LIKE IT IS : Spurrier good at playing, winning mind games
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008
COLUMBIA, S. C. — It happens all over the country and is nothing more than part of the mental preparation for football season.
What Steve Spurrier and most coaches are doing is getting their quarterbacks ready for the pressures of instant decisionmaking during a game.
Which means it might be more intense in the SEC this August because exactly half of the schools are going into the season with an unproven quarterback.
But Spurrier might be raising the bar for this annual practice, smirking when asked again this week what the situation was at quarterback. He said he told the media in the spring he was going with Tommy Beecher and nothing had changed.
Chris Smelley was believed to be ready to start this season, but in the spring, after some head-butting, Spurrier said no, and Beecher was penciled in at the No. 1 spot.
Beecher has never started a collegiate game, and going into his junior season, the actuary mathematics major has thrown a grand total of 15 passes.
Smelley started seven games last season and has completed 101 of 177 attempts in two years.
Smelley, whose hometown is Tuscaloosa, Ala. — but he was not recruited by the Crimson Tide — is running second team. For now.
Anyone who has been to an Arkansas Razorbacks practice has seen what happens if a quarterback has a moment of indecision and throws into double coverage.
He gets a loud, expressive face-to-face correction from the quarterbacks coach and sometimes the head coach.
The theory is simple: If a guy takes a butt-chewing personal and pouts, he’s probably not going to be calm, cool and collected when his personal space on the field is being invaded by 300-pound defensive tackles who want to body slam him.
So the tongue-lashings are a test, not abuse.
Honestly, Spurrier can get that message across without raising his voice. When he rips his topless hat off and glares, his meaning is loud and clear.
Although he does speak out, like the first night of practice when an offensive and defensive player got into a scuffle and players on both sides started jawing and shoving.
Finally, he started to walk off, then turned around and yelled that they could just practice without him, that he was finished for the night.
In moments, there was complete order.
Since arriving at South Carolina, Spurrier has probably mellowed a little in his personal instructions because he’s learned these are not the same type of quarterbacks he had at Florida.
Instead of grooming guys like Rex Grossman, Jesse Palmer and Danny Wuerffel — guys who helped him win an unbelievable 100 games in his first 10 years — he’s had Blake Mitchell and Smelley — guys with talent but who can’t seem to get on the same page with Spurrier.
Spurrier expects the most of all his players, but he wants perfection from his quarterbacks because they are an extension of him.
Spurrier still calls the plays and says he does so because he likes it.
That also means he is still getting to play quarterback on Saturdays, and it must be because it is fun instead of a need to prove something. No one doubts Spurrier’s achievements as a player — he won the Heisman Trophy and played 10 years in the NFL. Although Spurrier has said his son Steve Jr. will have more say in the play-calling this season, no one believes Junior will have final say on a third-and-3 with the game on the line. When South Carolina gets in that situation, Spurrier is comfortable because he knows the guy on the field is going to physically execute what Spurrier is executing mentally.
Steve Spurrier knows for the Gamecocks to win, his quarterback must be the one who thinks most like him.
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