What the #&$@ is going on right now?’: Inside Mike Leach’s QB meetings

[BillsFan4]

Mike Leach sounds… unique.

 

https://theathletic.com/1138379/2019/08/15/what-the-is-going-on-right-now-inside-mike-leachs-qb-meetings/

(athletic subscription required)

 

Quote

Brink: Our No. 1 rule was: Never say or ask or do anything that would get him talking about anything besides the film.

 

Apodaca: We would get pissed at people in the meeting room if they asked a question toward the end of the meeting. We would have these fall camp meetings that went until 9:30 at night and if there was a young freshman in there asking questions, we were all looking at him like, “Oh my God, dude, shut up because we will be in here for an hour and a half more on this subject alone. Stop asking questions, damn it.”

 

Isaac Dotson, 2013: I was playing QB at the time, and we had our first position meeting, and 90 percent of the meeting had nothing to do with football. Maybe five plays into watching film, something happened that sparked a classic Mike Leach tangent. For at least an hour, he sat there rewinding and playing the same play over and over while he talked about everything from growing up in Wyoming to having a pet raccoon, getting paddled by the principal at his junior high, the origins of football and eventually just a full-blown Native American history lesson. The one-hour meeting lasted probably three hours. I remember looking at the veteran QBs in the room with a ‘what is happening right now?’ look on my face, but I could tell by their reactions that this was just a normal thing.

 

Brink: Sometimes they’re literally out of nowhere. We’ll be watching film and he’ll be like, “Throw it to this guy here. On this play, we could have checked to this play. And you know what? That reminds me …” And now we’re on some story that happened in Key West and some guy with one eye and a peg leg that he met at whatever bar.

Quote

Jeff Tuel, 2012: We’d watch a play and he’d go, “Good.” Next play. “Good ball.” Next play. “What did you see here?” “I saw leverage on outside ‘backer.” He’d take the laser pointer and circle an empty plot of green grass. “Throw it over here next time.” Next play. It was always just like, “Wherever people aren’t, throw it there.” Or, “He’s open. You should have thrown it over there.”

 

Neville: It was fall camp my second year and someone threw a pick. He was like, “Don’t throw the ball to the other team. That’s the last thing you want to do is throw the ball to the other team.”

 

Jorgensen: We didn’t really have playbooks.

 

Brink: Any high school, any junior college, no matter where you were, your playbook gets simpler when you get to Washington State.

 

Tuel: Literally as simple as humanly possible.

 

Apodaca: I remember I threw a pick or something, and I remember asking him what coverage that play is good against. And he goes, “Well, you should have just thrown it to this ***** guy because he’s standing there wide-ass open.”

 

Halliday: I said to Leach, “What do I need to do to get the ball there on time?” He was like, “Well, just throw it to the guy who’s ***** open.” I was like, “Yeah, no, I get that dude, but what do you want me to do to get there quicker?” And he was like, “I don’t give a ***** what you do. Just throw it to the guy who’s ***** open.”

 

Brink: Every week we’d look at what the defense was going to do inside the red zone. So every week Coach Leach would lean back and be like, “All right, guys. When we’re down in the red zone, they’re going to do one of two things. They’ll be in man or they’ll be in zone.” Early on, you look around at the other quarterbacks like, “Are you serious? That’s what I came to play college football to learn?”

Quote

Apodaca: We’re literally watching film like you would watch a YouTube video. We’re watching through it and if there’s something that pops out, he’ll go back. I kid you not, sometimes he would be pressing the rewind button for freaking 14 minutes talking about the Cody, Wyo., rodeo or some ***** like that and you’re just like, “What is going on in here?” The same thing would be playing back and forth because he would just rewind, let it play, rewind, let it play. We wouldn’t even be watching it. We’d just be talking about Native Americans or his surfing lessons in California.

wow.
 

[Buffalo716]

7 minutes ago, BillsFan4 said:

Mike Leach sounds… unique.

 

https://theathletic.com/1138379/2019/08/15/what-the-is-going-on-right-now-inside-mike-leachs-qb-meetings/

(athletic subscription required)

 

wow.
 

Leach is a legend

[Cynical]

16 hours ago, Buffalo716 said:

Leach is a legend

 

In his own mind.

 

I'd take Kiffin over Leach all day every day.

And I would not want  either one has HC of my team.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Cynical

[Buffalo716]

5 minutes ago, Cynical said:

 

In his own mind.

 

I'd take Kiffin over Leach all day every day.

And I would not want  either one has HC of my team.

I don't think you get the kind of legend I'm calling him

[RoyBatty is alive]

Lo and behold, a Jeff Tuel quote.

 

Don't know how much of this is just to attract attention but it sure is hard to fathom it isnt wildly exaggerated.