Kent State Head Football Coach Kenni Burns and his staff did something different Sunday with the Golden Flashes, following Saturday’s 55-24 loss at Pittsburgh. They watched the game film together as an entire team.
Typically teams will break off either as a unit, or as a position group to watch their specific unit.
Watching as a team makes everyone accountable, both players and coaches. Every play is now being seen from a different perspective, because everyone has eyes on it and it’s being seen through the eyes of the entire team.
The other main thing it does is it lets the game flow point out situational football and complimentary football and how it all works together. In my experience as a coach, sometimes you will skip over the other units’ plays to get to the side of the ball you want to watch, but doing so, you miss how it all fits together.
Burns talked about the new film tactic and complimentary football, something we wrote about Sunday and were spot on about.
“Yesterday we did something a bit different,” Burns said at his Monday press conference. “We’ve never done it before but I’ve known programs that have. We watched the game as a whole team. Typically you split offense-defense, you split into your position groups and you really break the film down but I think our team has to understand complimentary football and that’s no disrespect to the people or the staff that was here before me but we were really one sided, it was the offense score points and the defense if you’re going to get scored on, get scored on as quick as possible. That’s not what we’re trying to do. That’s not to me championship caliber football. The offense has to work with the defense and the special teams has to be the bridge that brings it together. Saturday we did not do that. We got closer the second half but we’re not there yet. We have to understand how it all works together so our response mechanism was better but it still wasn’t where it needs to be.”
Burns spoke about how there’s eight or nine plays in the game that impacted the entire situation, and the game could have taken on a different tone. A receiver getting his depth, an accurate pass, a back picking up a blitz. Defensively, alignment and assignment, reacting quicker and a number of other things that impact winning.
“I think they knew, that’s the thing,” Burns said. “We watched it together. I didn’t know what the response was going to be. It’s different, being called out at your position group and its just you and your eight or nine guys, now you’re in front of the whole team and now you’re accountable to the play that just happened, as a coach the call that just happened and you got to look each other in the eye and if we say we’re doing it for each other then those moments you should take pride in and i think our team understood that. Like I Said there’s about eight or nine plays and if you make a play here, if you get the right depth here, you don’t see the next play. That was my whole message to them, because we didn’t have to see the next play. The punt return never happens if we throw an accurate ball on the third down and receiver you get your depth.”
Kent State still has a very young football team and they are learning as they go. Burns is encouraged by the willingness to learn of his 2024 football team.
“The thing I love about our football team is they love that stuff. They love learning football. They love ball. They weren’t running away from it yesterday. We left as coaches and they kept watching. They watched it over as position groups. They want to be great and that’s the start. Now they’ve got to go do it. They can live in this misery or they can take the evidence and what they just saw and fix the problems they need to fix to move us in the right direction.”
Kent State hosts St. Francis (PA) at 2:30pm Saturday at Dix Stadium.
PREVIEWING THE RED FLASH: St. Francis fell at Dayton Saturday by a score of 18-10. Outside linebacker Paul Tangelo was named Co-NEC Defensive Player of the Week for his efforts with seven total tackles, two sacks, a tackle for loss and two forced fumbles. With a coaching staff thats been together for a long time, Burns said St. Francis has “cultural sustainability.”