College football is volatile. Coaches come and go, heading to bed employed by one team, only to wake up the next day looking for a job. While it may not always be that dramatic, there are few occupations — in the world outside of life and death — that demand such a high level of performance in such a short period of time. Win and you stay, lose and you might be on the chopping block.
So how do you manage the pressure?
“That’s a good question,” Penn State offensive line coach Phil Trautwein said standing out on a scalding hot practice field earlier this June, thinking briefly as he digested the matter at hand.
“I mean, for me, I just worry about my guys— my offensive line and my family,” Trautwein said. “If you think about every little thing you’re gonna drive yourself crazy. So it’s kind of just focusing on getting your guys better because that’s the number one thing, getting them better. Being out on that field will help you and then also recruiting, being able to recruit, being able to get those guys ready to go and being able to make your room better every year is key. So really, the pressure doesn’t really bother me. I just got to work and grind every single day.”
Penn State as a program finds itself in an interesting place in 2022. The Nittany Lions have talent, but they also lack depth in key areas like offensive line. For a coach like Trautwein he exists in a weird intersection between the roster that he has to work with, and the pressure that has accumulated over the years for his group to perform. The Nittany Lions do not seem destined to be bad, but the inevitably of their success feels less obvious and much more speculative.
In turn it creates a much larger problem that any assistant coach might face heading into a season: how good can my room really get this year? And is that answer good enough?
“To me, I want to look at how can we improve every day,” new special teams coach Stacey Collins added. “Whether that’s myself, how we’re teaching, how we were handling our practice situation, how we’re prepping these guys on and off the field and myself included. Whether that’s from a breakdown standpoint, whether that’s from a schematic standpoint. So how do we continue to get better in development? I think that’s everything, regardless of the profession, like you said, where the job is how to continue to grow, have that growth mindset and get better every day.”
For coaches like Collins he faces much less pressure on a net average than same of his counterparts. Some of that is by virtue of being in his first year on the job, some of it is by the relatively straightforward nature of special teams. Even so, enough missed kicks, a few too many blown blocks or coverage plays and even Collins would have to look in the mirror.
So how do you prepare for the good and the bad as a coach? According to cornerbacks coach and elder-statesmen Terry Smith – who is entering his ninth year at Penn State under James Franklin – it has a lot to do with how you go about your work.
“There’s an old saying that, if you’re prepared, you don’t feel pressure,” Smith said. “That’s why we have the offseason to get ourselves prepared. We’re masters at our craft and from year to year, you have a different Johnny or a different Joe but but your coaching style pretty much stays the same. You make slight tweaks to it but for me personally, I don’t feel the pressure of success. I pride myself in trying to be prepared and and equip my guys the best way I know how and prepare my guys so that when they go out on Saturday afternoons or Saturday evenings, they make no mental mistakes. It’s not to say that they won’t make a physical mistake or get beat physically, because those things happen at our level. [The opponents] are on scholarship too. So the key is to not make mental mistakes and as long as we can line up where we’re supposed to do where we’re supposed to be and do what we’re supposed to do. You know, at that point, those guys will have a pretty successful night if they just do that alone.”
For other coaches the challenge is simply getting your feet underneath yourself. Take for example Penn State tight ends coach Ty Howle who is just in his second year as an assistant coach. In his case the Nittany Lions have a talented room of tight ends between Brenton Strange, Theo Johnson, Tyler Warren and freshman Jerry Cross – but with talent comes expectations. And with expectations comes the pressure to perform.
So any advice from one of Penn State’s most veteran coaches to one of the youngest?
“You trust the process – those guys that are young, they watch veteran coaches,” Smith said. “Ty is in a different situation, his dad was a coach all his life. So he’s seen the ups and downs the peaks and valleys the good years bad years, the good games, the bad games. But man, we were in a profession where you’re not going to have great nights every night. And so you know, you’ve got to trust that you’re doing the right things by your your players and by your team. And then when you have those bad nights, you just go back and reevaluate what went wrong, how did it go wrong? And then you correct it. The key is don’t make the same mistakes twice. And that’s what we hopefully try to do with our guys.”
Of course sometimes there isn’t much pressure at all – or at least much external pressure. Penn State receivers’ coach Taylor Stubblefield has seen a host of quality wideouts come and go through the program over the past several years. But don’t confuse quality players for a lack of quality stress any given night.
“In some regard, you’re never satisfied when you win a game and you constantly look at the areas of improvement,” Stubblefield said. “And so yeah, my wife has had to remind me at times to enjoy the wins as ugly or as beautiful as that win was, to enjoy it. But your personality in this profession if you are somebody who gets real high there’s going to be some awful lows. And so that ability to stay even keel emotionally is where there’s a big benefit.”
Last but not least, there is the pressure of being a coordinator. Don’t score points? It has to be the OC. Can’t stop the run? Has to be the DC. In the case of Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich he knows how the business works. When you sign up to be a coordinator you’re signing up to sometimes be the first on the chopping block. It’s rarely that simple of course, an offense or defense can – and often does struggle – for reasons beyond calls and scheme.
Nevertheless, it’s a results based enterprise.
“I get it. That’s the dynamic of sport and competition, and really any business right?” Yurcich said with a smile. “If the productivity is not there, then usually that’s what happens. First of all, you got to marry right. I think that’s the key. Right? Yes. How do you deal with the volatility, you have to have the right partner and my wife’s been very special in that regard. A tremendous understanding and feel for everything and very supportive of me, that’s really important. But the second thing is my head is not there. I don’t live in that space [being worried about performance pressure] You know, my job is to make this team and to help these players become the best they possibly can, to win. And, you know, to do that at a place like Penn State – I mean, just look around this. This is this is football heaven. So to me it’s it’s one day at a time, 1-0 and go man, go.”
