Clayton works with young offensive line

In the wake of last week's walloping by Lehigh, the eyes of many Tiger fans fell on the young and inexperienced offensive line. The game was the first true test of the o-line's ability, and if the grade it got in Monday's 'Prince' shows anything, they did a mediocre job. A "D" in the running game is just a hair away from failing.

In Wednesday's press conference, offensive line coach Stanley Clayton echoed what senior captain Bob Farrell had said weeks earlier after the scrimmage against Penn:

"We have to be more physical."

But what does it mean to be "more physical"? Football coaches repeatedly use this term after losing a game, especially one in which their team was physically manhandled. In this case, though, the score did not reflect what really happened on that field, and Princeton is far from defeated.

"After a game like Lehigh, it only makes us more hungry to fix our mistakes," junior cornerback Paul Simbi said.

So how does Clayton view his offensive line's need to be "more physical"?

"To me, being more physical means that a player is still putting forth his best in adverse conditions," he said. "When you're at the start of a 14-play drive, you're fresh. But you've still got to be at peak performance on the 12th and 13th plays as on the first."

The offensive line already knows that, though. They have been through this season's practices, during which coach Clayton has "clarified" what it means to be "more physical."

"He's not a yeller, but a teacher with volume," head coach Roger Hughes said.

Last season, Clayton coached a stronger, more experienced offensive line. He played a big part in molding Dennis Norman '01 and Ross Tucker '01 for their jobs after graduation — playing football for a living in the National Football League. The team also graduated two more starting offensive linemen, leaving senior guard Matt Peluse as the team's only returning starter in the trenches.

This season, Clayton had almost an entirely new line. While some of the players had been coached by him before, they had no game experience.

With only one lineman returning, the four others had some big shoes to fill. But under Clayton's tutelage, sophomore tackle Kevin Manning, junior center Roger Patterson, junior guard Chris Havener, and junior tackle John Holownia have come together with Peluse to provide a front in protecting sophomore quarterback Dave Splithoff and opening up holes for junior tailback Cameron Atkinson to run through. While the line tried hard, Atkinson didn't see much space all day and Splithoff was forced to escape the pocket on a number of occasions.

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The entire line has worked extremely hard under Clayton this season. At the beginning of preseason, the six-year NFL veteran taught them a new technique for pass blocking so that they force a stalemate on the line of scrimmage instead of two or three yards behind it. When they first learned it, all of them said they could not do it — that it was too awkward. But with Clayton's insistence, the five have learned how to perform the move effectively.

After watching game film of Lehigh, Clayton was disappointed with the fact that the Tigers could not run because the linemen could not pick up the Lehigh defense, However, Clayton was encouraged by one thing.

"Their techniques are almost perfect, and they understand what is going on, including all the adjustments," he said. "We just have to be more physical."

Under Clayton's definition of the classic coaching cliché, the offensive linemen went to work this week. Coach Clayton tried to put them into "adverse conditions" and see how well they could perform.

"They may do it right on the first play, then I take them out," he said. "I make sure that they are good and tired, and then I put them back in."

While some might consider coach Clayton's style cruel, he instructed his linemen not to see it that way.

"I told them to listen to what I am saying not how I am saying it," Clayton said.

The rest of the team knows how Clayton coaches, and they believe that it gets results. Splithoff knows that because of Clayton's coaching, his offensive line is going to protect him, as was evident in his 34 completions in 39 attempts last week.

But the true judge of whether or not coach Clayton's coaching is making this young offensive line any better will be the score of this weekend's game.