How does one truly coach football over Zoom?

That’s a question a lot of fans have been wondering these past couple of months, as spring ball at many schools was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic and with it valuable field reps for a host of players.

At UVa, outside linebackers coach and co-DC Kelly Poppinga and QBs coach Jason Beck said last week that the Cavaliers have done all they can to try and squeeze as much as possible from the video calls.

In addition to team meetings, which Bronco Mendenhall holds every morning at 8 a.m. Eastern regardless of time zones, the players have certain expectations. In addition, they have also been taking part in position meetings.

Those calls include a wide range of topics, perhaps most notably the ability for coaches to give their players information and one-on-one feedback.

“With the outside backers,” Poppinga explained, “what I’ve done is made a script of the movements that they would make in a game. If there was some type of drop that they would do in coverage, if there was some type of pass rush move that we would make, or if there was some type of shuffle to crossover to shuffle that we do as outside backers as we fold as we call it, all I did was I made a list. There’s about 12 or 14…of the different types of movements that we would make in a game and then I sent a script out to them that they would run 12 plays in a quarter and they’d do four quarters and a play in about 45 seconds between each play and there’s a different movement in there.”

“That’s been pretty effective,” he added. “The guys have liked it. They’ve responded pretty well to that.”

Of course, the downside is that he wasn’t able to be on the field and the players aren’t able to learn off recent film.

“I would say the hardest part with this whole thing is there’s not something for them to go and do, have film on it, and then for them to be critiqued off of that,” Poppinga said. “Right now, we're watching old film, watching film going all the way back to 2017, 18, and 19 and just critiquing [what] guys did good and then watching things that we didn't do as well as this past season and making sure we're making those corrections right now.”

Beck, meanwhile, said that he’s been able to get a lot of work done remotely with his guys as well.

“We're getting eight hours in with the players [per week],” he said, “so it gives us about an hour and 15 minutes a day to meet with as quarterbacks and it's going good. Yeah, we've kind of picked up on the whole Zoom thing over the last couple months, how to work our film, how to do tests and quizzes, and conduct our meetings through that. So we're kind of making the most of all the technology and it's been going going well and the quarterbacks are learning and progressing and I feel good about it.”

Though it might seem somewhat hard to believe, he added that they can actually install a fair amount of the offense via these video meetings.

“You know, you can do quite a bit,” Beck said, “in terms of drawing it up on a whiteboard, watching film of it, talking through it, and even quizzing the guys. Obviously, the limitations are you can't get the on-field reps that we missed in spring ball. So we're not getting that learning happening on the field but we're getting a lot done that will help for when camp starts.

“For this time of year,” he added, “we're probably doing more learning than we typically would with [coaches] being out in recruiting, the players would be at home from break right now with no formal meetings. So, we're getting a lot of work done under the circumstances.”

Of course, Zoom hasn’t just been instrumental in how UVa’s coaches have been able to meet with their existing players. The Cavaliers have had a nice run of commitments this spring in large part because of the way they were able to use video calls in place of in-person visits. As such, the pandemic hasn’t slowed them down on the trail.

“Not at all now, because I think we had a great plan,” Poppinga said. “I think we were ahead of the curve. Coach Mendenhall has everything to do with that. I mean, he's always pressing us to make sure we stay ahead of other people. And I think we got ahead and used the technology that we had to be able to do some things that gave us the advantage before other people caught up to it. I think with the leadership of Coach Mendenhall, I'm not surprised at all because he was the one that was pressing the envelope continually from the very beginning [saying] ‘Let's not relax right now, this is not the time to relax. This is the time to put the foot on the pedal and let's go.’ And that's exactly what we did.

“And we I think we created a really good plan,” he added, “to help people see, help recruit, help parents see how the University of Virginia could fit them without them being here. And man, we went through a process with a lot of different guys. And there was a time there, a two-week span there, where it seemed like where we were just getting a commit like every other day. And I think a lot had to do with the process and the leadership of Coach Mendenhall.”

As the program moves forward, Zoom calls will obviously remain a fixture until players return to Grounds. But don't be surprised if they are still a factor well beyond that.

“I think the main thing that we’ve taken away from this is that we should have been using Zoom a long time ago,” Poppinga said. “Honestly, we should have been using this technology with kids that maybe have not had the opportunity or would not have the opportunity to come out to Virginia. We could do a lot of things over Zoom calls, a lot of different things, that we just never thought we could do, different things that we can show them and that we can present to them without them ever being here and it has really helped a lot of these guys make a decision without them ever being here.

“I think the biggest [thing] we're going to take away,” he added, “is that we're going to use continue to use these Zoom calls during recruiting to help players experience different things that they might not be able to experience until they get here.”

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