4C z FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019 z USA TODAY SPORTS
OXNARD, Calif. – “A quarterback
walks into a bar” sounds like the begin-
ning of a bad joke.
It’s also a scene defensive coordina-
tor Rod Marinelli has shown Cowboys
players the night before games.
In this animated scene, Marinelli
shows the team whichever quarterback
the Cowboys will face the next day walk-
ing into a bar. Windows line the bar’s
walls. All of a sudden defensive lineman
Tyrone Crawford pops out of one win-
dow. Linebackers Sean Lee, then Leigh-
ton Vander Esch, then Jaylon Smith
emerge from doors. The quarterback
has nowhere to go.
And thanks to what the team calls
“Marinelli Madness,” Cowboys defend-
ers watching the clip have a new way to
visualize the technique they’ll need at
kickoff. Marinelli has been conceptual-
izing these animations since before
some of his players were born.
“You’ve got to be creative as a teach-
er,” Marinelli says. “The last thing you
want as a student is some guy boring
you and just giving information. Our job
is to create a lively environment, change
the environment.”
Marinelli’s strategies were effective
in 2018. His Cowboys defense ranked
seventh overall last season and fifth
against the run. It contained a Saints of-
fense averaging 31.5 points to 10 in a Dal-
las win. And the defense stifled a Sea-
hawks run game averaging 160 yards
(league best) to 73 in a divisional-round
win.
But as the Cowboys pursue their first
NFC Championship Game berth since
the 1995 season, the team will need its
defense to repeat last year’s swagger.
Marinelli has a few ideas to ensure
that.
‘It’s just visualization’
The 24-year NFL coach and six-year
Cowboys defensive coordinator de-
scribes himself as “just a different cat.”
He limps quickly from drill to drill in
practice, intent on instilling a lively en-
vironment as he teaches his defense to
master technique and attack an offense
with a mind-set so singular that the en-
vironment does not matter.
“It’s just visualization,” said Kris
Richard, the Cowboys defensive backs
coach/passing game coordinator.
“You’ve got to see yourself having a
great impact.”
Marinelli often uses animations of
animals to send that message.
Sometimes, Marinelli Madness fea-
tures a cheetah chasing a gazelle to il-
lustrate the speed a pass rush demands.
Marinelli shows a bull turning a corner
as an example of how his defensive line-
men should drop their shoulder and
turn their heads inside when coming
around to rush. Marinelli never illus-
trates his players as antelopes – “we
don’t like antelopes,” he says – and in-
stead designates receivers as antelopes
whom his defenders chase down. Mari-
nelli does like sheep. He wishes he could
put one on the Cowboys’ 53-man roster.
“Sheep could come in and be a hell of
a under (tackle),” Marinelli said. “Sheep
work all day. Give them water and here
we go.”
The amusing clips help the team re-
focus the night before each game. Mari-
nelli’s preseason and weekday film ses-
sions are engaging, too, players say.
“He makes you almost realize (a tech-
nique) in a different way other than
football but still relates to football,” line-
backer Justin March-Lillard said. “It can
be a Tuesday and we don’t play until
Sunday, but we’re fired up about just
how he goes about life in general.”
In training camp, Marinelli hammers
each defensive installation initially the
night before he wants players to incor-
porate it into practice. Before morning
walk-through, he shows them a series of
film cutups to illustrate a technique
from his system across years, body
types and game scenarios. The film
reels include Hall of Famers and Super
Bowl champions whom Marinelli has
coached – Warren Sapp, Simeon Rice –
but also current Cowboys like lineback-
er Sean Lee nailing a read and corner-
back Byron Jones mastering a tackle.
Players know they’ve grasped a tech-
nique if their performances merit a spot
in the reel of players Marinelli has
coached since before some of them were
born.
“Really, the goal is to make some ofthat film, make his cutups,” said Woods,
who made a few in 2018. “You can tell
some of them are real old. He has some
old, old people doing it.”
Marinelli himself isn’t young. At 70,
he’s 40 years older than offensive coor-
dinator Kellen Moore and 30 years older
than his defensive partner-in-crime,
Richard. Fifteen seasons have passed
since Marinelli coached the Buccaneers
while Jason Garrett, now the Cowboys’
head coach, suited up as backup quar-
terback. But players and coaches across
the Cowboys organization say he trans-
lates age and experience into strong
convictions that he doesn’t let go stale.
He has helped develop draft picks
like 2014 second-rounder DeMarcus
Lawrence, who’s riding a two-Pro Bowl
streak, and 2015 second-rounder Randy
Gregory, who has been effective when
not suspended for violating the league’s
substance abuse policy. And Marinelli is
good for recruiting. Rookie defensive
tackle Trysten Hill spent his 21st birth-
day with Marinelli, who Hill says coach-
es him the way he wants to be coached.
Newly acquired defensive end Robert
Quinn said Marinelli’s “freestyle” de-
fensive line strategy helped convince
Quinn he wanted the Dolphins to trade
him to the Cowboys rather than to the
Saints in March. Quinn was expected to
start at right end in Gregory’s place after
61 ⁄ 2 sacks and 15 quarterback hits for Mi-
ami in 2018, though he was nursing a
hand injury.
That doesn’t mean Marinelli goes
easy on his players. He called Hill the
“caboose” of training camp after the
Central Florida product left Dallas’ first
(non-padded) practice with dehydra-
tion. Days later, Marinelli said Hill stillwas “not quite to the dinner table” of the
train, and even that table is “not the en-
gine.” Marinelli isn’t afraid to conduct a
critique but “you don’t take offense by
it,” Quinn said he learned this spring.
“He’s coaching everyone like that,”
Quinn said. “It’s coming from the heart
and he just wants you to succeed. So you
can’t take it personal. Just correct your-
self and don’t let it happen again.”
Lawrence, who has 25 sacks across
the two seasons, calls
the coordinator a “relentless” teacher.
“He demands greatness,” Lawrence
said. “He takes the ceiling off you and he
demands that you grow. Even if you
don’t think you have it in you, you still
have it in you.”‘We have to be better’The Cowboys enter 2019 under the
specter of their divisional loss to the
Rams. Through the regular season in
2018, the Cowboys allowed 329.2 yards
per game. In the 30-22 Jan. 12 playoff
loss, Los Angeles gashed them for 459
yards.
“You don’t like to finish the season
that way, but in reality we did,” Marinelli
said. “So now we take off.”
The plan: Return the stingy run de-
fense, frenetic quarterback pressure
and mostly solid secondary coverage
that drove their success in 2018. Hawk
the ball more effectively to improve on
an average of 1.1 takeaways per game
that 20 teams bested. Twenty-six teams
forced interceptions on throws more of-
ten than the Cowboys did.
“It matters,” linebacker Jaylon Smith
said of the infrequent takeaways. “We
have to be better.”
Marinelli preaches the same mes-
sage. He sends it through aggressively
repetitive pointers on getoffs, pad level
and reacting to stimuli. He sends it
through daily directives on each line-
man’s alignment, assignment, key and
technique.
And come September, he’ll send it
through another season of Marinelli
Madness.
Returning players have some idea
what to expect. They anticipate Packers
quarterback Aaron Rodgers will again
be displayed in a well — keep him in the
pocket! — in an Oct. 5 film session, and
that the bulls will be back. After videos
surfaced of Redskins cornerback Josh
Norman leaping over bulls this summer,
Lawrence began hoping Marinelli will
add Norman to the bull animations this
season.
And defenders know to be ready for
another quarterback-in-the-bar sce-
nario. God help the quarterback who
ends up there, Lawrence says.
“We lock the quarterback in,” Law-
rence said, “and you know we’ve just got
a group of (defenders) in there ready to
rumble.”Marinelli mastermind behind star ‘D’
Jori Epstein
USA TODAY
Cowboys defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli says of his creative teaching
methods: “The last thing you want as a student is some guy boring you and just
giving information.”MATTHEW EMMONS/USA TODAY SPORTSLOS ANGELES – The recurring tight
shot was almost painful. The TV cam-
eras kept coming back to Chip Kelly,
staring from the sidelines as the game
plan unraveled in front of him. It seems
laughable now, but in the moment –
with his Oregon Ducks on the wrong end
of one of those impressive, BCS-busting
performances by Boise State – people
wondered if the first-time head coach
might be in over his head.
Ponder that scene from 2009 as you
consider Kelly’s demeanor throughout
2018 – and now, too, on the eve of his
second season with UCLA. In his return
to college football after four years in the
NFL, Kelly’s Bruins lost their first five
games and floundered to a 3-9 finish –
two more losses than in his four years at
Oregon. Add a decidedly unsexy recruit-
ing haul, and already there are ques-
tions about whether Kelly – who was in-
disputably seen as the home-run hire
during the 2017 coaching carousel – has
what it takes to get it done in Westwood.
But that’s not reckoning with the sit-
uation Kelly inherited at UCLA. Or with
his track record, either.
That Thursday night in Boise, a 19-
loss, was compounded immediately af-
ter, when Oregon running back LeGar-
rette Blount punched Boise State’s By-
ron Hout. In sum, it was a bad night.
But it quickly became apparent those
tight shots of Kelly were not indicative
of, well, much of anything. Instead, it
was our first glimpse of a guy whose
steady state is stoic. Whose public com-
ments are routinely delivered in a high-
speed New England monotone, punctu-
ated by the occasional zinger. And who
adheres to the adage about never letting
‘em see you sweat. Kelly’s demeanor
that first time out in 2009?
“You can’t be concerned, when you’re
in that position, of what other people
think about what you’re doing,” he says
by way of explanation.
To anyone who has followed Kelly’s
career, this much is abundantly clear:
He seems truly unconcerned what any-
one else thinks.
“You should focus and worry about
winning,” he says, “as opposed to what
people are talking about.”
Kelly is referring specifically to the
perception of the Pac-12, but it’s consis-
tent with his stance on, well, every-
thing. Maybe we should wait just a little
before deciding how this experiment
will go. The challenge of revitalizing
UCLA’s program presents as different,
more difficult task than the situation
Kelly inherited a decade ago in Eugene.
That first Oregon team was loadedwith talent, recruited during Mike Bel-
lotti’s tenure (which included Kelly as
offensive coordinator). When Bellotti
stepped aside, Kelly was promoted into
a very nice situation. “I’d been there for
two years,” Kelly says. “I knew how
things were. If I was going to tweak
something, I knew what it was like in
the past. It wasn’t like that here. It was
all new. They players were new to us,
and we were new to the players.”
After that loss to Boise State, the
Ducks went on to win the Pac-10 and
reach the Rose Bowl for the first time in
15 years. In four seasons under Kelly
from 2009-12, Oregon was 46-7. The
Ducks won three Pac-12 championships
and played for a BCS national champi-
onship, all while employing a spread of-
fense at warp speed.
“He innovated the game,” running
back Joshua Kelley says. “He innovated
college football, for sure. So him coming
(to UCLA), it was crazy.”
What followed has not been. Kelly
swept into Westwood and began install-
ing his version of culture change. Where
his Oregon teams were taught to “win
the day,” the Bruins embrace the mantra
“habits reflect the mission.” He says
they largely did. But UCLA was anything
but a turnkey operation. The Bruins
played 21 true freshmen in 2018, and it
showed. They ranked 98th nationally in
scoring and near the bottom of the
Pac-12 in defense.
“It was as expected,” former UCLA
coach Rick Neuheisel says. “The roster –
there’s always a transition when a coach
enters. There’s guys that are gonna buy
in and there are gonna be (others) who
are, ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ that don’t fit the
system. ... They were without a quarter-
back. So now you didn’t have any of thepieces. So it was kind of ‘as expected,’ in
my mind.”
Kelly points to progress in the second
half of last season as important in the
program’s development. After their
worst start to a season since 1943, UCLA
won three of its final seven games. In-
cluded – and this is important – was a
victory against USC (as a bonus, it
helped send the crosstown rival to a los-
ing season).
“The kids, at the end of the season,
understood what it took to win,” Kelly
says.
And now?
“The only thing you can’t accelerate
is time,” Kelly says. “It takes time. It
takes time to build trust. It takes time to
build relationships. So obviously, going
into Year 2, you feel a lot better than go-
ing into Year 1, because you’ve got a bet-
ter sense and feel about everything.”
Although UCLA returns 10 defensive
and eight offensive starters, the Bruins
opened preseason practices last week
with 42 freshmen and six transfers.
“We’re still gonna be really young,”
Kelly says. “Now, we’ve got a bunch of
younger guys that have experience, but
we’re still in the same boat. We do not
have (many upperclassmen). ...
“Obviously, you hope that game ex-
perience plays out for you.”
It’ll be a while yet before we know if
Kelly and UCLA will be the right fit, and
if his return to college football will ulti-
mately be a success. One thing’s for
sure: Watching the coach probably
won’t reveal any clues.
“Everybody is allowed to have an opi-
nion and everybody is allowed to weigh
in,” Kelly says. “But you have to still stay
kind of true to your vision and what it
looks like.”Chip Kelly won’t worry ‘what other people think’
George Schroeder
USA TODAY
UCLA coach Chip Kelly is working with
a young but experienced team.
KIRBY LEE/USA TODAY SPORTS