By Pete Pelegrin
The way new FIU special teams coach Kevin Wolthausen sees it, coaching special teams is like coaching offense or defense. In 34 years of coaching Wolthausen has worked with different units on defense and helped out coaching special teams.
However, in his first year at FIU, Wolthausen will coach solely special teams as the Panthers special teams coordinator. In the 11 years of FIU football, Wolthausen will become just second Panthers coach to be in charge of exclusively special teams. Apollo Wright was the first FIU assistant coach to solely head special teams in 2007. While some teams may pay lip service to special teams, Wolthausen was drawn to the FIU job because of the attention that will be dedicated to the kick and punt units.
“The thing that intrigued me the most about this is that I knew the importance that [FIU head] coach [Ron] Turner was going to put on special teams,” said Wolthausen, who was Purdue's defensive line coach last season. “I think if he is going to dedicate one position on the staff to just special teams I think that sends a great message to the team. The other thing that intrigued me is that as the special teams coach you are dealing with the whole team. When I was a defensive line coach or a linebackers coach I dealt with one faction of the team.”
Said Turner: “Special teams are a huge part of the game. Games could be won or lost on special teams play. I think it's important to have more of the NFL approach where one guy focuses on special teams. We're going to devote a lot of time and energy to making sure we have the right people on the field and that we have good sound simple schemes.”
As exclusively the FIU special teams coach, Wolthausen is responsible for all facets of the unit. Wolthausen says he will approach coaching special teams as if he was coaching offense or defense.
“To me special teams are no different than coaching an offense or a defensive position,” Wolthausen said. “It's just all in space. If you are a coverage unit you are playing defense. You are playing defense for the whole field so you are going to try to reduce the field to an area that you can cover. When you are returning a kick it's like an offensive play, but it's an offensive play in space. You've got to get guys blocked and you have to get the ball to where it needs to be run. Special teams are an extension of offense and defense. You have to be aggressive. You have to be attacking, but yet you got to have calculated risk taking.”
Like some other areas of the 2013 Panthers team, Wolthausen will have to fill key positions on special teams. FIU graduated kicker Jack Griffin, punter Josh Brisk and long snapper Mitch MacCluggage. Starting in spring practice, competition for the three specialist positions will commence.
“We don't have an established specialist,” Wolthausen said. “That's OK. It doesn't mean that it's bad, but we just have to evaluate what we have and put them in situations that they are going to be in in the season and see what they can do. They are young. With the new guys coming in it's an open competition. Athletically, we have some cover guys, some return guys, we just have to get them in situations where each day in spring practice is going to be a little bit of a revolving door whether it's by need or by choice where we want to take a look at this guy or that guy.”
Wolthausen will try to keep special teams simple in the spring as new schemes are installed and he evaluates the players who will figure in the competition for starting jobs in the fall.
“We won't get real fancy this spring,” Wolthausen said. “We might have two different types of punts protection-wise, two basic returns on kickoff returns. We want to be able to have a kickoff cover group that we feel good about getting down the field. We want to figure out what our kicker can do so we don't recreate the wheel. Whatever he does best is what we will try to do and get an idea on punt returns so we can get that going. Hopefully, every day we will be able to line up PAT/field goals and PAT/field goal block. So that by the end of the spring we have a pretty good feel of what's good and what we need to work on and where are we with our specialists.”
