Oregon’s speed-freak football starts on the practice field:
Oregon does no discrete conditioning during practice, no “gassers” — the sideline-to-sideline sprints that are staples in many programs — and no “110s” — sprints from the goal line to the back of the opposite end zone. The practice itself serves as conditioning. Just as they do during games, Oregon’s players run play after play — offensive sets; punt and kickoff returns and coverages; field goals; late-game two-minute drills — but at a pace that exceeds what they can achieve on Saturdays. Nick Aliotti, Oregon’s defensive coordinator, explained that the team can go even faster in practice because the “referees” — student managers sprinting around in striped shirts — spot the ball faster than any real game official would.
Trying to reach (or exceed) competition speed in training is a common goal across a range of sports. I once asked Bob Bowman, the longtime coach of Michael Phelps, why Phelps did not swim the languorous distance sets that were part of some other competitors’ regimens. “We don’t want him to swim slow in meets,” he said, “so why would we have him practice swimming slow?” John Wooden, the legendary U.C.L.A. basketball coach, was known for fast-paced practices that reduced the need for aerobic training.
But in more traditional settings, what slows things down is the impulse of coaches to stop the action and be heard. To instruct and correct. Coaches , after all, get into the business because they love a sport and want to see it played right. They have limited control during a game. Practice is when they can stop time and choreograph perfection.
Imagine the following, which you would see at a typical football practice across nearly any level: An offensive-line coach wades in after a play, puts his hands on the shoulder pads of his big left tackle and tries to correct the angle on his block or some subtle aspect of his footwork. Another play is run, and the coach says, “Better,” but he wades back in to make another small adjustment. That’s how a crisp two-hour practice becomes a three-hour ordeal.
It doesn’t happen at Oregon. Coaches sometimes pull players from the field for quick talks, but first they send in substitutes, and the plays keep on rolling. They look back at the films from each practice — identify mistakes — and then point them out in early-evening players’ meetings, which are also short.
This style has been easier for Kelly’s players to adjust to than for his coaches, most of whom have spent many more years than he has at the major college level. Aliotti, the defensive coordinator, is 56 and in his third stint on the Oregon staff. He has also coached in the N.F.L. “It’s insanity for a coach,” he said when we talked one morning after practice. “You’ve got the music blasting, you look around and your kids are dancing and you don’t want to stop the fun. But when you’re an old-school guy like me, it takes patience and change, because you want to make yourself heard. I want to correct a guy, but we’re already on to the next play. Don’t get me wrong. This has been good for us as a team. But I have to be real with you. It’s still hard for me.”
This lets them push the pace on the playing field:
College-football offenses have become more wide open in recent years, but the highest-scoring attacks tend to rely mainly on the forward pass. They are aerial circuses, like Texas Tech under former Coach Mike Leach, whose celebrated spread offense from 2000 to 2009 was so pass-first that his quarterback, in 2003, averaged about 60 pass attempts and 486 passing yards per game. By contrast, Oregon was leading the nation in scoring through 10 games this season with an attack almost evenly split between passing and rushing attempts. The run plays — because receivers are not spread all over the field at the end of a play — allow the Ducks to scramble back to the line of scrimmage and quickly snap the ball again. And Oregon sequences its plays and formations in such a way that it can push the tempo even after pass attempts. The running-backs coach, Gary Campbell, told me that if a receiver on the right side of a formation is sent on a crossing pattern to the other side of the field, Oregon coaches have already planned a formation for the next play that keeps him on the side of the field where he finished.