Kliff Kingsbury Goes to the Extreme to Eliminate Penalties

Kliff Kingsbury may not be playing the role of the laid-back big brother anymore. This off season, the Texas Tech head coach has resorted to some accountability measures that could be straight out of the Vince Lombardi coaching manual in an attempt to bring discipline to his football team.

Aside from being ranked 119^th in turnover margin last year, Tech’s biggest problem was penalties. Last season, Texas Tech was penalized for 89.2 yards-per-game ranking them last in the nation.

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Though this problem has haunted Texas Tech football since the days of Mike Leach, many seem to think that Kingsbury’s easygoing demeanor has inadvertently created a lack of discipline within his team. So this year, Kingsbury has taken a hardline stance in regards to discipline both on and off the field.

Kate Hairopoulos of the Dallas Morning News detailed many of the measures Kingsbury and his staff have taken to instill more discipline in the Red Raider football team.

"“A handful of times this offseason, the Texas Tech football team has been forced to gather at 5 a.m. to serve a punishment caused by one individual.”"

Penalties such as holding or grabbing a facemask, that happen in the flow of the game are often unavoidable as players are hustling and going full speed. However, Tech must limit the number of mental mistakes that lead to penalties like offsides, false starts, personal fouls, and delay of game flags. Those are the sorts of penalties the Red Raiders have control over.

"“We recognized as a team that we were very undisciplined last year,” said defensive end Branden Jackson on Monday at Big 12 media days. “It had nothing to do with our coaching. We were punished like everyone else is for jumping offsides, for being late to class. But we just took it to the next level. It’s just the way you live your daily life now.”"

While Kingsbury has been portrayed by the media as one step short of a fraternity president running a football program, the truth is that he has known personal discipline his entire life. Kingsbury’s father was his high school football coach and his mother was a teacher so discipline on and off the field was ingrained in Kingsbury throughout his childhood.

Now the third-year head coach is hoping he can teach his team to be disciplined in every aspect of their lives as well.

"In an ESPN.com article by Max Olson, Kingsbury admits, “As coaches, we haven’t done a good enough job, I don’t think, of holding them to a certain standards…”"

One way Kingsbury is trying to make sure his entire team is disciplined is by holding the every member of the team accountable for the mistakes of an individual player. If one teammate skips class, sends out an inappropriate social media message, or fails to properly dispose of his plate at the dining hall, the entire team suffers together.

Olson even notes that Kingsbury has turned to showing examples of successful teams in other sports to illustrate the importance of mental discipline. To highlight how powerful a team can be when it eliminates mental mistakes, Kingsbury made his team watch the NCAA men’s basketball semi-final game between the Wisconsin Badgers and the undefeated Kentucky Wildcats.

Wisconsin, a senior-laden team committed the fewest fouls and turnovers in the nation last season, helping them reach the national title game. They beat the young and undisciplined Kentucky Wildcats (which featured multiple NBA draft picks on their roster) because the Badgers made fewer mistakes.

This example made an impact on one of Texas Tech’s senior leaders, starting running back DeAndre Washington.

"“It correlates…It really boils down to the mental side and putting your teammates first. A lot of stuff can be easily avoided. I really feel like we’ve made strides on that this offseason. But we’ve got to cut out the dumb stuff. For real.”"

Texas Tech has brought in David Gibbs to coordinate its defense because his defenses have had a reputation of creating turnovers. Likewise, Kingsbury has emphasized that whomever he names the starting quarterback (Davis Webb or Patrick Mahomes) will be the player that best takes care of the football. That is the plan for fixing one of Tech’s two fatal flaws: turnovers.

To correct the team’s other fatal flaw, penalties, Kingsbury is resorting to every tactic he can think of.

"“We address it in any which way we can,” Kingsbury said to Olson."

If the Red Raiders can simply be average in the turnover and penalty department, the nightmare of 2014’s 4-8 record is unlikely to be repeated in 2015.

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