Jeff Reinebold can look back on a long football coaching career: The 60-year-old has trained players in the Canadian CFL as well as in college – at Louisiana Tech, SMU and Hawaii among others – for many years.
During the big SPOX College Football Theme Week, SPOX spoke exclusively with Reinebold, who now works as Special Teams Coordinator of the British Columbia Lions again in the CFL: About the special features of college football, about football in Reinebold’s adopted country Hawaii – and about the chances of Johnny Manziel, who has also been playing in the CFL for a few weeks.
SPOX: Mr. Reinebold, right to the start: How would you explain the fascination of college football, especially compared to the NFL? What makes it so unique?
Jeff Reinebold: Tradition is one thing. The other aspect: nobody graduates from the Chicago Bears or the Dallas Cowboys. But if it’s the school you went to – and that’s a special time in your life, you leave home for the first time and often you make new friends for life – all these things matter. Moreover, the story is really gripping. One can go back to President Roosevelt, who at the turn of the century was thinking about abolishing sport because it was too brutal and rules were finally changed. College football became part of American culture; similar to football in Europe, where generations of fans have been loyal to a team because they grew up there and it is so deeply rooted in culture. Especially in the South, where football is more religion than sport, the passion of the fans for the game is hard to describe. For example, up to 100,000 people come to the University of Alabama Spring Game – an internal team game! That would be like 100,000 fans coming to a training match from Bayern Munich. Unbelievable!
SPOX: Is it also different from a coach’s perspective? Does it make a difference whether you train at college level or with the pros?
Reinebold: It’s definitely different in that you’re dealing with a different age group, of course. You recruit players who are about 18 years old and they go at about 22, so you not only train them, you also help them through a difficult time in their lives. When they’re learning what it means to be a man and stand on their own two feet. This is something completely different. In addition, work as a coach at college level has changed, and recruiting has become even more important. You have to be able to recruit good players, and at the same time every high school player thinks he can become a pro – and that’s not realistic. And of course your players have to attend their courses and pass their exams at the same time; it’s a completely different job because of the other things you have to do.
SPOX: How does the direct interaction with players among the professionals change?
Reinebold: The professionals are men and business. Ultimately, you make business decisions. Of course you train the players too, but it’s a much drier, I’d say a tough business. They say yes: the more you can, the longer you can hold on. But the reality in professional business is: nobody stays forever. Doesn’t mean college isn’t serious. But here we’re talking about boys who make a living from it and feed their families.
SPOX: And on the field? Where are the biggest differences? After all, we still regularly see players who perform well in college but have problems in the NFL – or don’t make it at all. Is it just the increase in level, or is the game really so different in your eyes?
Reinebold: There are two things you have to be clear about: Only about one percent of high school players will even get the opportunity to sign a professional contract. The number of players who are good enough is already very small, even at the highest level like in the SEC. Here we have about 100 players per team and maybe four or five of them will play professional football. On the one hand, it’s exactly what you say, the level is just incredibly high on the next level. Another aspect is the fact that college football and the NFL have really changed and evolved away from each other.
SPOX: You mean tactical and schematic?
Reinebold: Exactly. College football today is completely different from 20, 25 years ago. Zone reads, RPOs – the way the game is played and what teams focus on is still very different from the NFL. Football in Canada is probably closer, you see more creativity and the quarterback is exposed to more risks. Don’t let’s not get along: Zone Read isn’t bad per se and I think Kyle Shanahan (49ers Head Coach) said it very well a few days ago: Zone Read is great – if your quarterback stays healthy. These guys are million dollar investments and you only have three quarterbacks in your team; you can’t constantly expose the quarterback to these hits. It’s a little different in college: There are not only 85 to 100 players, but usually also five or six quarterbacks. It’s more affordable to expose the quarterback a little more to some risks. At the professional level, this is very dangerous. That makes the game different.
SPOX: And it has an effect on the character of a quarterback…
Reinebold: … that is the other aspect. The development of a quarterback is definitely slowed down by all these things – the Zone Read, Spread Offenses and so on. These guys don’t have to do what the NFL requires them to do. That’s why it’s so difficult to evaluate college quarterbacks: The field of activity is quite different. That’s why you always see good college prospects that seem lost on the next level. Christian Hackenberg is such an example; at Penn State he was a good player, he was just fired from the jets a few weeks ago – without playing an NFL snap.
SPOX: You already mentioned the run pass options, which of course played a major role last season. Why does it often take so long for the NFL to adopt such a concept – although it undoubtedly helps the quarterback enormously?
Reinebold: After all, football is a game of trends. If you look at the story of the game, you can see that this has always been the case. One thing comes into the league and works, then it’s the hottest topic and everyone copies it. Subsequently, the coaches on the other side of the ball begin to study this innovation and ultimately develop schemes to counter it. There are always trends: The cowboys brought the shotgun formation back to the NFL under Tom Landry and suddenly everyone used them because they can protect the quarterback better. The run and shoot offense came into the league with the Houston Oilers and the Detroit Lions, and these teams initially partially dismantled their opponents. Some of these elements can still be found in the NFL today, but Defensive Coordinators found the gaps in the system here too. There must always be an antidote in the end. This will also be the case with RPOs: The more coaches see it, the more often it is studied in the offseason. Defensive coordinators will find answers.
SPOX: Do you think that college coaches often have to work with less quality overall? Is that why they need to be more creative?
Reinebold: One of the reasons college football is more forward-thinking in terms of creativity and ideas, especially in the offense, is the way the whole game is structured. If you have these big squads, you can also have players who specialize in certain things. You can have more depth in the quarterbacks, which doesn’t work for the pros. But yes, if we look back in history, let’s take option football as an example: it was developed, one could say, in the south, in Texas with the Wishbone Offense. All in all, this was just another way to set up a run game when a team was otherwise not good enough to move the ball without it.
SPOX: You see that more often, right? Teams at college level develop ideas to compensate for weaknesses.
Reinebold: Yes. The Run and Shoot Offense is another very good example of this. Mouse Davis developed the Run and Shoot using the concepts of a high school coach. He then installed this offense at Portland State – because it was the only way for him to move the ball. They didn’t have a chance to recruit the players who got Oregon or Oregon State. So they couldn’t just play the T or I formation that was the standard of the time. They simply weren’t good enough for that. But he could very well find smaller players who had good qualities but weren’t big enough for these other systems. And he could find quarterbacks who wanted to throw the ball. So he developed a football style that, to be honest, revolutionized the game.
SPOX: Same as option football.
Reinebold: Well, you were looking for a way to make a run game when you weren’t good enough to get rid of your opponent. One way to make up for that: You don’t block one of the defensive lines, you read it. This allows you to send an additional blocker elsewhere. What you will see more and more here, and that has already begun: Defenses will start attacking the quarterback. Defenses will also find more ways here.
SPOX: In a sense, the more extreme version of Zone Read is the triple option, but we are already seeing some versions of it in the NFL – the Panthers, for example, played it last season. Shouldn’t teams use them more often?
Reinebold: One thing NFL fans need to understand is that: NFL coaches have all the time and means to study the game. As soon as the offseason begins, coaches receive various projects. For example, to watch every zone read play of the past season. There is so much information and coaches study and dissect so many things in the offseason today – that may be a certain play, a certain down, a formation, or something else. That’s why the game is constantly evolving.
SPOX: You’ve trained both sides of the ball: would you rather play against a mobile quarterback or a better pocket register? Which one is harder to defend?
Reinebold: Of course, everyone brings their own challenges. If a quarterback has the skills to expand a play and make it dangerous as a runner, you have to defend him differently – you can’t be so risky and when he leaves the pocket, your linebackers and defensive backs have to do what we call “plastering”; simply put, they have to stay on their man. Russell Wilson is a good example. He’s extremely good at creating things outside the pocket itself. This puts the defense under enormous pressure, every defender has to be extremely disciplined and must not leave his coverage. Too often, the defense starts targeting the quarterback when he scrambles.
SPOX: And the more traditional pocket quarterbacks?
Reinebold: A great dropback quarterback causes other problems. We’re talking about player types like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, against whom you have to be extremely creative when it comes to hiding your defense. You have to present them with completely different looks to confuse them. And you have to attack their wide receivers.
SPOX: So play more press coverage?
Reinebold: Among other things. The Patriots managed to beat one of the most dynamic offenses of all time – the “Greatest Show on Turf” – in the Super Bowl. How? They have beaten up their wide receivers in a figurative sense. They attacked her hard, pushed her around – and in the end the NFL adjusted the rules. Another example of how the game is constantly evolving. This also applies to the line-up: Today the Slot Corner is one of the most important players. He used to be the fifth defensive back, usually a good special teamer with some snaps in obvious passing downs. Today he plays more than one of the starting linebackers.
Page 1: Reinebold on college influences in the NFL, trends and quarterbacks
Page 2: Reinebold on football in Hawaii and Johnny Manziel in the CFL