The Wellman Interview: Part II
MTOW—Personally I thought Jim Grobe had built enough of a safety net that the team would be as bad as this year, as reflected by the 3-9 record and margin of losses. What was your reaction to that?
WELLMAN—Well they’re very good coaches, but that doesn’t mean you can overcome as many obstacles as we had this year. And when you develop a pattern that has been successful for you and you’re depending upon that model, again, and you don’t have it available, your coaching schemes, your philosophy, is thrown out of kilter. And so major, major adjustments have to occur. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes regardless of what you try, it’s not going to work. I don’t think the coaching staff did a bad job coaching this year. I don’t know of any more that could have been done. They didn’t become bad coaches this year because of the record. There were other things that led to what the record was this year.
MTOW—Do you see the 3-9 and the way they lost as an aberration?
WELLMAN—Yes. It was definitely an aberration. We started to improve by the end of the year. You could see improvement especially defensively, players understanding their roles a little more, the experience being evident. We have good speed, for instance, on our team. And Monday through Friday our speed factor is really good, and then on Saturdays, maybe because we’re a little hesitant because young guys are not sure exactly what they’re doing – they’re thinking too much rather than just playing football – all those types of things lead to the type of season we had this year. But the one thing I was encouraged about was I did see improvement. I think all of our fans could see some improvement as the year progressed – maybe not as much as we would have liked to have had, which would have produced a few more wins. But there was enough improvement to encourage me about the future, for sure.