look, literally, like a box.
“They’ll have boxes on a sheet, just like a package. And, in Box A, these are the plays that are going to be run during this series. And in Box B, these are the plays they’re going to run during that series. The intent of that is to stay one move ahead of the defensive team,” Groh said.
“So, if they ran a package of play B in this series, and the players come off the field and the coaches are discussing the series with the players and making adjustments about what just occurred, well, that’s not going to occur in the next series because [the offense] is going to Box C and a different package of plays.
“After a while, those things tend to recycle, but early in the game once you see a series on the sideline, sometimes you have to change the whole style of calls that you’re making on defense, then tell the players why you did it so that the next time this happens, this is what we’re going to do.”
Groh remembered that in 2007 there were circumstances where he put some things in on the bench that the team had run the year before but had not been put in for ’07.
He informed his players that the scheme would cure the immediate problem, but had to get confirmation they could execute.
“Can we do this?” he asked them.
They responded positively and solved the dilemma.
On those heralded halftime adjustments you hear about on TV, Groh referenced former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms’ book “Monday Morning Quarterback,” on that topic.
“Phil writes, ‘I can’t remember a meaningful halftime adjustment that was made,’” Groh said. “I guess that kind of negates the commentators making great halftime adjustment speeches, right?”
Right.