Barry also was let go. At the time, the Broncos had allowed a league-high 57 sacks and ranked 23rd in the NFL in rushing. does not sound like a good hire
It's the perfect excuse for when this dogshi* of an offensive line roster fails to produce. Who is the 2024 offensive line coach going to be? That's the problem! Coaching!
There goes the 2023 season. With Butch as OL coach and the **** talent we have at OL, plus Tua's injury prone body, we might as well forfeit the season now.
As a former linemen and high school line coach (volunteer, not the real deal), I can say that it's more on the players to execute than it is teaching some secret elite technique that nobody else uses. The line coach definitely matters to bring them together and get the best starting five out there. But this isn't like the offensive coordinator job where the coach will have this massive, instant impact. I could teach everyone here in an hour how to block like a pro bowl guard, tackle, or center. Balance, stance, pivots, sliding your hips, etc....there's not a ton to learn. But it's sort of like figure skating, it's all highly technical. Plus, nobody is trying to bulldoze a figure skater while they're performing, LOL. That would actually be a pretty fun sport to watch though! Anyway, the line coach definitely matters, but folks don't need to blow this out of proportion. Our biggest line problem last year (and every year) is injuries. We need our starters on the field and that hasn't happened in a very long time. I'd put just as much blame on the strength and conditioning coaches, the nutritionists, and the team doctors.
No offense, but this is an incredibly simplistic and wrong take IMO. So coaching is not so important now and it's the nutritionist's fault that our OL has sucked for ages? I like how we always make up excuses and play mental gymnastics to explain this organizations **** decisions and **** play. Coaching is very important, and we have not had a good OL coach here for ages. Talent aquisition is also very important, and we have not had a GM who can draft good OL talent here for ages. Staying healthy is also important, but good OL coaching, scheming, and quality depth can also overcome injuries, there are numerous examples of other teams overcoming injuries and being succesfull. We are not the only team that has injuries for gods sake and blaming it all on nutrition and conditioning is incredibly naive.
I’m bewildered by this hire, especially when Mike Muncheck is available. I just hope McDaniel knows something we don’t because his resume doesn’t impress me.
Did I say coaching wasn't important? I said having our starters on the field was important- and I'm not sure how that's not obvious to anyone here. Coaching is certainly important both to induvial linemen and the OL as a whole. But the failures we've had at line is not on the coaching or the blocking scheme...the vast majority of the problems have been in the execution on the field. We have a LT that doesn't even practice- what does coaching do for him, LOL? We have a stud veteran center that knows his role, and two young guards that are promising. Jackson is okay at RT. The core problem we had, however, is that we rarely saw these five on the field together last year and the drop-off to guys like Jones, Shell, and Little are pretty severe (Little did have a few very solid games though). A 2nd string line is rarely going to look competent in the NFL. That's just the truth. It's the one positional group that you have to be dead-on in drafting, yet the only close to sure thing we have is Robert Hunt. Everyone else is still adapting or they're overpriced free agents.
I played rugby not football, and in set pieces the tight 5 which is as close to the OL as you’ll get to in any other sport. The similarity I see with playing in the tight 5 in rugby and OL in football is that technique is king. I can teach the basics of of how to scrum and do a lineout pretty quickly too. But performing those techniques consistently under stress? That’s a whole another world. Performing them in concert with the techniques your teammates are using? Again a completely different level of performance. Making the correct adjustments based on what your opponent is doing? You get the story. coaching in Rugby makes a huge difference.
It does in football too, but at the same time it's muscle memory since you don't have time to think. So much of OL is reacting and sliding on your feet from instinct and repetition. A sack or pressure often comes from one wrong step, that technique is everything.
My brother coaches his daughter’s rugby team and had an interesting story from a recent coaching symposium he went to. One of the speakers was a prop forward for one of the big 3 southern hemisphere teams, and had a HoF type career and was a starter on a team that won the Rugby World Cup. After he retired as a player he took up coaching and was the ‘scrum doctor’ for the national team, as well as a highly paid consultant for professional teams around the world. He retired from professional coaching because he was sick of the travel and volunteered to assist, unpaid, as the forwards coach of his old high school. He dropped one kid, a prop forward, from the starting line up because the kid was coasting in talent and not working on technique. He then had the kid’s mother get into his face and she screamed at him “And what would you know about coaching rugby?” To bring it full circle on Butch Barry, kids are coming into the professional ranks having been mollycoddled since pop warner football because they were the most talented player on their team ever since they picked up a helmet and they’re used to their boosters and supporters puffing up their egos. A lot don’t respond well to being told they’re not good enough and need to pick up their game.
Great story! Very true as well, that made me think of LeBron when he came to Miami and thought since he was a superstar, the rules didn't apply to him. He was butt-hurt for a few months there figuring out what it meant to be a professional. I had sort of the opposite story in high school. As a freshman, we'd go through drills with the upper classmen during the first two weeks of practice (at the end of summer before school started, those grueling two a days in the S Florida heat). And this one coach, he was all over me....screaming to get my head down, to pump my feet, to stay low, etc. By the end of the 1st day I wanted to fight the guy, LOL, because he wasn't screaming at anyone else. This went on for about a week until I couldn't take it anymore, and I went to the head coach to tell him that I had enough...I was ready to quit. The head coach said to me, "He's pushing you because you're worth his time. Most of the kids out here aren't, so if he's yelling at you, it's because he believes in you. As long as we're yelling, that means you're doing something right." I didn't understand what that meant for years and years...and I hated that coach so much! But I got varsity playing time as a freshman because of him, and started varsity at left guard as a sophomore. Another quick story, same coach. As a junior, I was one of the team captains. And one summer practice, he was screaming at me that the captain jerseys meant something, that I should be to practice early and get others stretching, etc. It made me so furious that I took my jersey off and handed it to him, saying, "Then maybe you should wear it coach since you know everything and do everything so perfectly." He was a short, fat bald guy in his late 40's...probably never started in a football game in his life, LOL. So he takes the jersey and gives it to a freshman QB, which made me 10x madder somehow. And every day for the rest of summer, he lectured us while we stretched on what it meant to be a leader and why the coaches chose the team captains that we had. For those practices, I literally tried to maul other players when that coach was around, I was so determined to show him that I was the meanest, toughest kid on the team. But he already knew that, I was just too dumb to get the lesson. As we dressed for our 1st game that season, the head coach handed me my game jersey with the captain patch on it. But he also laughed and said something like, "I don't want to pressure you or anything, but I figured that you might want to be a captain again." And of course I did the whole time, I was just too stubborn to admit it, LOL. The joys of being young and dumb. =)
his resume 2022: Broncos - OL coach. 2021: 49ers - OL assistant 2020: Packers - Senior analyst 2015-2018: Buccaneers - OL assistant 2010-2014: Central Michigan U - OL coach/TE coach. 2009: North Greenvile U - OC/OL coach. 2006-2008: Michigan Technical U - OC/OL coach 2004-2005: SW Minnesota State - OL coach. Seriously that’s pretty typical for a coach working his way up the ladder. Most of his stops are in the 2-4 year range, and his progression has been from smaller colleges to larger colleges and then from assistant coach roles to coach roles in the NFL. If he wasn’t working his way up the ladder and stuck as a long time assistant somewhere that would be more of a red flag.
I tried to research him some, but there's not a whole lot out there. He's a very intense coach and stresses speed/agility over bulk (which is a good thing). Was praised by the 49ers but seems like mostly a flop in Denver...not sure if that's on him, the offense, or just the talent in general. Did well and was liked in Tampa as well. Cant find much going back through the college stuff but it looked like he had pretty decent offensive lines. Not sure if the 49ers was an outlier or not. The 49ers gave up 63 sacks last year; Wilson's 55 sacks is tied for worst in the league (the backup was sacked 8 times as well). Can't find a good site for pressures but that normally correlates with sacks...guessing it's also up there. That's pretty discouraging. Also, not a lot of players talking about him online other than what you'd expect to hear- he's a pro, he's a good mentor, he has a great work ethic, etc. The word "intense" did come up several times in interviews, and that's a good one to hear when talking about the line. His own philosophy is to be explosive, get off the ball quickly and play with intensity....all good stuff to hear, but what happened in San Fran? Must be more to the story since he was such a quick hire. I'd like this hire if it wasn't for last year, we just don't have enough context. He wasn't fired mid-season though like several others, so that speaks somewhat in his favor...not sure why Denver was so disappointing last year but the line was definitely a factor.
