No more country club era. Coach Haywood means business.
Discipline, hard work and family. These, the values of Enrico Blasi’s ‘Brotherhood,’ are spilling over from the ice and on to the gridiron. They are now the values Miami University head football coach Mike Haywood wants to communicate to his new team as well. So far the message is being heard, loud and clear.
“(Camp) has been pretty intense,” freshman defensive lineman Austin Brown said. “That’s one of the big differences all the upperclassmen talk about. I didn’t think it was going to be this hard but they turned it up a notch and we’re really working now.”
Judging by last year’s results and this year’s projection, work is exactly what this team needs. The RedHawks finished their 2008 campaign at 2-10 and dead last in the Mid American Conference. This year’s MAC pre-season poll predicts much of the same, placing Miami back in the cellar with only 33 total points.
Word of this pessimistic projection certainly reached the Miami locker room, but was met with a rather optimistic reaction. Haywood quickly pointed out with a laugh that the same poll picked the ’Hawks to finish first last season. Senior quarterback Daniel Raudabaugh said it just makes him want to go out and “shock the world.”
“No one likes to be picked last. You can be upset and use it as motivation from an angry standpoint,” Raudabaugh said, “but the way we look at it is to not worry about what anyone else thinks. We just want to go to work and handle our business. Let them talk about us after we go out there.”
Such outlooks serve as a mere glimpse into the thought process of a team with a completely new swagger. You can notice it before even stepping foot inside of Yager Stadium, as a noisy energy rings loudly out from the practice field on a daily basis. The so-called country-club era of the last four years is over, and no one is being quiet about it.
“There may be a lot of the same faces but they’re new players,” Raudabaugh said. “There is new energy, new schemes and a new attitude and a new team. We are going to be able to play Miami football again.”
Coach Haywood injected this energy into a rather lifeless team with one major change to practice: competition. He gave every player on the roster a chance to compete for a starting position. Depth charts were all but tossed out the window. Even freshmen receives chances to play with the first stringers, a feature that Brown says “helps them grow up a little bit.
In addition to individual competition, Haywood introduced head-to-head battles at the team level. One drill used in practice lines the offense up against the defense on the goal line. If the offense scores, the defense runs sprints. If the defense produces a stop, the offense runs. End result: the attention of every single player on the field.
“You have to come out and have a fire in your belly,” Raudabaugh said. “Nobody likes running.”
The RedHawks held two team scrimmages this fall. Miami continued its early offensive struggles in the first, failing to score until late in the game. The defense actually lead for most of the contest after sophomore middle linebacker Jerrell Wedge returned a fumble for an 88-yard defensive touchdown. Two late scores from the other side of the ball, however, gave the offense a 17-7 victory.
Haywood was not pleased at all after this first live look at the team. Failing to break off a run longer than six yards did not sit well with this coach who wants to implement smash-mouth football.
“I don’t like the way they approached the field,” Haywood told the Dayton Daily News after the scrimmage. “They didn’t have a sense of urgency. They had the attitude ‘I’m cool’ and were doing things half-speed. I guess we’ve got to do a better job of coaching them.
The second stint wrote an almost exact opposite script. This time the offense jumped out to the early lead only to see the defense recover and lock them down late. Taking a break from its early-game woes, the RedHawk attack scored on the opening drive capped by a one-yard touchdown run by Raudabaugh. This wasn’t the only time he carried the ball on that drive, as the Miami signal caller broke open two long runs on coverage breakdown.
After the game, Haywood announced junior safety Jordan Gafford and senior wide out Dustin woods as team captains. Woods just began practicing again after a pulled hamstring in the first week of camp and Gafford missed most of last year after a season-ending injury against the University of Michigan. Haywood pointed out that being voted captains by teammates despite missing so much time gives insight to their remarkable character.
“Both of them are great Christian guys,” Haywood said, “and (being voted as captains) shows a lot of respect for them.”
The RedHawks will continue to work hard as they prepare for their season opener against the University of Kentucky. Haywood said Saturday’s scrimmage was the last big chance for players to move up the depth chart. With the roster set, the team looks to focus in on the three areas it deems most important: discipline, hard work and family.
DK Kountry 