CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Football’s variation of ‘6 Levels of Kevin Bacon’ occurs inside an unadvertised ballroom within a chic midtown Charlotte deluxe resort.
It is invite just, surrounding a years given that its beginning, as well as going beyond the international pandemic that 2 years prior had actually terminated the Football Coaches Organization’s yearly convention.
On this evening, instructors are back with each other.
Some 15 or 20 in the beginning. Football Bowls Neighborhood. Power 5. Team of 5. Football Champion Neighborhood. Department II. NAIA. Secondary school.
An invite, not a college name or training title, indicates you belong.
Gerad Parker, from little Louisa, Kentucky, populace much less than 2,500 as well as resting along West Virginia’s western boundary, is heating up the area with an enthusiastic mix of tent-revival preacher respect as well as ‘Football Individual’ ordinary talk.
Motivation is the late Phil Ratliff, after that a participant of Charlotte’s team that passed away in 2015 after an awful heart occasion, as well as this team is his group.
Parker is Notre Dame’s limited ends, a 2022 FootballScoop Train of the Year finalist, as well as lugs with him in market circles the honored as well as requiring tag of “future head trainer.”
“So takes place to be where I matured as well as where I’m from as well as where Dontae Wright, the securities trainer at West Virginia, is from as well as where a person called Jason Michael, that’s the limited ends trainer for the Philly Eagles, is from,” Parker booms, the area currently slipping near standing-room-only. “As well as all of this insane video game of football brought us with each other in this tiny little community.
Gerad Parker aids maintain the memory of late university football trainer Phil Ratliff to life yearly at the AFCA Convention as well as maintains expanding the sporting activity, along with Ratliff’s significant training network, while doing so. (Image, John Brice)
“As well as the reason I played or began to play was due to Phil Ratliff, due to the fact that Phil resembled this, if you didn’t recognize him or you listened to a tale regarding him, Phil resembled the best badass. Greg Adkins hired him; he’s currently at South Carolina. Costs Legg is right here, he mosted likely to Marshall, dipped into Marshall, was a two-time All-American at Marshall, won a championship game with a person called Troy Brown; God, I wish individuals in right here still recognize that Troy Brown is.”
Like several in the area, Parker’s is a mentoring arc of the increase; others are lodged in their particular blog posts.
Practically every person rests with note pads as well as pens, a couple of have laptop computers, as well as there’s a periodic shout of reaffirmation transforming this or else solemn meeting room right into a football class.
With experience at Charlotte as well as West Virginia, to name a few programs, Tyler Hancock starts the guide part of the celebration with unique groups malfunctions.
“If you don’t have take advantage of, obtain it,” Hancock commands. “If you’ve got leverage, keep it.
“And if you can’t get it, cut bait!”
The crowd roars approval, Hancock’s teachings echoing those of many in the room and reinforcing a foundational tenet to teams units around the sport.
Justin Manning, Tufts University’s defensive coordinator, also is presenting to the room. Manning waxes for some 15 minutes on the minutiae of how his defensive linemen are taught to read defenders and work off blocks, to coverage elements and controlling the line of scrimmage.
The Jumbos are coming off their best season at the NCAA Division III level since 2018. Manning’s impact on the defense – it is statistically one of the program’s best in more than a decade, shaving more than eight points per game off its 2021 scoring average and notching a seven-sack game in a win against Colby – is undeniable.
Manning doesn’t emphasize his specific teachings, extol the benefits of his Power 5 experience at Duke on the staffs of esteemed college football veteran David Cutcliffe or talk about gimmicks.
He wants those in the room to remember one overarching element: they’re coaching people.
“At the end of the day, our guys started believing it because they had more confidence,” Manning says. “And what I will leave you all with and what I’ve learned is just the human element of it. Don’t take out the human element in coaching.”
Justin Manning says as long as guys “play hard and believe in what we’re doing, we have actually obtained a chance.”
Manning recalls the sudden-change moments of games lending themselves to frantic coaching calls and sensing his players’ need instead for empowerment.
“I started seeing it in change of possession, right?,” he says. “Guys are sitting there, drinking water, talking and now they gotta go run out there and I’m calling something. And a guy gets chewed. Come on. Let the car get started. Give these guys a chance to get going and don’t lose sight of the human element, getting caught up in some bs-coaching in the moment.
“We did some things that we can be happy about, but the kids bought in and they played hard and at the end of the day that’s what it’s about. It doesn’t matter what I draw up here; if they play hard and believe in what we’re doing, we got a chance.”
There are more than a half-dozen speakers during the course of the ‘Rat Pack’ session. FCS head coach Tre Lamb, coming off a watershed season featuring the school’s first-ever FCC Playoffs berth, subsequent win, and with a coaching tree already sprouting limbs is among them.
So, too, is new West Virginia wideouts coach Bilal Marshall.
A former wideout under Parker at Purdue and already with coaching experience at a Florida high school, as well as serving as the full-time wide receivers coach under Scott Wachenheim and Patrick Ashford at VMI, Marshall is in his first weeks as the Mountaineers’ wideouts coach.
It matters none. Soon, he’s commanding the room – and even before Marshall dives into his first teaching technique, he fields a question from the floor.
Tyler Bowen is Virginia Tech’s offensive coordinator, owns Big Ten experience at both Maryland and Penn State, and is entering his second season coordinating the Hokies’ offense after spending the 2021 campaign as an NFL assistant coach.
Bowen just ones to know one thing.
“Bilal, you gonna talk about the punch-off?,” Bowen quizzes.
“You’re damn right,” Marshall says.
“I love that,” Bowen says, numerous coaches echoing their regard for the technique. “I love that.”
“C’mon, now,” says Marshall, relishing the moment. “That’s the secret sauce.”
And Marshall shortly thereafter provides the video evidence. The move, for which Parker and others insist Marshall deserves credit for honing during his playing days at Purdue, involves a receiver creating an opportunity to “punch off” a defender – usually a strike to the chest-plate – to legally create separation on a route.
Already cultivating a reputation as heir apparent to some of the sport’s great young wideouts coaches in a crowded field that includes Ohio State’s Brian Hartline, Notre Dame’s Chansi Stuckey and Washington’s JaMarcus Shephard, among others, Marshall also sheds insight on what he asks of his receivers for each pre-snap read.
“Is it one-high or two-high, man or zone, and who is the flat player,” he shares. “How do we determine that?
“We look at our near triangle. That’s our near ‘backer, our near safety, and our near corner.”
More coaches teach throughout the evening, more stories flow and more bonds are cemented.
Parker notes that Ratliff’s coaching is quite literally living on inside the room.
“We lost Phil way too soon, so full circle right in the front row is a guy named Dylan Ratliff, and Dylan is Phil’s son, who’s now going to G.A. at Charlotte for a game named Mike Hartline, who I met at the University of Kentucky,” Parker says. “You all get my point?
“We are all connected.”
The human bond is the element for which Parker hopes ‘The Rat Pick’ keeps Ratliff alive.
“I couldn’t be more humbled to stand in front of you and talk about Phil,” says Parker, who shares four children with wife, Kandi, and traces his coaching evolution from Kentucky high school to UT-Martin, Penn State, West Virginia and now the sport’s most famous brand, Notre Dame. “When we came to a convention, I remember Gunter Brewer walks in as one of the best wide receivers coaches in the country, and Gunter Brewer would text me to talk ball at the convention. And I thought, ‘Why in the hell would he be texting me to talk about wide receiver play?’ And it’s because he wanted to gain as much information and knowledge and piece it all together and put together as he could. And I admired that about Gunter. Me and him have stayed in touch and been friends since. And Gunter was at Marshall with Phil. I could maintain going on all night about the connections, but the point is, it just brings us all here and brings us together for a bigger purpose and it will remind us that we’re not just coaching ball.”
Parker, and the group gathering here, are reminding one another that they are purposing for more than a salary.
“We’re not just making a little bit of money, some kind of money and a lot of money,” Parker shares. “We’ll all make in between all of the above. But you know what? It doesn’t matter if you don’t have people to share it with.
“Bringing people together to celebrate a life and making sure we remember a man who stood all that was coaching, the convention, planning, the care for all, and all those things matter, and nobody did it better than Phil Ratliff.”
His proof fills the area.
