Editor’s note: This is the first in
a Sunday series of one-on-one
Q&As with Division I football
coaches along the Front Range.
Denver Post staff writer Tom
Kensler sat down with Colorado’s
Dan Hawkins to discuss
the upcoming season and the
beginning of August drills.
Post: The toughest part about living through a 2-10 record in your first season in Boulder?
Hawkins: Just not being able to push enough of the right buttons to win more games. I really believe, in every kid and in every team, if you’re creative enough and inventive enough and arduous enough, you can eventually find the right buttons to push to get people to achieve. When you don’t, that’s a humbling thing.
Post: Sounds like you didn’t see it coming.
Hawkins: I never do. I really don’t. And I’m not just saying that. It’s part of my nature of being successful and finding solutions. I don’t know that I’ve gone into any game thinking, “Well, maybe we can keep it close.” By the time the kickoff comes around, I’m pretty firmly convinced that we can win this football game. You never picture (2-10) in your head. That being said, things are going to happen and you just have to continue to adapt.
Post: Other head coaches coming off a 2-10 season might burn the game films. But you’ve told your team countless times to never forget 2006. Why?
Hawkins: There are a couple of things that successful people do, and I’m trying to teach these guys to be successful – not just in football, but in life. When bad things happen, you need to embrace those things and learn from them. You need to carry that message forward and not say, “Well, it was circumstance,” or “Well, I wasn’t lucky.” To me, that would be a recipe for disaster. If you take all the emotions of adversity and put that in the burner of your soul, you can use that energy to get to a better place.
Post: Anything surprise you during your first tour through the Big 12 Conference?
Hawkins: The strength of the teams, how tough it is to play at places, we knew that coming in. It’s more what I learned about the coaches. I knew some of the coaches beforehand, and it’s a very solid group of guys – very professional, very collegial, very much interested in getting a Big 12 team in the national championship picture. There is a lot of camaraderie and chemistry and energy in that direction. That’s really impressive.
Post: Keys that you’ll look for during the next few weeks in the quarterback battle between your son Cody and junior-college transfer Nick Nelson?
Hawkins: It comes down to who can move the club and score points. There’s obviously the execution part of it. There are things we want to do on offense, being able to have the quarterback do some things mentally. There’s always a little chemistry, a little bit of energy with the right person. There’s a spark. Great quarterbacks make everybody around them better. So you’ve got that intangible to it.
Post: Which departed player will be toughest to replace?
Hawkins: That’s hard. I guess you’d have to say (defensive end) Abraham Wright on the basis of his production (conference-leading 11 1/2 sacks) as a stand-alone pass rusher. Because we felt Abe always had a chance to get to the quarterback, that allowed us to do some things in pass coverage and not have to bring extra guys.
Post: Without Wright, might we see more blitz packages this season?
Hawkins: Yeah. You’ve got to pressure the quarterback. You can’t just let him stand back there and throw.
Post: Having to play 11 consecutive weeks until the bye before Nebraska can’t be ideal.
Hawkins: It’s not. You’d love to have an open date about Week 5 or Week 8 or something. But you just get in and go. You have to develop the mind-set that “we go.” That being said, what we’ve typically done with a schedule like this is scale back practice as time moves along.
Post: Biggest overall concerns entering August drills?
Hawkins: For me, and I’ve talked to a few of our guys about this, it’s that when you’re so hungry to win you need to translate that into investing in the process. If you’re hungry to win, then don’t eat a pizza at 11 o’clock at night when you’re trying to cut your body fat. Get eight hours of sleep. I know all of that stuff sounds corny sometimes, but it’s really at the heart of the matter. I mean, I could also see another scenario where we get off to a good start and then guys are going, “All right. The schneid is off.” It’s never off. You need to be mature enough to realize that the score is a result of taking care of all the little details in your life – go to school, watch game film, get enough sleep, do the right things, take care of the details. We really have to continue to hammer on that. I tell people, “You’re never there. You’re on the way.”
Post: Is it easier to convince players at a place such as Colorado that they can win?
Hawkins: I think tradition is big. That’s one of the reasons I came here. They’ve won a national championship. So the media, the fans, the administration, community, alums, people expect that. I used to throw that out at Boise State and they’d say, “What’s wrong with you?” But with this school, having accomplished that, it’s easy for them to realize last season was just a blip. It’s not us. That’s not Colorado. That’s not who we are.
Staff writer Tom Kensler can be reached at 303-954-1280 or tkensler@denverpost.com.
