One of the most difficult things for college football coaches to do year in and year out is to find ways to spend time with their families during the grind of the season that keeps their attention from sun up well past sundown.
During a recent hang-out session with his oldest daughter, Averie, first-year Kansas University football coach David Beaty found himself relating time with his teenager to an important aspect of his football team.
“She’s been driving for about seven months now,” Beaty began. “And the first time I got in the car with her, I was scared to death. I was pretty much convinced that she did not see past the hood, and I needed one of those brakes. Got in the car with her yesterday and it was amazing what that experience has done for her…. In my mind, it’s the same thing (with our team).”
Whether he’s talking about freshman cornerback Tyrone Miller’s sense of belonging in a secondary that faces some of the best offenses in the country, the development of freshman quarterback Ryan Willis, who started the season well behind KU’s first-string QB, or the proper technique employed by sophomore receiver Darious Crawley on a deep ball against Texas, Beaty is recognizing progress week after week and starting to feel more comfortable with his young Jayhawks behind the wheel.
“Tyrone Miller (and I) were standing in the stretch lines and I said, ‘Hey, man, how much more comfortable do you feel now from the first snap you took against South Dakota State,'” Beaty said. “And he’s like, ‘Coach, I can’t even believe that I was out there.'”
Even though it was awhile ago, fifth-year senior Ben Goodman remembers the feeling well. And although he often laughs when looking back at how little he actually knew during his first couple of years in the program, the KU co-captain is doing his part to help this team grow even if the win total isn’t.
“Talking to Ben Goodman yesterday in leadership council, I said, ‘Look, tell these guys what it was like as a freshman until now,'” Beaty recalled. “He was very eloquent in the way he said it. He said my first year I was trying to figure out what to do, figuring out how to do it. Now, it’s how to attack them. I know what that tackle is doing now because his legs are further back. But he’s got a slight bend in his front knee. Those things all tell you things. As a freshman, you don’t have the benefit of that experience.”
Goodman, who will be playing the 58th game in his KU career on Saturday at TCU, said his message for the younger guys in that meeting was to use film study as much as possible to slow the game down.
“My freshman year, the game was going fast, fast, fast,” Goodman said. “But now I can line up and get a pre-snap read. I know if it’s a pass or a run. Most of the time it’s (KU cornerback) Brandon Stewart on my side, and I tell him if it’s a pass or not. Once you’ve been playing for a little bit, you notice little things that the young guys don’t notice.”
Little by little, some of these younger guys are starting to pick that up. That’s why defensive end Dorance Armstrong has been arguably KU’s best defensive player during the past few weeks. That’s why third-string QB Keaton Perry, a red-shirt freshman who spelled an injured Willis in last week’s loss at Texas, checked out of the called play during his first live snap of the season. That’s why junior cornerback Marnez Ogletree, despite getting beat for an 84-yard touchdown on the first play of the game last week, kept his head up and finished the game with three tackles and a pass break-up.
“Everybody has to do their one-eleventh,” Beaty said. “And stuff’s starting to take hold. It really is. We’re kind of winding down towards the end of the season here, but, as coaches, we wish we had 10 more (games) right now. We need 10 more to close that gap.”