KNOXVILLE — A new wave of how to install plays is taking place at Alabama and will begin soon at Catholic High School in Knoxville.
The new wave consists of installing a play that is displayed on a jumbotron where players can watch it in real time at practice.
On the show “Tennessee Two-A-Days,” Catholic head coach Steve Matthews discussed how he intends to implement plays being installed with the help of the Fighting Irish’s jumbotron.
Catholic’s jumbotron was donated by former Tennessee head coach Butch Jones and his family. Jones enters his third season as an analyst at Alabama in 2020.
“That was great by Butch and his family to get that scoreboard for us and jumbotron,” Matthews said. “He was watching us install and we were doing it the old-fashioned way of me lining everyone up. He called me over and said ‘Coach at Alabama, they install the play and then they put it up on the jumbotron where the guys can actually watch it’.
“These kids in this generation are visual learners. I am going to implement that this year because of the jumbotron he got us. I can talk about the play, install the play, then have my guys look at the screen and show it to them right on the field. He brought that up as one of the things Alabama does and I thought it was great.”
“Tennessee Two-A-Days” is co-hosted by USA Academy head coach Rush Propst. Propst is also on board of the new wave of how to install plays in real time the way Alabama does.
“That is sort of the new wave in how to install,” Propst said of using a jumbotron to teach plays. “For me going forward, and having different ideas on how kids are in the 2020-21 campaign, how do they absorb the material and installs differently than they did five years ago.”
Propst won five state championships as the head coach at Hoover High School from 1999-2007. He had Jeremy Pruitt on staff from 2004-06. Propst then won two state championships and one national title at Colquitt County High School from 2008-18.
2019 was a season of reflection for Propst who was a defensive volunteer consultant at UAB. He plans to take many things that he has learned in the past year and implement them into his program going forward.
Propst discussed his time of reflection and learning in 2019 in comparison to Jones’ time at Alabama before he takes another head coaching position.
“Butch will land on his feet somewhere soon,” Propst said. “The good news for him, when you get fired, you can sit back and analyze your program and more of a slow mode because you have more time and no deadlines to meet. You are going around and you watch practices, study film, studying the way people are winning.
“I go back to the most impressive thing in my life was Eddie Robinson on the front row of a high school coach that was speaking and he was writing notes in a book. It was so impressive. I walked up to him and I said that you have been in this game a long time, what possibly could you have written down? He said you never stop learning in this game. So sitting out like Butch, and like I have done, and others have done, we always seem to come back stronger than we were when we left.”
Jones has also learned other elements of running a program during his time at Alabama that will help him going forward.
“He kept going on about how much that he had learned and is learning from Coach (Nick) Saban,” Matthews said of Jones. “He talked about the diet, the trainers, just how everything is done, and if he could do it again at Tennessee and everything that he could do different — and a lot of times it is just little things in the program. We talked about trainers, equipment managers, the strength coach and how they do things.”
Propst echoed Matthews discussing Jones evolving in preparation for his next head coaching position.
“It’s not just the X’s and O’s,” Propst said. “It’s how do we develop, how do we beat them better, how do we get them better medical care, how do we rehab differently, how do we practice differently, how do we install better.”
The entire interview with Matthews and Propst can be listened to here or below.
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