As players use the off-season for improving their skills, coaches often do the same.
Hamline Football Coach Chip Taylor, the only Black coach in the MIAC, is beginning his seventh season as head coach. Recently Taylor did his own in-service career development regimen by spending time with the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers.
“As a younger coach, I had done some NFL internships,” Taylor told the MSR, during a break as he sat behind his desk. “I did one with the [Arizona] Cardinals in 2008. I did it the next year, 2009, with the [Kansas City] Chiefs.
“When I first got the Hamline job, I tried to do it with the Detroit Lions,” recalled the coach. “I sent in my stuff and didn’t get it. That was 2015. So, I left it alone.”
This spring, however, Taylor attempted once again: “I called the [Steelers] running backs coach who I knew from Valparaiso and told him exactly what I wanted to do.”
As a result, he got to watch up-close one of the NFL’s most successful coaches in action, Mike Tomlin during the team’s OTAs (organized team activities). “He’s never had a losing season. I think that’s what doesn’t get talked about enough,” observed Taylor. “He’s a leader of men.”
Taylor said he learned a lot. “The way he did things, it’s was just very refreshing,” he said of Tomlin. “From a program standpoint, he talked about conditioning and being in supreme conditioning shape. I thought that was pretty cool.
“He wants to practice hard… little things like that, we talked about,” continued Taylor. “How he talks to his team when he presents something. How he presents it. He’s really, really good at that.”
It was a lot to take in, but Taylor said he hopes to use some of what he learned from Tomlin when he begins preseason practices at Hamline in August. Of the experience, he says he learned, “things that make me really reevaluate how I want to run my team meetings. This was a really good experience, man.”
The 2023 off season is slowly winding down, but Taylor reiterated that there’s never enough time to get everything done to prepare for the upcoming season, which begins at home on Sept. 2, versus Crown.
“We’re in the thick of June.”
Three-player draft?
The 2023 NBA draft is June 22. Minnesota has only one pick, the 53rd player, late in the second round.
Experts are calling this draft not so deep. Victor Wembanyama, a 19-year-old from France, is projected to go No. 1. Then, according to ESPN draft analysts Bobby Marks and Jonathan Givony, who gets selected next is open to speculation.
“I think there’s not a lot of separation in that four-to-10 range,” explained Givony during a media call. “You have the first tier, which is Victor. The second tier, which is Brandon Miller [Alabama] and Scoot Henderson [G League Ignite]. And then that third tier is pretty wide with the Thompson twins [Amen and Ausar] (Overtime Elite), [Cam] Whitmore (Villanova), Jarace Walker (Houston), Anthony Black (Arkansas), [Taylor] Hendricks (UCF), Gradey Dick (Kansas).”
Marks added that this year’s draft is top-heavy with underclassmen or players who bypassed college to enter the NBA draft early. “It’s a big challenge as far as finding impact players now instead of a 19- or 20-year-old that’s probably going to be really good two years from now.”
“A lot of people look at this as a three-player draft,” Givony concluded.
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