Getting to know Phil Snow ( the rumored DC)

[panther4life]

Ive had some free time this morning and decided to dig up more info on Snow. Heres what I could find that seemed worthy of sharing. I like the guy a lot more now that I've learned a bit more about him and I think you will too!

Phil Snow reading material:

https://247sports.com/college/baylor/Article/Baylor-defensive-coordinator-Phil-Snow-named-finalist-for-Broyles-Award-college-football-top-assistant-coach-2019-139712241/

Highlights:

• Was nominated as a top five finalist for the Broyles award (best assistant coach in college football) but none other than our own Joe Brady ultimately won.
• Used a 3-3-5 defense
• Took them from worst in yards per play in 2018  to first in 2019 in the conference
• Went from 9th, to 8th and then first end points allowed per game from 17-19
• Baylor's defense ranked 2nd nationally with at least 1 takeaway in 14 consecutive games at time of article (12-2-19)
• In last 14 games they improved to 31 combined picks and fumble recoveries, after only having 6 in the prior 14 games.
• Ranked 3rd nationally with 16 picks, 5th with a +12 turnover margin and 9th with 40 sacks (tied a big 12 record for sacks in a season)

This one is from 2017 https://www.kwtx.com/content/sports/Baylor-defensive-coordinator-Phil-Snow-is-a-Yoda-of-football-437196623.html

Highlights: 

• Matt Rhule was offered Oregon job in addition to Baylor. He said it was a "we" decision because he knew he was taking Snow with him. Snow said Baylor, so they wouldn't have to get on a plane to recruit people
• Clay Johnson a LB for Baylor, called him a Yoda of football, Snow never watched Star Wars, then found out Yoda was very wisea and 1000 years old. Snow then replied "well yeah, that's what I am 1000 years old". (He was born in 55, so will turn 65 this year)

https://www.wacotrib.com/sports/college/baylor/patience-you-must-have-baylor-defenders-soaking-up-wisdom-of/article_08eae924-f722-5a67-ac37-68f9832c532b.html

From July 2017

Highlights:

• This was his 41st year coaching (making last year his 43rd)
• Mentions he improved Temples defense every year, getting them to 3rd in the nation his final year there in in yard per game (282.5)
• Rhule recalls their first year at temple, they started 0-5 and had the 129th defense in the nation. Dick Vermeil called him and said "just keep believing in yourself", said people were calling for Snow to be fired, but Rhule trusted his gut to stick with him. The next year the broke the top 25 in defense. After that, Rhule says "everyone in the nation tried to hire Snow away from me" and the lesson he learned was to " be consistent, not to panic, follow a process, rather than emotion"
• One player said a difference between their previous coordinator and Snow is that the old one" would gripe at you on the field, Snow won't do that, he'll save it for the meeting room"
• Other players mentioned more contact in practice under snow. Snows thought process on that matter; " Nobody says oh that's a tough baby, when a baby is born, its the environment that you're put in, we put them in a tough environment , if your going to be tough you've got to be in a tough environment.

 

https://www.kxxv.com/sports/baylor-bears/no-excuse-to-not-trust-the-process

Start of the 19 season, 

Only real takeaway was that the Defense played great 90% of the time the year prior, but gave up explosive plays 10% of the time. The 3-3-5 switch was intended to fix that and apparently did.

Lastly here's a 13 minute press conference with him before the sugar bowl if you want to hear him speak.

https://sicem365.com/s/5938/watch-baylor-dc-phil-snow-sugar-bowl-press-conference

Whole thing is worth a watch, but if you can't here's some of the transcript:

Quote

Q. To go from 10 takeaways to 30 in a year, I know experience is part of that with your players. But what are the kind of things that you guys do in practice or the things you preach about being ball conscious to have those kind of results this year?

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: We all work I don't care, every defense in America works on turnovers, okay? But, like, we got Grayland Arnold back. And Grayland had been hurt the first two years for here, hadn't played too much. Grayland has the knack to get the football. That becomes contagious. He gets a pick. Now the next guy wants to get one. Pretty soon everybody is intercepting the football. I think it's more based on if you want to get turnovers, recruit people that create turnovers in high school. When I was in the National Football League, if guys didn't intercept the ball in college, you know what? They didn't intercept it in the National Football League either. And the same thing for us. I don't recruit a DB that doesn't intercept the football in high school. That's the first thing I watch. People bring me Oh, he can run, he can do all this. Here's a highlight tape, and there's not one interception on it. They're not going to get turnovers, are they?

So guys have a knack of stripping the football. They just do. Like Terrel Bernard has a knack to strip the football. We didn't teach him that. There's things that go into that. But the big thing is, is it contagious? If you get enough guys that like the turnover deal and have a knack for it, then the other guys start to really feed on it. You can go from 10 to 30. I'm proud of that. That's a big jump from one year to the next.

Q. You see coordinators being fired and hired and all this change. Is it more difficult the time it takes for a defensive coach to take hold than it is an offensive coach? And if yes, why?

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: Okay. Sean Payton came and talked to our football team a couple of days ago. You know what he talked to the guys about? Tackling, blocking, doing what you're supposed to, being detailed. That's still the game. So I don't think one side is harder than the other. They said we could not play defense in the Big 12. Well, you can play defense in the Big 12. I mean, the head guy at TCU, every time you say that, he gets madder than heck because they played good defense. You can play. And the better players you get, the better you play. Now, we did tweak our system a little bit to play in the Big 12 and I think it helped us. There's some things we did schematically. Put guys in the right spots and did some things. And Georgia will try to take advantage of that, too. They'll probably try to run the football against us because we have eight guys in a twopoint stance that aren't real big. So we'll see if that holds up against Georgia's offensive line. But, no, I think you need good players. You need to put them in the right spot. Guys, look at LSU. Offensively, they have been struggling forever, right? And then all of a sudden, they get the mixture of coaches and players together this year and look what they've done. So it happens at every level. You got to have the right people, the right process, and then the right coaches and the thing can come together. Does it always come together? No. I've been places where we never got it changed. But I've been in a lot of places where we have. So it depends. Q. Coach, you talked about Clay [Johnston] being out or losing him in that sixth game. But for the most part, that was really it. How big was that to keep this defense healthy? I know y'all have that "next man up" mentality. But you have done a good job of keeping those guys healthy this year.

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: Yeah, we have.

I will give you an example. Grayland Arnold missed two games. And JT Woods came in and played good for him. Chris Miller was targeting, missed a game. So we've had guys that have stepped up. So not everybody has played the 21 out of 21 starts, we say we have had 21 guys not get hurt and only Clay has been hurt. That's not true. We have had some guys miss some games for various reasons and guys step up. Again, it is vital you keep as many of your starters as healthy as possible. The three starters that have really helped us are the threedown guys. Those three guys are [Bravvion] Roy and [James] Lockhart and [James] Lynch. Those three staying healthy have really helped us. And one of the reasons is, the guys behind them, a lot of them are freshmen that are playing. We have one sophomore. I think those three staying healthy has really helped us.

Q. You touched on those three. You guys set a goal for sacks this season. You guys achieved it. But why have guys been so successful with just threedown linemen? Those guys are maulers up front, and you guys have been getting to the quarterback pretty often.

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: A lot of threemanfront teams are real conservative with the threedown guys. They're too gapping and all that. That's not really our style of football. So we're a little bit more aggressive with the threedown guys. But it's a great tribute to Frank Okam and Joey McGuire, the two that coach our Dline that we have over I think it's 23 or 4 sacks with the down line in a threeman front, which is a lot. The goal of 40, our players a year ago looked at how many sacks we had and said, Coach, we'll never get to 40. Now, they didn't tell me that until we got to 40, right? We said, Coach, we thought you were nuts. But I think we're the only team in college football right now that have played 13 games that had 40 sacks and 30 turnovers. I don't think anybody else in college football did that in FBS. We have had some other guys get sacks, too, with a pressure out of a threeman front. It's been fun to watch. We dropped eight which gives us more time to rush. But, again, you got to get there, too, with eight with three. But it's been fun to watch.

Q. Coach, first of all, another report coming out today that Matt Rhule is being considered for an NFL job. What communication has there been among the staff with that? And playing a team like Georgia that plays so much up front, tries to run the ball a whole lot, is there any sort of thought or what's sort of the game plan in terms of do you stay with three, do you bring down the fourth? How exactly are you guys planning to attack that?

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SNOW: The deal with Coach [Matt] Rhule, I prefer not to talk about that. You can talk with him about that. And just stay with the football game we're about to play.

If you want to stop the run, we all try to outnumber you in the box, whether you are in a threeman, a fourman. They do it. We do it. Everybody does it. We'll have more guys in the box sometimes, and hopefully they can block. And so will they, their defense. Now, when you do that, you better be able to playactionpass and hold up outside. So we both have those problems. That's why we play the game. That's a chess match. The big thing is can you disguise what you do so they don't know. [Jake] Fromm calls the whole game at the line of scrimmage. They put a lot on him. I even think he calls the protections. So they put a lot on their quarterback. He's really a bright guy. He's fun to watch play quarterback. So we've got our hands full.

 

[countryboi]

this staff answers the question of what would happen if you take a great college staff and bring them to the NFL. 

[jtm]

I'm so mad that this thread title isn't, "Getting to know Wade Phillips."

[trueblade]

10 minutes ago, panther4life said:

Rhule recalls their first year at temple, they started 0-5 and had the 129th defense in the nation. Dick Vermeil called him and said "just keep believing in yourself", said people were calling for Snow to be fired, but Rhule trusted his gut to stick with him. The next year the broke the top 25 in defense.

I wonder if Rhule and Vermeil maintained that relationship. I hear Vermeil might know a thing or two about being a successful NFL head coach.

[Mr. Scot]

Good reads...

Liked the "tough baby" line

[Mr Mojo Risin]

Any reason why he hasn't officially been announced?

[Squirrel]

Interesting if he will bring the 3-3-5 with him.  

[panther4life]

1 minute ago, Mr Mojo Risin said:

Any reason why he hasn't officially been announced?

No clue. I’m wondering if he’s mulling retirement? 43 years of coaching is a long damn time!

[TheSpecialJuan]

nice job

[Mr. Scot]

4 minutes ago, Mr Mojo Risin said:

Any reason why he hasn't officially been announced?

May not have signed the contract yet.

[Daddy_Uncle]

If he was going to be our DC, it would have already been announced. 

[Jon Snow]

I like to talk football over a beer with this guy.  

[Mr. Scot]

Rhule had apparently said he wouldn't be making any official decisions about former Baylor guys until they had picked his replacement. Had they picked one of the existing staff, there would have been a better chance that they'd have wanted to stay on.

They picked someone from outside, so that's a lot more fluid now.

[CamsUrDaddy]

51 minutes ago, panther4life said:

No clue. I’m wondering if he’s mulling retirement? 43 years of coaching is a long damn time!

I suspect he was in the running for the Baylor HC job. Now that it has been filled, they should be ready to announce it.