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Thursday, November 6, 2008
Green Machine
Central Kansas, KS
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By: Tom Witherspoon, VYPE Central Kansas
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Photo(s) By: Walter Dixon
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The Derby Panthers are back playing state-caliber football, thanks to an undersized quarterback and a green coaching staff – not that there’s anything wrong with that
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Clark says Derby’s running the no-huddle in third grade, more proof that Panther football is back on the rise. “It’s the kids we have,” says Clark, eternally pleased with the attitudes his players have brought to the table since he took the job.
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If the coach had been a KU guy, the story wouldn’t have had enough ripples. As it is, a K-State graduate’s team this fall has most resembled a prep version of the 2007 Kansas Jayhawks football team: Physically underwhelming and coming off a string of unimpressive seasons – yet well-coached and possessing a wealth of capable role players.
The immediate correlation between the 2008 Derby Panthers, that prep squad in collegiate emulation, and KU of a year ago is its no-huddle, look-to-the-sideline offense, which has rendered any lead over Derby unsafe this regular season.
But unlike KU’s schedule of a year ago, the six-team Ark Valley-Chisholm Trail League Division I offers no mail-ins and the league’s top teams don’t rotate off the schedule. (KU didn’t play Oklahoma or Texas last year.) Since the AV-CTL I’s inception in 2004, Hutchinson, Salina Central and Salina South – three of the state’s best over the past decade – have met Derby squarely, not to mention tough squads at Maize in 2006 and Goddard in 2007. In 2005 under Mark Bliss and in 2006 in current coach Brandon Clark’s first season at the helm, the Panthers didn’t win a league game.
In Reesing manner, senior Jake Snodgrass – leader by example of these smallish Panthers (he’s not 5’10” though most certainly 155 pounds as listed) – has quarterbacked Derby’s spread option attack. He’s been schooled, alerted and haggled by Clark for three years now and for the first time this season by a new Derby assistant, Caleb Smith. Undaunted by as difficult a road schedule as there was in the state this fall, Snodgrass and Derby have erased the memory of three dismal seasons. Mid-season, they sandwiched a win at No. 1-ranked Hutchinson with two wins at Salina District Stadium against Central and South. Derby trailed in each game, including a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter at Hutch, but won them all by a total of five points.
While Snodgrass’ ability was no secret entering this season after he put up gaudy offensive numbers last fall, his orchestration of an unstoppable unit hadn’t come close to happening in 2007. It’s phenomenal how much difference a season has made.
A few pieces had been missing in 2007. Clark did more over the off-season than depend on the guarantee of increased experience. He persuaded two coaches to leave favorable positions in their own right to join his mission to revive Derby High: in addition to Jared McDaniel hopping over from his head coaching position at Douglass High to become offensive line coach, Caleb Smith left the K-State football team to search out his father’s footsteps.
Clark, already in Caleb’s father Mike Smith’s footsteps, also left K-State for Derby, though not as directly as his newest offensive coach did. After five injury-ridden seasons with the Wildcats as a wideout, Clark pursued his dream to play pro ball for two years before landing at Derby in 2004 as an assistant. In that year, Caleb Smith, by far the youngest member of a young Derby staff, was a high school quarterback at Garden City, where Clark’s former prep coach at Valley Center and Caleb’s dad, Mike, had been head coach since 2002.
The Green Prep Football Machine is back in Derby, and Smith could be the wild card on a very young staff. Each offensive play is a relay for the Panthers. From the press box, Smith looks at the defense, and Clark stands up the sideline behind the defense and checks off where they’re lined up. Smith has increasingly made play calls this season – Clark says he called two or three of the TDs at Hutch and almost all of the plays at Salina South, a comeback from down four TDs – Clark always okays them, then two other assistants relay the play to the field at the line of scrimmage. One signals to the quarterback, the other to the wideouts. The exchange between the coaches occurs over their headsets, and the players never huddle, forcing the defense to awkwardly line up as the Derby offense looks to the sideline after taking proper positioning in the spread.
“It’s really not that difficult,” says Clark, who’s a perfect fit as a head coach, finding time during the game for the big and small pictures, staring down an attentive defensive unit after they had been unattentive against Wichita East on Oct. 24 and later asking his quarterback after he chose to keep the ball and pass rather than handing off to running back Aaron Wilson if he thought this was the “Jake Snodgrass Show”.
Of course it’s not, and Snodgrass and everyone else knows it’s not. The quarterback isn’t the only one who’s come of age in his senior season. Tyler Dunham, one of five players for Derby who can consistently catch the ball on any route asked to run, grew five inches over the off-season to lead the receiving corps at 6’3”. And Wilson the tailback, who can also catch a jump ball up the sideline, began the year at 197 pounds, over 30 heavier than last season, in which he was set back by illness. His renewed strength (Wilson cleans 347 pounds) was evident against Hutch, driving his legs through arm tackles against the state’s best front seven.
Which may be the most important number in this story. At a practice leading up to Derby’s first district game against Southeast on Oct. 17, Clark had them playing 30 to 45 minutes of 7 on 7, a large portion of the entire practice. You’d be challenged to find another team in Kansas doing that much 7 on 7. Ask most coaches about the activity, and they’ll nonchalantly say it’s something they do over the summer as an excuse to get a few players together and touch the football a little bit. Think about it: if you have implemented a run-first offense at your program, what good does 7 on 7, a drill centered on the passing game, really do?
Most offenses in Kansas run the ball at least approximately 75 percent of the time. Not Derby.
Kansas rules bar prep football players from using equipment over the summer, limiting what teams can do in the off-season. Clark, however, has done what he could with what he was given. The spread option Derby has shown this fall is basically summer 7 on 7, just with an offensive line. The synchronicity of Snodgrass and his wideouts is clearly the product of repetition. Snodgrass often rolls out one way, only to stop, set and look back to the opposite field to hit Dunham streaking up the sideline – the whole process is very fluid, no hitches, predictable for those who intend it to be so. Dunham knows all along Snograss is coming back to him, and Snodgrass knows Dunham will be true to his route. Seven on seven is more than just throwing the pigskin around, indeed.
Clark says Derby’s running the no-huddle in third grade, more proof that Panther football is back on the rise. “It’s the kids we have,” says Clark, eternally pleased with the attitudes his players have brought to the table since he took the job. But really, as is evident from Derby’s second-half comebacks this season, achieved by making adjustments, it’s the coaches, too.
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