In Adams, Wahoos find a LBs coach who is all about the people

Just before spring practice began, UVa received a bit of an unexpected staff shakeup. Linebackers coach Clint Sintim, one of three holdovers from Bronco Mendenhall’s staff when Tony Elliott assembled his own, departed his alma mater for a similar role at Illinois. The move came late in the game for UVa, which had to scramble to replace a coach just days before spring practice began.

Elliott ultimately went with a familiar face, hiring former colleague Mike Adams to take the vacant role. Adams and Elliott worked together much earlier in their respective careers, serving on the same staff at South Carolina State in 2006 and 2007. From there, Elliott climbed through the ranks at his alma mater while Adams made a name for himself as a quality developer of talent at the FCS level.

“He has a ton of experience,” Elliott said of Adams at the beginning of spring practice. “He’s worked with many guys at the FCS level and developed them and helped them transition to the NFL.”

Earlier in the offseason, Adams was hired as the defensive coordinator at FCS program West Georgia, having previously coached at Mercer as a defensive passing-game coordinator. He has had one stop at the FBS level, working at South Alabama for three seasons, and has also coached at Charleston Southern.

While Adams and Elliott have a relationship and history, UVa’s head coach only selected Adams after going through several rounds of interviews with respective candidates, eventually agreeing with his staff that Adams was the right choice for the role.

“It was a very thorough process, we interviewed five guys for the job,” Elliott recalled. “At the end of the day, we felt like, as a staff, he did the best job from an interview perspective. And he gives us what we need at this moment with the transition from Coach Clint.”

Understandably, Adams was excited to have another chance to work with Elliott when the opportunity arose.

“That’s really just a long-standing friendship,” he said of his history with UVa’s big whistle. “Certainly any time you’re in the profession, you’re always talking a few times a year when you run into each other. That was almost 18 years ago that we were actually hired together and got to be on the same staff.

“Of course we were young coaches then,” Adams added. “You never know how the paths cross or if they’re going to cross again, you always hope they would, and you just watch each situation, and this one happened to be right time, the right fit.”’

While Adams is excited to get the opportunity to work at the Power-5 level, he said what attracted him to the job is the type of program that Elliott wants to run, and what the university is all about.

“It’s really about all the people that are here at the university, within the program, that surround this place,” he explained. “I knew that if Tony was asking me to take a look at this, there would be a lot of people associated with his kind of program.

“That was the impression coming in, that everybody’s not exactly what you think, but they’re the style of people and professionals that you want,” he added. “And the players, you always know that this is a highly regarded academic institution, so the players are going to be catered to that, but there’s also football here that’s really important too.”

The transition from West Georgia to UVa was a quick one for Adams, thrown right into the fire with spring practices all while trying to get to know his players and schemes.

“It’s been fast. Every day is 100 miles per hour, but you’ve got a lot of people helping,” Adams said of learning on the job during spring ball. “You get through each day, you learn each day, and some things are becoming routine. It’s been great.”

While Adams will be assigned to coach linebackers, he has a wealth of experience that should help the entire program and specifically the defense. Adams has coached defensive backs, special teams, tight ends, receivers, linebackers, and has been hired to call a defense twice, first at South Carolina State, serving in the role for seven seasons, and again at West Georgia last fall. He said the variety of experience should be a big asset to him as he tries to learn everything about John Rudzinski’s defense.

“I don’t know if it's so much the coordinator aspect, it’s more the ability that you’ve had to work in different positions and have to see things and develop things from a holistic perspective,” Adams said of the importance of his different experiences at different stops in his career. “So that when you’re coming into a program and trying to make sense of everything you’re doing schematically or the language, you can always associate it to something you’ve done and something you’re familiar with.

“I’m having to do that everyday right now until I can take a break but it’s been great,” he added. “We’re so in tune from a staff standpoint as far as what we’re trying to do on the field and off the field, it’s a process of putting it all together.”

As for what the biggest challenge has been, Adams said it’s picking up the language and calls of the D so that he can coach it better, as well as getting in tune with the day-to-day expectations for the staff.

“It’s always the language, just picking up all the pieces of the language that goes into every call and every check, and every adjustment,” he said. “Once you can get a handle on some of the language, you can relay the concepts to the players, and make sure you can actually communicate well with them. And then it’s figuring out the routine of the day, making sure you know what’s next, and you’ve got everything prepared for the next meeting, and what’s coming up the next day.”

Adams still has a lot to learn as he takes on this new role but is already working to do one of the most important aspects of any coaching position: Earning the trust and respect of the players he leads.

“These are young men that want to do right,” he said of his linebackers. “They’re going to make mistakes, they’re not always going to perform at the level you need them to that day.

“But I think as long as they think that you have their best interest at hand,” Adams added, “that you’re really trying to get them to maximize their ability, then eventually, even if you’re tough on them, and today we had to be tough on a few guys for things that were more off the field related…once they believe that you’re really their side, you can dig into them a little bit because they know you’re going to pick them right back up.”