Dante Scarnnechia Giving a Coaching Clinic is Patriots Porn
Dante Scarnecchia : You have to be as physical in pass protection as you want them to be in the run game pic.twitter.com/S8J5hsVKk8
— GipsySafety (@GipsySafety) May 23, 2017
Dante Scarnecchia on blocking a Rip move pic.twitter.com/TLZDjXhOmD
— GipsySafety (@GipsySafety) May 23, 2017
Dante Scarnecchia : There’s a lot of ways to skin a cat, fellas pic.twitter.com/oNvvaoWXrY
— GipsySafety (@GipsySafety) May 23, 2017
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This is from The C.O.O.L. (Coaches Of Offensive Linemen) Clinic over the weekend. It’s an annual seminar where the guys who call themselves mushrooms because they’re “kept in the dark, fed garbage and continue to flourish.” The featured speakers were guys like Bill Callahan of the Redskins, Mike Munchak of the Steelers, Brent Key from Alabama and others. But needless to say, the guy who stole the show is Dante Scarnecchia.
Just in these three short clips you get a sense of why he’s the most respected position coach in the game. And why he’s been coaching the Patriots since the early 80s. Through turmoil, chaos, financially bankrupt owners and morally bankrupt coaches. He’s been the one constant and has forgotten more than any of us will ever know about the most under-understood position in all of sports.
Offensive linemen are the only guys in any sport who live their whole lives knowing they’ll never touch the ball/puck. Never score. Never make a save. They’ll never hear the name on the back of the jersey over the PA system once player introductions are over. They’ll labor in obscurity until they get beat. Then the entire stadium notices them and blames them for the glamor guys getting hit as hard as they do on every play. With the satisfaction of a perfectly executed block that lets someone else be the hero as their only reward. O-line play is football in its purest form, right out of the lab before it gets cut with all the other bullshit filler stuff and sold on the streets. And nobody explains it like Scar.
“Are we gonna try to butt up on them and knock their ass off? Not quite. But we’re gonna hit these assholes just as hard as we possibly can.” The minutae about hand placement, forming a “W” and “playing the piano” across a rusher’s body that’s like something you’d teach middle schoolers. The five or six different options for handling a linebacker walking up to the line in the A-gap. “Some of you didn’t raise your hands. So either you weren’t paying attention or you just don’t give a shit.” All presented with handwritten slides on the same overhead projector I used for my Solar System project in 7th grade. He’s the superstar at this obscure, overlooked profession, sharing his four decades of experience. For football nerds, it’s like being at ComicCon and getting to hear William Shatner, only instead of just being an actor he can tell you how the Photon Torpedoes work.
And you can see why this guy lasted all of two years in retirement. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna need a bigger box of Kleenex.