“The talent’s fine,” Holgorsen said. “The biggest thing was the culture shock, trying to train these guys how to practice, from a throwing-the-ball standpoint.” Holgorsen said East Coast-bred players don’t grow up with 7-on-7 summer leagues and passing drills. Many don’t get an extra hour of athletics in school. “The skills were underdeveloped. They didn’t understand how to practice what I was I talking about.”
Holgorsen and Leach faced the same kind of transition 12 years ago when they went to Tech and installed a new-age offense. Holgorsen didn’t face that at Houston (Art Briles, a Leach disciple, had just left UH) or OSU (Gundy and offensive coordinator Larry Fedora at least were running no-huddle, fast-paced).
“But when we went to Texas Tech, it was about like going into this situation,” Holgorsen said. “Very slow. Huddle. Try to call plays and try to do things to make the defense good. We just had to teach ’em. We weren’t going to stray from our philosophy.
“We just had to coach it. We kept pressing forward, we kept improving, finally the light came on in the last game.”
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