Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/616353
NFL STYLE IN THE COLLEGE GAME This isn't an issue about VanGorder's competence, because he has built a repu- table name, from national assistant of the year at Georgia early in this millen- nium to instructing in the NFL most of this past decade. The issue is more about fit to the cur- rent college game. Halfway through the 2014 season, VanGorder admitted that after coaching for a while in the NFL, he became somewhat spoiled. "The biggest adjustment is how many times a college player has to see some- thing before he solves a problem," he said in late October 2014. "And then once he solves it, the ability to recall and not allow it to happen again. It's diffi- cult. But they're so young. "In the NFL, a lot of players, not all of them but a lot of them, they're 'one-tim- ers.' They make a mistake, you tell them, 'Hey, this is what you should have seen, this is what should have happened' and they solve it. They've been playing the game a long time. "Here, we're talking about some 18- and 19-year-olds that are really just kind of learning the game … just the incon- sistencies of doing that because of the players' experience is the biggest differ- ence to me." Later that year, standout linebacker Jaylon Smith indicated that, per Van- Gorder, a football player doesn't really reach his prime, physically and in the game's IQ, until he is about 25. Unfortunately, college players don't have until 25. They are usually out of eligibility by 22, so a college defense generally must be structured to where they can grasp rudimentary concepts and apply them from 18 to 22. Furthermore, in the NFL, it's at least a 9-to-5 job for the players, with plenty of overtime. In college, NCAA rules man- Senior defensive lineman Sheldon Day was one of many future NFL prospects to start on Notre Dame's 2015 defense. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA