Football Toolbox

  • Home
  • Special Teams
  • Defense
  • Offense
  • Training & Conditioning
  • Intangibles
  • Program Building
  • Safety
  • Archives

NEXT GEN: The Innovator

January 20, 2020 by

By Brendan Hall
From Hudl

Every offseason, countless high school coaches make the leap to college, or even NFL, staffs. Why are they such attractive additions? A peek at what the University of Arizona’s new, tech-minded offensive analyst John Marinelli built at a southern Connecticut high school lends some insight. 

Some jumps from high school ranks to col­lege staffs are sub­tle, like an upstart young whip head­ing to a near­by Division II or III col­lege to infuse some ener­gy into a tired pro­gram. Others, such as a head coach at a revered high school pro­gram join­ing a major Division I staff, are seismic.

John Marinelli’s leap this sum­mer, from south­ern Connecticut pow­er­house Greenwich High School to offen­sive ana­lyst at the University of Arizona, falls under the lat­ter. This move is the prod­uct of a rela­tion­ship that’s been fos­tered over the last decade with offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Noël Mazzone. He’s the pilot of Kevin Sumlin’s cel­e­brat­ed ​“Air Raid” scheme that made a Heisman Trophy win­ner out of Johnny Manziel, and who’s now tasked with revi­tal­iz­ing for­mer Heisman fron­trun­ner Khalil Tate after a rough 2018.

An inquis­i­tive type, Marinelli found him­self pick­ing Mazzone’s brain quite a bit the last few years. 

“It’s incred­i­ble. We’d share ideas, I’d bounce a lot of stuff off of him, I appre­ci­at­ed his men­tor­ship,” Marinelli said. ​“He’s some­one I great­ly respect in my pro­fes­sion, some­one who cares a lot about high school coaches.” 

But the ques­tion remains — what makes so many of these coach­es attrac­tive to a col­lege staff?

These things are always in the eye of the behold­er, but a look at the prac­tice atmos­phere Marinelli cul­ti­vat­ed dur­ing his four years run­ning the Cardinals’ pro­gram might give us some answers. Today’s most for­ward-think­ing high school coach­es are lever­ag­ing the pro-lev­el data and tech­nol­o­gy avail­able, cre­at­ing a col­lege or even NFL-like atmos­phere for teenagers. These play­ers are there­fore bet­ter pre­pared to con­tribute right away at the next lev­el. For the Cardinals, this set­up was some­thing like equal parts Sean McVay and Chip Kelly.

Greenwich’s 2018 cam­paign was a super­son­ic rein­force­ment of the prin­ci­ples Marinelli start­ed with when he first took the job in 2015 — play fast, then play faster. The Cardinals allowed just 54 points total over their 13 – 0 cam­paign, pitch­ing six shutouts, includ­ing an 84 – 0 mar­gin over the final eight quar­ters of the sea­son. Offensively, they aver­aged near­ly 45 points per game and near­ly sev­en yards per play, com­plet­ing 60 per­cent of their pass­es (just a thread over the Mendoza line, as our part­ners at X&O Labs spelled out).

The sea­son end­ed with Marinelli’s sec­ond vic­to­ry of 2018 over near­by New Canaan (coached by his father Lou, the state’s all-time win­ningest high school coach) in a 34 – 0 shutout, giv­ing the Cardinals their first state cham­pi­onship since 2007.

John’s Cardinals aimed to play as fast as pos­si­ble — some­times faster than the chain crew can set up a new first down. The stat­ed goal was to get the ball snapped in 13 sec­onds. Plays would get called in a series of hand sig­nals, or some­times a mere one-word association. 

Marinelli is no Ben McAdoo, or any oth­er NFL coach whose playsheet resem­bles some­thing like a din­er menu. His play­book — which could bloat to near­ly 10,000 plays when fac­tor­ing in all the dif­fer­ent twists and stems — was whit­tled down to some­times as lit­tle as 12 base plays for game nights, with a num­ber of vari­eties stem­ming from those plays.

Sounds tax­ing, right? But that’s noth­ing com­pared to how prac­tices were run, a pace some­where between fre­net­ic and all-out chaot­ic. Practice scripts were acute­ly reg­i­ment­ed and orga­nized, with the play­ers them­selves per­pet­u­al­ly in motion, nev­er in the same drill for more than 5 – 10 minutes.

“Our prac­tices are high tem­po. They’re fast paced. They’re well thought out,” Marinelli said back in the spring. ​“As a staff, every­body has to know what they’re doing. I hate when peo­ple are stand­ing around at practice.”

The idea, far from unique in coach­ing lex­i­con, is to make the game come easy on Friday nights. But Marinelli goes to excep­tion­al lengths. Wearable tech­nol­o­gy may not be allowed on the field dur­ing games, but there’s noth­ing that says you can’t break out every gad­get pos­si­ble dur­ing prac­tices to accom­plish his goal.

On NFL Sundays, coach­es have long com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly to the quar­ter­back through their head­set (and as of this past decade, one des­ig­nat­ed defen­sive play­er). Marinelli mic’d up his scout quar­ter­back for prac­tices to get in the play call faster. This often results in the young sig­nal-callers in his pro­gram pick­ing up the game, and the nuances of var­i­ous offens­es, quicker.

The age of no-hud­dle offense has spawned a rich cor­nu­copia of cre­ative ways to call plays quick­ly, from indi­vid­u­al­ly-tai­lored play strips to giant sand­wich boards with var­i­ous logos (some of the car­toon­ish vari­ety). At Greenwich, the coach­ing staff would deploy as many as two dozen Android phones on the scout team, to be insert­ed in the playstrip wrist­bands, with the screens call­ing up the plays through an app. Most play­ers end up wear­ing these on their belt loops for quick­er reading.

Filming prac­tices is a stan­dard among many of the nation’s top pro­grams. But near­ly a half-dozen cam­eras could be seen at Greenwich prac­tices, and not just your stan­dard wide/​tight vari­ety. A drone would fly over­head, there’d be a cam­era affixed from atop a mov­ing pole, and a sta­tion­ary cam­era atop a rock wall from behind one of the end zones. 

Programs invest­ed in this kind of a set­up often find that all this tech­nol­o­gy adds up on Friday nights, enabling them to play and make changes at light­ning speed. This pace is ardu­ous to keep up with. The game has been mov­ing fast for decades at the col­lege lev­el, and that influ­ence is grow­ing among the more youth­ful NFL coaches. 

For the high school lev­el, the ben­e­fits add up. With live side­line replay tech­nol­o­gy so read­i­ly avail­able, teams that wait until half­time to make their adjust­ments often find that they’re too late. Marinelli saw the com­ing tide and chose to make it a footrace, fight­ing speed with more speed. The results spoke for themselves.

“Our defen­sive coor­di­na­tor will be the first to tell you he hat­ed going fast in prac­tice,” Marinelli said ear­li­er this sum­mer. ​“But over the course of time, real­iz­ing what it can do in a game for us, he’s gone com­plete­ly 180. He loves it now.”

And when it came to game night, every­thing seemed a lit­tle slow­er. The big-screen TV was there on the side­line. So were the iPads, ready to show them their mis­takes as soon as they come off the field. And there was no sense of panic.

Marinelli knows if you aren’t trained to play fast defen­sive­ly, it can be hard to rec­og­nize for­ma­tions and ten­den­cies. But by play­ing fast in prac­tice, and get­ting used to find­ing posi­tions quick­ly, rec­og­niz­ing the offense feels like sec­ond nature.

How well did all that con­trolled chaos pay off on the defen­sive side of the ball Friday nights? In 2018, the Cardinals put up eye-pop­ping sta­tis­tics off the edge and in the sec­ondary, rack­ing up team totals of 57 sacks, 60 tack­les for loss and 20 inter­cep­tions over the 13-game season.

Marinelli’s biggest inspi­ra­tion for how he built his work­flow comes from his father Lou, who has a career record (and cur­rent Connecticut record) of 350 – 106-7. Adversaries on the field, the father and son are a lab­o­ra­to­ry off of it, con­stant­ly hit­ting each oth­er up for new ways to lever­age the tech­nol­o­gy and data avail­able in today’s game.

Coaches, Marinelli reminds us, love to have all the bells and whis­tles. And as an ear­ly adopter of many tech­nolo­gies that are now the new nor­mal for high school foot­ball, Marinelli is con­stant­ly on the look­out for that next poten­tial game-chang­ing inno­va­tion. He’ll often spend the first three months of a cal­en­dar year explor­ing the mar­ket, look­ing at what’s out there and what makes sense.

But if there’s one thing Lou has taught him over every­thing else, it’s that not every­thing works. Not every­thing is what it seems. Sometimes it’s bet­ter not to force some­thing on your kids or your coach­es. It real­ly is okay to occa­sion­al­ly say no to the new best innovation.

He says that’s one of his father’s strongest traits — know­ing when to say no. ​“We bounce ideas off each oth­er con­stant­ly. We influ­ence each oth­er equally.”

Marinelli’s advice? If you’re going to use it, if you’re going to make your team learn a new piece of tech­nol­o­gy, it had bet­ter be there in the long term. If you’re not going to use it, or if you’re going to have to com­plete­ly rein­vent your­self? Move on.

Filed Under: Operations

  • Home
  • Special Teams
  • Defense
  • Offense
  • Training & Conditioning
  • Intangibles
  • Program Building
  • Safety
  • Archives

© Copyright 2023 Athletic Performance Toolbox

Design by BuzzworthyBasketballMarketing.com

Privacy Policy