Jan. 16, 2009
ORLANDO, Fla. - On Friday afternoon, UCF head football coach George O'Leary formally introduced his new offensive coordinator, Charlie Taaffe, to the central Florida media in a marathon 52-minute press conference which touched on a plethora of topics. Here are a selection of O'Leary's thoughts on Taaffe and Taaffe's thoughts on his new position.
"I've known Charlie since the late `70s. I took my time hiring a coordinator because there's a lot of flash in the pans out there that have one good year and all of a sudden they're being elevated all over the place. I wanted someone to come in that has run a lot of different systems and not just one. (I wanted someone) who had knowledge of not just the drop back game but the option game and all phases of football. I think college football has changed. It has become a wide open game, but it still comes down to blocking and tackling. I wanted to bring somebody in that could deal with all phases of what we may have to do and what we may not have to do. I wanted someone who had experience attacking all of the different schemes of defense that we're seeing and utilizing personnel."
"I didn't make a quick decision. I had a lot of people calling and trying to get involved in it."
"I always respected what Charlie has done because I've been on the other side of the line trying to defense what he was doing at Maryland. I thought he attacked the defense. When you look at offensive coaches, are they just calling plays or are they attacking the defense and putting an extra guy where you're short a guy? I always thought that they did a good job of that."
"He's had a lot of experience with quarterbacks and I was real happy to get him. I didn't think he was going to be available." (Taaffe recently interviewed to be the head coach at Army)
"Charlie is someone I was interested in because he has a varied experience from the wide open Canadian game to when he was at The Citadel and it was all option, wishbone sort of stuff. He's had his hand in a lot of things and that's what I wanted to bring in. I didn't want to bring in one guy with one system because all it takes is to lose one or two guys within that system and you have no system. That's what happens to a lot of teams. They bring a guy in and he knows that system and all of a sudden that system's not working and they're out looking for another guy. I wanted to bring in somebody who had some experience with a lot of different things who could evaluate the talent base, assess it and make decisions on what we have to do to score points."
"Orlando, Florida? Great white north? I'm coming! I'm here. So it wasn't that hard for me to get here. I'm very excited about this opportunity. (O'Leary) and I have known each other a long time. I've been in this game a long time. Hopefully we'll try and minimize the mistakes here and shorten the learning curve for our athletes."
"This is a tremendous place. I was blown away when I saw what UCF has to offer. Number one, it is an outstanding university, one of the up-and-coming largest universities in this country. It is one of the great destination spots in this country for people to come and visit. And then are the athletic facilities. I didn't realize exactly what has transpired here over the short period of time since (O'Leary) has been here. When you're taking a job, in general terms, and looking at opportunities, I was blown away by what I saw here. The opportunities and potential here is limitless."
"I hope what I can bring here is some stability and consistency in developing an offense that will serve our football team well and give us a chance to be consistently competitive at the highest levels of Conference USA. We want to continue to build championship caliber teams. We had a taste of it in '07 and obviously there were some issues in '08 on the offensive side of the ball. We're going to have to address those things. We've got a great challenge ahead of us in a short period of time. One thing in coaching, you're always fighting time. The clock is always ticking from the day I arrived here."
"My job is simple on some respects. One, the fact that the rest of the offensive staff has all ready been here is going to shorten my learning curve in getting to know the personnel. At the same time, I don't want to go in with any predisposed opinions about players. I want to give everybody a fresh start and be able to evaluate what they do. I'm not a potential guy. I'm a performance guy. I want to give guys an opportunity to start off on a clean slate and evaluate based on what they actually do on the field and in their offseason preparation to find out who the committed guys are."
"My job is to assess the talent and to evaluate and, as we develop our offense and put our offense together, to put people in position to be successful. My job is to set people up for success and not failure. Whether that's a two-back offense, a one-back offense, and empty backfield, run the ball, throw the ball, all of those things come after you assess and evaluate what you're strengths are. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses that you have to develop and work on."
"Our offense will be a total offense. My job is to set our people up for success and not failure and to have the adaptability and flexibility within this big system to determine what our guys can actually do best and make sure we get the ball in the playmakers' hands. There's a lot of different ways to do that. That's my responsibility is to assess, evaluate and set the guys up for success with enough diversity. You have to be able to both run and throw the football in today's football. There's no mistake about that. They give you 100 yards of vertical depth and 53 yards of width. We want to be able to use all of the space they give us. They give us a full field to work with and we want to be able to exploit and attack all areas of the field. (We want to) try to get our playmakers the ball in space out where they can make plays and get them away from the box. Whether it's running the ball, whether it's option football, wide receiver screens, I want a diverse offense. I want one that's flexible and I want one that has the ability to attack all areas of the field. That's philosophically where I'm coming from in a nutshell. Obviously the details we will be working on as soon as recruiting is over and we can get in the staff room and get the coaches together and start putting the plan together of exactly what I just talked to you about in general terms."
"Recruiting is number one right now. I've been putting a preliminary playbook together, a rough draft for spring with the terminology that I'm familiar with. (Terminology is) one thing that is not going to be an extensive change as I come out of the same tree as coach O'Leary. The Georgia Tech offense under Ralph Friedgen was the offense that I coordinated at Maryland. I then went to the University of Pittsburgh and worked with Dave Wannstedt and (former Baltimore Raven's coach) Matt Cavanaugh. That offense came from Brian Billick which is very similar to what we're doing here and what I've done at Maryland in terms of formations and terms and plays and how we install our offense. There's going to be a lot of carry over. It's not going to be a totally foreign offense to the coaches and, most importantly, to the players."
"It's not just something where you flick the light switch on. It's a process. Where I have to be smart is, as a coach, you're always wanting to do more. As long as your players are learning and responding and progressing, you keep challenging them. Once they hit that wall, or that learning curve where it's too much, then you've got to pull the reigns back a little bit. It's not so much what I know. It's about what the players can do and the players can execute. Coach (O'Leary) said the operative word. We want to be aggressive. We want to be attacking in our style. A confused player cannot execute. There's a balance there between having enough in your system to challenge the defense - which you have to have because the guys on the other side of the ball are pretty smart - and, at the same time, you can't overload your players. You can't have paralysis by analysis and get that deer in the headlights look where they can't absorb everything. That's where you've got to pull back a little bit. Once they get it, then you can go on and add a little more. Basically, this spring, I just want them to understand what we're trying to accomplish philosophically. We want to be aggressive. We want to be attacking. We want to finish every play. We want to finish every drive."
"From what I'm hearing, one of the issues coming out of last season may have been a confidence problem with the offense with a lot of young guys getting their first test in battle in game conditions. We want to have some competition in the practices. We want them to improve their mental toughness and fight their way through things. When you hit that wall, you have to go on to the next step. We don't want to hit that wall and fall back. `Finish' is going to be a key word. We want to emphasize that on the practice field with the offensive drills that we do and finish everything that we do."
"I had heard through coaching circles that the campus facilities and the university had been significantly upgraded and when I came down here with my wife, I was just blown away by what has happened here over a very short period of time. Since I was last here (in the late `90s), it's remarkable the growth here."
On inheriting an offense ranked 119th in the nation out of 119: "There's only one way to go. I'm not interested in committing professional suicide. I said to coach O'Leary, `we've known each other for a long time. We're friends and have a great relationship. Ff this thing doesn't work out, will you still like me?' He said `absolutely, and I'll miss you too.' We've got to get this thing done. I know there's an urgency. Coaching is about challenges. I know where we've been and I'm a guy who looks ahead. We're just going to work hard every day and make this as good as we can and get better and improve a little bit each day. There's reasons for everything. You can make them sound like excuses but I'm not interested in excuses. This is a bottom line business. I've got a job to do and I have confidence that we'll get it done. We'll improve and be a very competitive offensive football team."