Todd Dodge's shaky 0-3 start at SLC

[gangrene]

Prior to SLC, Dodge was 24-35 in six seasons as a high school head coach (three years at 3A, District 18 Cameron -Yoe and three at another school which I couldn't find). Few remember, but TD started off his heralded SLC coaching career with three straight losses as the team struggled to adjust to his spread offense. We would most certainly experience a similar learning curve and adjustment period so it will be important to be patient with which ever coach is chosen.

I think it's also important to note that, according to the second article, Todd Dodge's system is taught at the pee wee level so kids will have an excellent grasp of the system by the time they reach the high school level.

Here are a couple of good articles I found:

Story #1 is from 2000 http://www.trnonline.com/hsfootball00/stor...200/carroll.htm

Carroll rallies from 0-3 start to I-4A final

Andy Newberry

Times Record News

There is one thing coaches have in common with their fans. They are very results-oriented people.

So Todd Dodge certainly wasn’t counting on a 0-3 start to his coaching stint at Southlake Carroll. After all, the Dragon faithful didn’t exactly try to keep Tom Rapp from resigning after a 7-3 record in 1999.

Dodge had a spread-out offense with no running game and a resume that showed six non-playoff seasons. He also had a killer non-district schedule that kicked off with this week’s regional championship opponent, Wichita Falls High School, and followed with Class 5A Haltom, 4A power Highland Park and 5A playoff-bound Coppell.

Almost predictable, the once-proud Dragons started 0-3 as their running game was non-existent and inexperience showed up with turnovers and key mistakes.

Regardless of the schedule, the Dragon faithful aren’t any more giddy over slow starts than Vernon or Holliday fans are in the Wichita Falls area. District titles are supposed to be a given.

"Early in the year, we obviously were playing some very good people, and we were inexperienced," said Dodge, who has enjoyed his most successful season in his seven-year head-coaching career. "We felt we were getting better every week."

The results came in the fourth week with a 22-19 win over Coppell. The running game broke 100 yards for the first time, and quarterback Ricky Lay threw for 315 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

"These kids have always won," Dodge said. "You get three weeks of telling them we got to make these corrections, and we’re making progress. They get tired of hearing it, and I was getting tired off saying it."

The moral victory campaign came to a close in September, as the Dragons (9-4) have won nine of their last 10 and seven straight.

The attack once described as the "most conservative one-back offense" started rolling, putting opponents – and not Dodge – on the defensive. Lay, who has passed for 2,720 yards and 27 touchdowns, broke loose with five TD passes in a rout of Waxahachie.

The Dragons lost a 20-19 air raid to Grapevine in their District 6-4A opener, but then found the rest of the league to their liking with four wins by a combined 151-42 margin.

Carroll was back where it belonged -- in the playoffs – and the Dragons are just three wins from another state championship.

Dodge said he learned a lot of his offensive philosophy from high school coach Ronnie Thompson at Port Arthur Jefferson. He was introduced to a passing offense as a high school quarterback and threw for more than 3,000 yards in a season.

Many coaches might be hesitant to put so much responsibility on a quarterback, but Dodge believes in it.

"Our quarterbacks go through extensive training, and so much of that (decision-making) is coached into them," Dodge said.

Regardless of where they finish, Dodge’s team earned a chapter in the school’s football history book last Saturday afternoon. The Dragons fell behind Andrews, 20-0 and 28-7, but rallied with 47 points over the final 36 minutes to win 47-35.

"All three phases of our game have to feed off one another," Dodge said. "That game was a perfect example. In the first half, none of the three were evident, but then everything came together. When we are playing well, we’ve had a real strong defense, the offense has had multiple guys and our special teams have been solid."

Despite 279 pass attempts, Lay has thrown just nine interceptions this season.

"We’ve been able to protect the football, and when you play a great team like (Wichita Falls High School), you can’t afford any mistakes," Dodge said.

Kyle Brown was the known commodity for Dodge entering the season, and the star senior wideout has done everything (1,275 yards on 78 receptions) and more (184 rushing, 570 return yards). But the coach said the key was establishing some balance.

Lay has really come into his own and is one of the most dangerous passers still alive in the playoffs. He has worked to get others involved like Brian Capps (42 catches, 677 yards) and Matt Terry (18 catches, 285 yards). Capps has 10 TDs on his 42 catches, just two behind Brown’s team-leading total.

Senior running back Blake Walker leads the running game with 661 yards and 10 touchdowns. Lay is second with 249, after 99 in last week’s comeback over Andrews. Joe Hoffmans has 193 yards, Brown has 184 and Kody Haverkamp has 180.

The Dragons average 120 yards rushing and 214 yards passing. The defense allowed 300-plus yards in four of its first six games, before running off a string of five consecutive games with less than 200 allowed. Andrews scorched Carroll for 401 total yards.

The defensive leaders are weak-side linebacker John Saldi with 134 tackles, strong safety Stephen Wood (128, four turnovers), strong-side linebacker Brandon Aguiar (125) middle linebacker Drew Logan (118) and strong-side end Royal Smith (70, seven sacks). Inside tackles Cole Coan and Bryan Butler have five sacks apiece, but they will have to stop the run first against Old High.

Assistant sports editor Andy Newberry may be reached after 4 p.m. weekdays by calling (940) 720-3470 or (800) 627-1646, extension 571, 447 or 470; or e-mail him at Anewberry@wf.scripps.com.

Story #2 is from 2005 http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/.../D8C3IIKO0.html

Southlake Carroll dominating Texas high school football again

08/20/2005

By SCHUYLER DIXON / Associated Press

Todd Dodge had a losing record as a head coach when he became a candidate to take over Southlake Carroll, a program with expectations far beyond mere winning seasons.

But Bob Ledbetter, the builder of the Carroll empire, liked the way Dodge carried himself. So when the program slipped under his successor, Ledbetter turned to Dodge — and his hunch has paid off with a run of success that almost rivals his own 72-game regular-season winning streak from a little more than a decade ago.

Using many of the same tools as Ledbetter, Dodge has guided the Dragons to 66 wins in 77 games. Most staggering is how easily they've made the move up from Class 4A to 5A, going 47-1 with two state championships and their only loss coming by one point in another title game.

Proof of their elite status came last season when they had a game televised on ESPN2, then later were crowned mythical national champions. With two more games being televised this season and another regular-season streak in the works at 30, it's safe to say Dodge has restored and even enhanced the school's reputation.

"I felt an awesome responsibility, being the head football coach of this program," Dodge said. "I really enjoyed that responsibility and just really delved into the whole thing of while I'm here, we're going to try to keep the level of excellence where it's been and maybe even try to keep raising it and make sure that it keeps on going."

Perhaps Ledbetter took to Dodge because he saw some of himself.

Ledbetter coached the school from 1979-95. The Dragons won championships in '88, '92 and '93 and had a record of 112-5-1 in their eight Class 3A seasons from 1986 to '93.

He took groups without superstars and turned them into punishingly efficient units through a relentless attention to detail. Former players remember having to run 10 consecutive perfect plays before a practice could end.

"I always thought we were going to lose the game by the time the game started," said Marty Dunbar, a junior lineman on Carroll's first championship team in 1988 and now associate pastor of a Methodist church in Southlake. "We were so concerned that the other team could beat us, no matter what. Coach Ledbetter would have us so geared up."

The 72-game streak ended in Carroll's second game of 4A, sparking the onset of some growing pains in the higher classification. Ledbetter coached the first two years in 4A before becoming athletic director and hiring Tom Rapp, who went 3-6-1 his first season.

The transition from 3A to 4A was tough because the Dragons had outdated facilities and faced foes with bigger rosters and larger coaching staffs, said Robert Drake, who coached under Ledbetter and Rapp and is now an assistant to Dodge. Other teams were using players only on offense or defense, while Carroll still had many two-way guys.

As this suburb northwest of Dallas continued to grow, Carroll got more players. The growth continued so quickly that officials knew it was a matter of time before they'd be in 5A.

The facilities took a little longer to spruce up.

Carroll was saddled with "2A facilities," as Dodge called them, when he took the job in 2000. Within two years — in time for the move to 5A — the Dragons had indoor and outdoor practice facilities on campus and a sparkling new Dragon Stadium with an original capacity of 7,500, more than twice that of old Dragon Stadium.

Rapp led the Dragons to the semifinals in 1998, but resigned after the next season, when Carroll lost its last two games and missed the playoffs.

Ledbetter already had his eye on Dodge, despite his 24-35 record over six seasons, two apiece at three schools. Ledbetter knew that at each stop — Cameron Yoe, Carrollton Newman Smith and Keller Fossil Ridge — Dodge had inherited struggling or fledgling programs and always made them better. He also remembered Dodge beating Carroll three out of four times, including one of Rapp's final games.

Embracing Carroll's tradition came naturally for Dodge. He'd played at Port Arthur Jefferson, a school with a football history dating to the earliest years of the game in Texas, and in college he was the starting quarterback for the Texas Longhorns.

Dodge quickly adopted "Protect the Tradition" as the only motto his Carroll program will have. He also implemented Ledbetter's "lockdown" meeting, a two-a-day ritual during which Dodge shuts himself in a room with the varsity players and they don't leave until they are "right," as Dodge puts it.

"Todd brought a lot of the philosophies that we had — really caring about kids and really caring about the program. Taking ordinary kids and making them believe in each other," Ledbetter said. "We were very fortunate that Todd and these kids meshed together."

The kids also took right away to his most drastic change: scrapping the run-based Wishbone offense for a four-receiver, spread offense he'd been using for years. He added a no-huddle wrinkle upon arriving at Carroll.

Although the Dragons lost their first three games under Dodge, progress came quick enough. And when it was time to move up to 5A two years later, everyone was ready.

"He never skipped a beat," said Chase Wasson, the quarterback on the first 5A team. "We were ready to lock and load and prepare to win again. It wasn't, 'Oh, no, we're about to be a bigger classification.' "

Outsiders were skeptical when Carroll was put in a district with recent state title winners Lewisville and Flower Mound Marcus. The Dragons proved they couldn't be fazed by opening district play with a 63-7 victory over Marcus, then beating Lewisville 52-14.

They finished 16-0, winning by an average score of 45-14 — precisely the result of their victory against Smithson Valley in the championship game. Carroll was the first school to win a title in its first 5A season.

Dodge said Carroll sneaked up on some opponents — the very thing he, like Ledbetter before him, works so hard to avoid happening to them. He and others also believe it was simply a matter of determined seniors carrying on a winning tradition.

A key advantage to keeping the program rolling is being able to implement the head coach's system all the way through the school system. Even in the elementary schools, there are no Lions or Tigers or Bears. They're all Dragons, a philosophy Ledbetter started and Dodge embraced.

"Once you got into the system and once you got up into the middle-school level, you were pretty much taught the same scheme, the same system," said Kris Brown, who ran Ledbetter's offense for Carroll in 1993-94 and now kicks for the NFL's Houston Texans. "When you do something enough, it just becomes ingrained into what you are doing."

The support system extends beyond family and friends. Casual fans abound. Just before Dodge was hired, the school formed the Dragon Council, a group of fans without children in the school system. The original six has grown to 10.

As for families with kids in the school system, that support is the fuel that feeds everything.

"I can't wait until that first (home) game, coming out here and that whole thing right there is full of first- through sixth-graders that are screaming at certain players, just because they're Dragons," Drake said. He was looking toward a section of the stands at Dragon Stadium, which has since expanded to a capacity of nearly 10,000 thanks to expansion from a one-year stay by Dallas' professional soccer team.

"It won't be long before those (kids) there are going to be out here. There's just a love for (Carroll) green."

Dodge keeps the program humming through the offseason with an intense quarterback training program. It's hard to argue with the results: Wasson is on scholarship at Texas State, and Chase Daniel, the two-time Associated Press Sports Editors Class 5A player of the year, is a freshman at Missouri. Ricky Lay, Dodge's first quarterback at Carroll, is now a running back at Army.

This season's QB, senior Greg McElroy, has the size (6-foot-2, 210 pounds) and arm strength to make it four straight college signees. McElroy has said he has Division I offers.

It almost works like pitchers in a successful baseball farm system — put as many out there as you can, and you'll end up with some good ones. Dodge said there are 12 quarterbacks in seventh grade, and the selection process ends with two on the varsity. Dodge tells aspiring Dragons that many of them will be quarterbacks.

"They may help out at other positions throughout their career, but they're going to train quarterback," Dodge said. "It's a position that we think we should never rebuild at. We just should reload."

Sounds like the Carroll program as a whole is headed in the same direction again.

[NCMeanGreen]

Personally...I think he would be a bad choice. It is hard to translate HS success into Div IA success (historically). Someone with some IA experience would be a better candidate...even if he were an assistant.

My humble opinion of course...

It looks like some new candidates, some better qualified candidates, have been mentioned lately.

Quite frankly, though, I will support whom ever gets hired as I am just glad to see Dickey go. It was time for a regime change.

Edited December 7, 2006 by NCMeanGreen