Talking offense with Tim Lappano
Published 7:56 pm Friday, August 1, 2008
With fall camp just around the corner, I had a chance to talk with Washington offensive coordinator Tim Lappano this afternoon about his offense and the season (less than a month away now football fans).
Here’s some of the highlights from the interview:
Will this camp feel different with Oregon as the opener?
“I don’t think it matters who you open with. It does in that we open with a Pac-10 game, and you always want to win your first Pac-10 game and build some momentum, but in our situation, we know we have to win, so it doesn’t matter who we play, we’ll feel that pressure to win the first game.
But it does add a little that it’s Oregon, and they’ve kind of had our number the last couple of years. It’s going to be a challenge, but we think we’re better than a lot of people think we are, so we’re excited to go down there and play a football game and see where we’re at.”
As the OC, is is scary or exciting to have so much youth at the skill positions?
“I think it’s both. It’s really going to be important for our staff offensively to understand who can make plays for us. That’s what we really have to be on top of these next couple of weeks, because we don’t have much time between now and August 30. We’re going to have to do a great job every day starting Monday of evaluating our young guys, because we don’t have any veteran running backs or receivers. We have one guy that’s played a little bit of football, and that’s D’Andre Goodwin. And when you say he’s the old man of the group, that’s a little bit scary. But like I’ve said since we recruited these young guys, this is a great group of young receivers. This is a great group of young guys that can go out and make some plays. Are they going to perfect all the time? No. Was Jake Locker perfect all the time last year? No. But did he do a lot of great things? Yeah he did. And I think you’re going to see similar things with this group of receivers and the group of running backs and Kavario Middleton maybe. I think you’re going to see flashes of brilliant plays that will excite all the fans, but I still think at times there are going to be spots where you’re going to know they are freshmen. That’s just the way it is. My job is going to be to make these guys go into the Oregon game knowing what they’re doing so they can play as fast as they can.
What I’ve got to do is make sure when they get to that game they’re not out there thinking and playing slow because they’re not sure what they’re doing. I’ve got to find that balance between what’s not enough and what’s too much. That right there is going to be really, really critical for us on offense. That’s going to be the balancing act that I’m going to face as far as getting these guys ready to play. How much can they handle? As soon as it’s too much and they’re playing slow, that’s not good.”
How important has Jake Locker’s leadership been this summer?
“He’s been really good. He had a good summer. We talked every week a couple of times a week, and I think it really helped our young guys just as far as getting out there and seeing the speed of our defense.”
Lappono went on to point out that the did 11 on 11 workouts in addition to the usual seven on sevens, allowing players to notice the increase in speed at the line of scrimmage.
“The biggest difference I saw from high school to college was the speed. Not necessarily the skill guys, because a lot of high school kids can run, but the line of scrimmage. When they got to see the big guys run and move compared to the guys in high school, I think that helped us a lot.”
Lappano said players like Locker, receiver D’Andre Goodwin and TE Michael Gottlieb played big roles in offseason workouts, which coaches cannot attend.
“Getting your young guys here working out with Jake Locker is almost like having spring football. Are they getting coached perfectly? No, but does Jake Locker know what they’re doing right and what they’re doing right? Yeah.”
What do you hope to see out of Locker this season?
“The thing I want to see from Jake is him being more poised back in the pocket. I want to see him calm down in the pocket. I want to see him calm down on the perimeter. Whether he’s going to run it or throw it, he needs to calm down. I think what happened his first year, when he had no experience under his belt is he wasn’t quite as calm and poised, is he started throwing the ball instead of passing it, and therefore it started to sail on him a little bit. I think that was his biggest problem.”
“I really want to see him take the bull by the horns from a leadership standpoint, and that started in the winter. I made him be a little more aggressive than he wants to be. Everybody leads in different ways, but this is Jake Locker’s team, and I want to see him vocal. His teammates respect him. He’s a competitor and has the burning desire to win, that’s got to become contagious.
I think that’s critical and he’s stepped up his leadership role. I think he has emerged more as a little bit more of a demanding vocal leader, and I think that will be healthy for our football team, especially our young receivers.”
How worried are you about recruiting having just one commitment so far?
“It’s a wait and see approach right now. I think it’s really important that we come out and get some wins early, because that’s going to give a young football team nothing but confidence and a lot of momentum. And recruits are waiting to see what we’re going to do. How we’re going to come out in September, are we going to win some football games?
The positive thing about recruiting is that nobody we’ve gone after is just flat telling us no. There are still some highly recruited kids that are not saying no. They’re going to wait and see. That’s the position that we’re in right now. The important thing for everybody to remember is that a lot of good kids out there haven’t told us no. We’re still in it with a lot of good football players and we could have a great recruiting year.”
