Fisher, Garrison: Right Coaches at the Right Time

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Look at the photos at the top of this column. They're recent shots. The photo on the left shows Rich Fisher, 40, instructing a group of high school players at the Rivers School, a perennial doormat in Boston prep football for 40 years ... that is, until Fisher became the school's head coach two years ago and transformed it into a championship contender that went 8-0 last fall before losing a prep "bowl game".

The photo on the right shows John Garrison, 30, an offensive intern on the Nebraska staff, encouraging Marcel Jones on the Husker sideline. Garrison had a small, but important role the last three years. To be perfectly honest, he was the lowest man on the totem pole. During the season, he would spend 16 to 18-hour days camped out in the Nebraska football video room, breaking down the opponent's defense.

Fisher and Garrison are engaged, connected, teaching, communicating, motivating kinds of coaches ... everything that's important for a Nebraska offense getting a makeover this spring, so it will evolve into a much better one next fall when the Huskers play the Badgers, Buckeyes, Hawkeyes, Nittany Lions, Spartans and Wolverines ... everyone who's anyone in Big Ten Conference football.

Today, Fisher, a backup linebacker on a national championship and three Big Eight title teams at Colorado, is Nebraska's wide receivers coach. One player he will teach is one he's already taught ...Taariq Allen, the only wide receiver in Nebraska's 2011 recruiting class.

Garrison is helping Barney Cotton coach the Huskers' offensive line. The four-time letterman and one-time Husker captain also oversees tight ends. Most Husker fans remember him as the starting center for Eric Crouch on a team that lost to Miami in the 2001 BCS National Championship Game in Pasadena.

The addition of Garrison to the staff is a new twist on an old Nebraska strategy - two hard-working coaches sharing responsibilities in the offensive line, just like Milt Tenopir and the late Dan Young did in the Tom Osborne regime and the late Cletus Fischer and Tenopir did before that. Osborne, of course, hired Tenopir as a graduate assistant before promoting him to his full-time staff, so the process Pelini followed in hiring Garrison was somewhat similar.

Still, the question lingers: Exactly how do a high school coach in Boston and an intern with a coaching rank of Army private end up on the "official" staff of a Nebraska football program that has come within a whisker of winning back-to-back Big 12 Conference championships?

Quite simply, they are the right coaches at the right time - coaches that Bo Pelini thought were perfectly suited for a new offensive philosophy that he shared with Nebraska football play-by-play man Greg Sharpe for a taped segment on Friday's "Sports Nightly" on the Husker Sports Network.

Fisher and Garrison were two critical pieces to the offensive puzzle that Pelini put together after a jolting 19-7 Holiday Bowl loss to Washington - a game that Nebraska's head coach said gave him "a new sense of purpose" and "reinvigorated" him into making the kinds of decisions he felt the Huskers needed to make.

Smaller Playbook, More Audibles = Attack Mode

In essence, Bo wants Nebraska's offense to be one that compresses the playbook, incorporates more audibles and makes a defense pay for its mistakes. "We want to attack people," he said. "We want to be a little more multiple than we were and really cut the playbook down in such a way that we're good at something."

Pelini said he knew exactly what he was looking for in his new offensive assistants and has focused his energy assembling a staff that will complement and reinforce Tim Beck, the Huskers' new offensive coordinator.

Beck, a fellow Youngstown, Ohio, Cardinal Mooney High School graduate, is a Pelini disciple. He believes in shared vision and implicit trust and thinks that simplicity and multiplicity belong in the same sentence.

"This system is going to be highly adjustable," Pelini said. "It's one where we can go after people and make them pay for doing things that we feel give us an advantage."

With Beck calling the plays and coaching the quarterbacks, Ron Brown replacing Beck as the running backs coach and Barney Cotton directing the offensive line, Fisher will be in charge of a physical fleet of wide receivers, and Garrison will help Cotton coach the offensive line and oversee the tight ends.

Pelini's master plan is to field a team that meshes philosophically on both sides of the ball. "What I set out to do," he said, "is really take the same thought processes that we employ on defense and apply them to the offensive side of the ball - and have people think that way."

Adding Fisher and Garrison to the staff produced "exactly" what Pelini was looking for. "We have a number of guys who can coach multiple positions," he said. "It's a very flexible staff. I'm excited about where we are. I'm real comfortable with the changes that were made and the direction that we're heading."

Key to Success: Making Adjustments on the Run

Pelini believes in having offensive coaches and players who have a deep understanding of what they're doing and why they're doing it. Success, he told Sharpe, will be determined by "how we do it, how we call it, how we get into things ... we want to make adjustments on the run, so we can attack people."

That, in a nutshell, is what Husker fans love most about Pelini - his ability to outwork, outwit and outlast whoever happens to be on the other side of the ball.

Some might question Pelini hiring Fisher and Garrison from where they were, but remember, he brought John Papuchis and Mike Ekeler from equal obscurity and onto his first full staff as a head coach in 2007.

Ekeler is now a co-defensive coordinator at Big Ten rival Indiana. Papuchis has proven to be an excellent defensive line coach and has become a five-star recruiter. Bo trusts him so much, in fact, that he is now the Huskers' recruiting coordinator.

"Three years ago, Ek (Ekeler) and I were skeptical hires, but with time, that's gone away," Papuchis said, predicting similar results not only for Fisher and Garrison on offense, but also for Ross Els and Corey Raymond on defense.

"Football isn't rocket science," Papuchis said. "Being a good football coach boils down to having a passion about what you do and being a dedicated teacher with an uncompromising work ethic. At the end of the day, if you teach well, relate to kids well, work hard and understand the team concept, you're going to have success. That's what I think it's all about."

Bo is Willing to Go Against Conventional Wisdom

Papuchis loves Nebraska's four new coaching hires because they prove how unique Bo is as a leader and how confident he is in his core beliefs. "He's willing to go against conventional wisdom and hire people he truly believes in," Papuchis said. "I will always have the utmost respect for Bo because he's a guy willing to follow his gut, trust his instincts and do what he thinks is right.

"We live in a world where everybody wants to do the politically correct thing," Papuchis said. "Bo does what he thinks is the right thing for this program and this staff. It may not always jive with what everyone outside thinks, but at the end of the day, that's not what matters."

Ross Els, Rich Fisher, John Garrison and Corey Raymond all have what Papuchis believes are Bo's most important characteristics that determine success ... confidence, attitude, work ethic, determination, passion and loyalty.

The four new members of Nebraska's staff fit right in with the existing coaches. "They're great guys, good human beings," Papuchis said. "They're good teachers. They're tough. They're what this program is all about."

Papuchis expects all four to do what he did the minute he stepped foot in Lincoln. "I put my head down and worked," he said. "I don't pay much attention to what people say I can't do. I try to focus on the things I can do. If that's the way you approach it, you should be able to overcome any outside distractions out there."

Since Bo knew everyone on this new staff sometime in his coaching past, the group already shows signs of rapid assimilation. "We all know each other on some level," Papuchis pointed out. "That kind of cohesiveness and camaraderie goes a long way. The players can see it. The staff can feed off of it. At the end of the day, there's going to be a comfort and a confidence that this program is on the track to have the success that we want it to have."

Great Coaches Find 'The Right Ones' to Win

To close this column and reinforce everything Papuchis just said, we take you to a scene in one of the best sports movies of all time - "Miracle".  Released seven years ago, the movie tells the true story of Herb Brooks, the player-turned-coach who led the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team to the biggest upset in Olympic history, beating a seemingly invincible Russian squad that absolutely obliterated an NHL all-star team.

Kurt Russell plays Brooks in the movie, and the way he played that role reminds me of the way an ultra-confident Bo Pelini might play Knute Rockne, if he was ever asked to portray Notre Dame's legendary coach.

Read some actual lines from Miracle and understand that theconversation is between Brooks, the head coach, and Craig Patrick, his assistant coach.

Brooks: Take a look at this.

Patrick: What's this?

Brooks: Twenty-six names.

[Pause]

Brooks: The tough part will be getting it down to 20 before the opening ceremonies.

Patrick: This is the final roster? You're kidding me, right? This is our first day, Herb. We've got a week of this. What about the advisory staff? Aren't they supposed to have a say in this?

Brooks: Not technically.

Patrick: You're missing some of the best players.

Brooks: I'm not looking for the best players, Craig. I'm looking for the right ones.

Sorry for the long setup, but to get my point, it was important for you to hear the context and the punch line.

I'm only guessing here, but can't you just imagine a conversation between Bo, the head coach, and Carl Pelini, the only holdover coordinator for a team looking to make a major overhaul?

Don't you think the Pelinis' conversation might have been similar to Herb Brooks' and Craig Patrick's?

Since Nebraska is considered a destination job more than a transition journey for most coaches who land in Lincoln, it would have made perfect sense if Bo stopped his older brother at some point in whatever discussion they might be having to say: "I'm not looking for the best coaches, Carl. I'm looking for the right ones."

Who knows? Carl, who rose from obscurity himself when he arrived at Nebraska, could have been the protaganist in such a conversation.

The good news is, whether we're talking Rich Fisher and John Garrison on offense or Ross Els and Corey Raymond on defense, Bo Pelini thinks he's found "the right ones" and his brother no doubt agrees.

Obviously, Nebraska is like everywhere else, and only time will tell how well this all works out. 

If you're like most Husker fans and can't wait to see what the Pelini brothers and Tim Beck have up their sleeves, maybe it's time to buy your Spring Game tickets right here right now!

That's what I'm going to do.

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Voices from Husker Nation

I love reading your articles. My comment is simply to applaud the bravery of our young head coach in making offensive coaching staff changes on a team which has won 20 games in the last two seasons. I truly believed that we needed to move in a new direction offensively, but one could certainly make an argument to defend Bo's choice had he not made any changes. It makes perfect sense to me that Bo wants an offense that somewhat mirrors what Les Miles had at LSU the year he won a National Championship. GO BIG RED!! Brent Quinn, '91, Las Cruces, New Mexico

I enjoyed this article as I believe it is spot on. Yes, time will tell if the changes yield championships but history of success is on Bo's side. Jon Reitz, Atlanta, Georgia

Love the way Bo thinks about the game and tailors his staff to what he wants Nebraska to be -- a physical force that's innovative and attacks every opponent, offensively as well as defensively. This article helps me understand why he hires the coaches he believes will move us forward. I realize that changes like Bo's talking about don't happen overnight, but I think they will put us in a much better position to win, both short-term and long-term. Ri Edwards, Yuba City, California 

Pelini says he wants to develop a system that's highly adjustable -- one that will allow his offense to go after people and make them pay for doing things that he thinks will give Nebraska an advantage. I think he just described the philosophy of the athletic director who's his boss. Can't wait to see the early stages of that offense in the Spring Game. Rick Anderson, Omaha, Nebraska 

 

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