Coach has uncanny success developing quarterbacks
By Lowell Ullrich,
Vancouver Province
An ancient Italian secret?
Wally Buono, the paisano from Potenza, Italy, does not confess to ownership of uncirculated instructional manuals or top secret coaching strategies. The coach of the Lions isn’t big on rah-rah speeches.
So how is it he continues to develop quarterbacks to a point where they can make a difference in a CFL game?
The play of Buck Pierce, an unheralded talent as a tryout camp walk-on 18 months ago, has now progressed to a point where he has been able to keep the Lions offence functioning, not to mention successful, for the last six quarters.
There’s every chance Pierce may also have to do it again Friday when the Lions play host to the Edmonton Eskimos.
The signs of progress being shown by Pierce lately are many of the ones exhibited in years past by quarterbacks like Dave Dickenson and other Calgary Stampeders predecessors, such as Jeff Garcia and Henry Burris.
All four are different to each other in terms of style than another quarterback from the Lions’ mould, auditioning NFL backup Casey Printers.
Buono says he doesn’t know why he’s been more successful developing talent than other CFL teams.
“I bet a lot of teams would like to know though,” said Pierce.
The offensive system Buono has instituted with the Lions, as offensive co-ordinator Jacques Chapdelaine noted, has been around for the last 17 years, so it’s hardly an unusual set of plays.
Nor has one coach been more successful than another. Just as Chapdelaine has had a hand in the development of Pierce, former offensive co-ordinators under Buono, such as George Cortez and John Hufnagel, also have done it Wally’s way.
Where there may be a difference, however, is an insistence by Buono that backup quarterbacks get sufficient time in practice to develop.
“In the NFL, the backup only gets snaps one day a week,” said Dickenson, who knows only too well from experience the hard way. “Players get hurt and you need to have a guy feel that he’s prepared.
“I also think Jacques is a very good teacher.”
In a week in which Dickenson’s ankle sprain has left his coaches unsure whether he’ll play this week, the Lions gave him 12 snaps in the 20-down practice period involving the first-team offence Monday. Pierce got the rest.
At one practice last week, by contrast, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers gave pending starter Mike Quinn nearly every snap prior to his CFL debut.
“You can’t develop them by osmosis,” said Buono, when asked about his formula. “Otherwise you might as well just turn on the film.”
But offensive structure also matters, and nobody would likely agree more right now than Printers. In his NFL preseason debut Saturday, the quarterback who made a name for himself by making plays on the run for the Lions was sacked five times in his debut with the Kansas City Chiefs.
“I know there are some CFL teams that believe there’s so few practice reps each week they want their starter to get all of them,” said Chapdelaine. “Our feeling is that we don’t want the No. 2 guy to digress from training camp.”
Because they stuck to their plan, the Lions have had a quarterback good enough to put together the back end of a four-game winning streak.
