The Lions' Pride

Saw on twitter that Chris Brown of smartfootball.com (good site) was talking with guys from The Solid Verbal about various college football topics. One of those topics was McGloin and Bill O'Brien. The whole podcast is 1 hour. The McGloin stuff is around 2/3 of the way through (don't know the exact minute, as they didn't display it online).

Here's the points from the podcast (not anything really new or eye-opening, but still interesting):

Question from the hosts: They saw McGloin play against Florida in the bowl game, saw him throw nearly 7 interceptions and thought this guy would never be a college QB. Bill O'Brien came in, and transformed McGloin into arguably the best dropback passer in the Big Ten.

Chris Brown's comments:
-- First, he said he was amused about that subcategory - "dropback passers in the Big Ten" - of which there might be 3 guys who qualify.
-- Bill O'Brien was impressive with the offense, especially given the attrition.
-- The turnaround of McGloin was not a total shock. He had struggled, but he had a lot of experience, played a lot of football. Seemed like a smart guy. It was putting it all together because he's not a physical specimen. Got better coaching.
-- It's as much to do with reads and schemes as fundamentals.
-- His previous bad throws were a little late, little behind, etc. It was the little, precise things that a good coach like O'Brien was able to fix.
-- If you don't have a big arm with high velocity, then you need better anticipation, better release. That was where McGloin seemed to improve, he was anticipating guys being open.
-- Didn't have superstars around him, though had good players like their primary receiver (Robinson).
-- Talked a little about the receivers and the coach (Hixon). The WR's were much more disciplined. Before they had 10, 15-yard curls that weren't consistent. Maybe the receiver would run 9 yards in a game or 12 yards instead of a 10 yard curl. This year, with the guy O'Brien brought in (Hixon), if you're running a 12 yard curl, it was 12 yards every time. You can tell they were very well coached and very precise. That can be the difference between a completion and an interception.
-- The question with O'Brien was if he's like Charlie Weis, says he coached with Belichick and coached Brady, but now that he doesn't have those, how will he do?
-- O'Brien was able to bring in his experiences and his decisions into his first year, the pro-style stuff and the way they attack defenses. He's also been a college coach for a long time at Ga Tech, at Duke - hard to win there.
-- O'Brien did a good job catering to college kids rather than the "dumping a 700 page NFL playbook" approach.
-- We'll see if he can do it with young QB's. McGloin wasn't the most talented, but there was still something there.
-- Credit to those guys and credit to McGloin, who obviously embraced the situation and worked hard. Coaches can only lead you to the path, but you've got to walk it.

That's about it. Not word for word transcription, but got the gist of the points he talked about. Link is attached if you want to listen.