Offseason Interview Series: Mike Cummings and the Offensive Line

@MattSchonvisky

In the game of football, success begins and ends, in most instances, with the play of the offensive and defensive lines. To say the o-line was inconsistent for UConn in 2014 would be kind, but they also had their moments and showed improvements as the year went on. The inconsistencies, however, were too much for longtime assistant Mike Foley to survive, as he has been replaced by Mike Cummings, who moved over from offensive coordinator.

I had the chance to sit down with him to talk about his new position, as well as last year’s performance of the group he will oversee. 

“Probably the positives from last year were the improvement of the techniques, the development of the offensive line and the improvement of their chemistry as they worked together,” Cummings said inside the Burton Family Football Complex. “We weren’t necessarily fundamentally sound early. We made some progress in our fundamentals, which led to schematic improvements and I think that’s where we’re going.”

Cummings is happy with the chemistry the guys have and it’s only gotten better since the loss to SMU in December.

“Once you create a chemistry because guys have played together, the chemistry isn’t just on the field, it’s off the field, [as well],” he noted. “You get to a point in an offensive line where you’ve got to make calls, you have to tell each other what you’re going to do based on the defensive movements and so forth. It gets to the point where the guys have played together enough, they almost can make their own calls out there. Well, we aren’t quite at that point, clearly, with how much inexperience we have, but we are making progress in the fact that we all know what the calls are, so we’re going in the right direction.”

Cummings mentioned inexperience and that was the case up and down the roster at the position, a year ago, as only Alex Mateas and Gus Cruz were upperclassmen. There will need to be young guys that come on the scene and take hold of a spot this season. Who will that be? Well, I asked the new position coach exactly that.

“Who’s going to take the next step? Dan Oak, Andreas Knappe, Trey Rutherford, Tyler Samra, you want me to name them all? Because I’ll name every guy,” Cummings joked. “There’s a threshold, there’s a level by every player and we expect them to go beyond that right now. And they are going to do that. That is part of our culture, that’s how we’ve been coaching and that’s how they are trained, in every aspect in this building. They all have something to do. There’s nobody that we can say, ‘okay, this guy is good enough.’ And if there was? We would push them harder and get more out of them. And that’s what we have to do. Our job is to make them as good as they can be, on and off the field and that’s what we’re going to do.”

As far as specific players who will rise above the rest?

“I couldn’t tell you who’s going to do this or who is there,” he said. “Who do I like? I like the guys that played last year, that were freshmen. It’s a shame that we had to play freshmen, but what a great thing to have, now that the young guys have played. You know, being young and being inexperienced is necessarily two different things. You can be young and be experienced because we have that right now. So that’s the good news. You have Trey Rutherford and Ryan Crozier, they played.”

One other player who has played and is still learning on the fly, is tackle Andreas Knappe.

“He’s smart, he’s tough and he has tremendous work ethic, those are the three qualities,” Cummings raved. “He’s a high achiever. He’s not going to like mediocre people, he really wants nothing to do with them and he’s very coachable. He’s not interested in the swirl of anything outside of his game. He comes to this building and wants to get better, but remember now, the academic center is this building too, so he comes here to get better in everything he does. The weight room is in this building, so he comes here to get better in that area too. He’s very conscientious and he’s very mature.”

Knappe played a big part in an area that saw the Huskies improve as 2014 progressed, pass protection.

“It’s a combination of things, it’s experience, but a lot of it had to do with instruction and technique,” Cummings said. “We’re talking about getting it down to the smallest common denominator for these guys. That’s what has to happen, you have to break it down. Let’s face it, Alex Mateas is going to understand things differently than Ryan Crozier, so bring it down as far as you can. The older player, you can take him on the side and help him out, but the younger player is not going to be missing out if you do it that way.”

What did the coaches do differently to aide in that success towards the end of the season?

“We changed up some techniques in the way we did things, in our instruction and tried to slow it down,” he continued. “We tried to simplify the things we were doing and give them more opportunities in practice. Football is a game of repetition, I don’t care what position you play. Did you know in football that the only position on the field that has to play full speed with the ball behind them, is the offensive line? So if you’re going to tell a guy to play full speed, with the ball behind him, he better know where the ball is. So if you’re not drilling him, not necessarily just how to block it, but where that ball is and where it’s going to go, you’re not going to be very good.”

Cummings will also serve as co-offensive coordinator to the incoming Frank Verducci, who joins the Huskies, from Northern Iowa.

“As all of our assistants are, we are here to serve one another, serve the coordinator and serve our head coach,” he said. “Really, it’s whatever Frank [Verducci] needs. Generally, the way it has worked, is in terms of run game, pass protection and how we’re going to attack defenses from a blocking standpoint. But if Frank calls me to do another job, I’ll be happy to do that too.”

The Huskies staff will have a chance to get accustomed to their new roles shortly, as spring practice begins next Saturday, March 7th.

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