Old Dominion defensive coordinator Rich Nagy is entering his third season with the Monarchs. ODUSports.com recently sat down with Nagy to discuss his coaching career, the state of the Monarchs and more.
Q: What do you like about coaching on the defensive side of the ball?
RN: I like the challenge of stopping an offense. I played offense in college and I thought scoring wasn’t that hard, but it was hard. I just thought the challenge of stopping people, especially in today’s age with the scoring going up, has gotten more challenging. I found that challenge on the defensive side to try and stop people to be a great motivator.
Q: With all the offenses right now in college football, how much harder is it to stop people?
RN: The toughest thing these days is you see so many different things. Sometimes it takes awhile for the players to grasp it and get the understanding of it. You can’t get to complex with your systems because it has to cover a lot of different offenses you have to face. It’s a learning curve for the players more than anything. What you tend to see in college football is the defense with older players are better because they’ve seen a lot of things and its easier to make adjustments. You have to keep educating the players and how to attack it.
Q: You’ve coached several positions throughout your career, how important is it to have experienced that?
RN: I think it’s important because I have to know what’s going on at every level of the defense, but at the end of the day as long as you have a base understanding of what’s going on and being taught, it allows me to help coach our coaches. I think there are a lot of different ways to teach things, but your always looking to get to the end result.
Q: You were hired in the first transition season in 2013, what has changed for you since then?
RN: The schedule. We’re playing some pretty good people. That first year it was a split schedule and that had its own challenges. One week we’re playing Maryland and then the next week playing an FCS school. It was an up and down thing and I thought the kids handled it pretty well. Now we’re playing a full FBS schedule and Conference USA is very good. Top to bottom there are a lot of good teams in this league and every week you have to come ready to play. That’s something we learned last year. We had that lull in the season and just understanding the preparation and effort has to go into the full 12 weeks in order to be successful.
Q: What do you consider to be the deepest position on the defense?
RN: I think our defensive line we have a lot of depth there. That was the first priority when we began in 2013, myself and Coach Comissiong (D-line coach Jeff Comissiong) that first year. I really believe that we’re only as good as our front allows us to be. We really spent a lot of time recruiting and developing our front. That is starting to show and pay off. Because of that, we sacrificed some depth at other positions but we’re starting to get that back which is good. The best part about this summer going in is there is a solid two-deep at every position opposed to the past where we knew freshmen were going to have to play for us. Now if a freshman plays for us next year its because he’s better and ready to play.
Q: You were able to redshirt some players last year that should see extensive time this year, how important was that redshirt year for them?
RN: I think it’s extremely important. Everyone in the country is looking for defensive linemen. There are only so many that are Division I ready coming out of high school from the mental and physical stand points. Those defensive linemen are very well courted, so we still have to recruit and develop them. If we can’t redshirt them the development process could get slowed down a little bit. All of those guys did a great job attacking the redshirt, getting bigger, stronger and faster practicing against our offense.
Q: How hard is it for these players to redshirt. A lot of these players were highly recruited that have never sat out before at any level?
RN: You want it to be hard. You don’t want anyone to come in and tell them you’ve playing your whole life and you can’t play this year. I want them to be upset, if they’re happy you might worry a little about their competitive nature. You want them to be upset but once you get through that I think when you talk to them about the benefits and how it will help their career, they start to get the picture.
Q: The ODU coaching staff has good continuity; there is not very much movement among the staff. What do you attribute that too?
RN: Start with it’s a great school in a great location. We have great support from President Broderick, Dr. Selig; they have done a great job of giving us an opportunity to be successful. Coach Wilder as a head coach, with the energy he brings every day and the type of person he is, it’s really a fun place to come to work every day. It’s a great school to walk around, a great office to come to work, we got great kids; I don’t think you can ask for anything better.