Coaching and playing football requires cohesion, communication, flexibility, and drive. Learn what it takes to have a great position room at the P4 level.
The transfer portal era has many pros and cons. Teams that are a few players away, like Ohio State, can bolster their roster with guys like Quinshon Judkins and Will Howard. Teams that are entire position rooms away, like Miami, can attempt to wholesale flip the room but then again at what cost?
Prior to the Buckeyes National Championship campaign in 2024 head coach Ryan Day brought in a half dozen transfers. All-American safety Caleb Downs being a huge piece for the OSU defense, much like Judkins and Howard were for the offense.
Seth McLaughlin started at center for OSU but was injured in November, while Will Kacmarek caught only eight passes, QB Julian Sayin who played in only four games, and safety Keenan Nelson Jr. played in 11 games without a stat.
Last season Michigan won the four team College Football Playoff with the majority of their 2022 roster still in tact. On offense the key playmakers in yardage and touchdowns were all Michigan Men.
On defense, Josaiah Stewart was a transfer from Coastal Carolina but the bulk of the playmakers in tackles for loss, sacks, interceptions, PBU’s and forced fumbles were Michigan Men as well.
Essentially your roster needs to be loaded with your high school signees, and then bolstered by a handful of carefully selected transfer players. Those portal players have to be the ‘best’ people, not just the most talented.
In 2025, Miami will rely on a transfer QB like many top teams do (Oregon, OSU, etc.), but my concern lies more with having to completely re-tool the tight end, safety, defensive tackle and cornerback positions with wholesale transfer portal moves.
In order to have a great position room in all aspects it starts at the top with the head coach.
The Umbrella of Culture
As Bill Belichick famously said, “Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling.” There has to be a baseline of ability throughout the roster. But culture isn’t only built on talent or Miami, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and USC wouldn’t be firing head coaches every four year recruiting cycle. Those teams are traditionally in Bud Elliott’s “Blue Chip Ratio” and yet have zero rings between them since the 2004 season.
The vast majority of recent national championships have been won by experienced coaching staffs. Nick Saban’s staff with OC Steve Sarkisian and DC’s Charles Kelly and Pete Golding. UGA’s staff with Kirby Smart as HC, Todd Monken as OC, and Glenn Schumann (six rings before age 35) and Will Muschamp as DC’s. And now Ryan Day’s OSU staff with Jim Knowles and Chip Kelly as play callers.
Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images
Recent championship staffs have former head coaches and experienced play callers on staff to ride the tough games and push through adversity with outside ideas and the resumes to transform their ideas into a winning strategy. High level experience (P4, NFL) cuts down on the nervous decision making in critical situations.
Ryan Day might have hit rock bottom personally with the loss to Michigan, but his players never stopped working for him or each other. The Buckeyes, much like the Wolverines the season prior, returned starters that could’ve gone pro and showed a commitment to getting their program to the top of the college football world.
UGA QB Stetson Bennett could’ve transferred, lord knows UGA brought in QB competition for him every off-season, but instead he doubled down and became a more effective runner giving him another tool in his arsenal on the way to a repeat.
Photo by Michael Pimentel/ISI Photos/Getty Images
Mario Cristobal has built his own image as a person that values hard work, toughness and discipline. Coach Cristobal doesn’t subscribe to the Sun Tzu philosophy of work smart and hard, not hard and stupid. If you believe Warren Sapp, Cristobal was demanding 20-hour work days.
That mentality can result in a lack of sleep, a lack of sleep diminishes our brain’s ability to dream which allows us to recover. Without our brains recovering we’re less likely to make the best decisions in a game that requires quick decisions.
This ‘hard work’ culture also hasn’t seen the benefits on the field. Miami is highly penalized, you rarely see a player sit after boneheaded mistakes like Jacolby George was infamous for making, and Miami still loses to unranked underdog teams- long hours or not.
That said, he’s a head coach and not a position coach. So… which qualities create the formula for a successful position room?
Talent
Talent is the starting point. The only teams that can win the CFB Playoff are going to be both talented at the top end, but also deep through the depth chart. Injuries happen in football and the more contacts (reps and plays) the more likely an athlete is to be injured. The era of a 12 game national champ are over, it now takes ~16 games to win the ring.
Unless you’re OSU in 2014 the starting QB needs to stay healthy. Imagine Miami without Cam Ward or Michigan without McCarthy now that we’ve seen what the rest of the UofM QB room can and can’t do.
Does the QB have to be a Heisman Trophy candidate? Maybe not. We saw solid performances from guys like McCarthy, Howard and Bennett over the past four seasons to disprove the need for a Trevor Lawrence or Cam Newton, even if guys like Dillon Gabriel and Ward are still wants via the portal.
Photo by Samuel Lewis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Where does top-end talent matter? Clearly on the defensive line. While Miami’s DL was busy underperforming compared to SMU aka “The JV of former ‘Canes” as some fans call them. Clemson, OSU, UGA, Alabama and Michigan have also had dominant D-Lines for recent championship runs.
One thing that is for sure is a roster can’t have a clearly weak room- like Miami’s safety room in ‘24, or the ‘Canes QB room in ‘23. Of course having a loaded room such as Miami’s RB room in ‘24 or OL in ‘23 will be beneficial.
Healthy egos
Competition is king. An athlete needs a healthy ego in order to believe in their ability to succeed. I teach my student-athletes the three C’s: Clarity. Confidence. Conviction. Clarity is a clear set of goals, values, mission, etc. Confidence is the self-efficacy and esteem that drives belief. And Conviction is the ‘it takes what it takes’ mentality made famous by Trevor Moawad.
The egos in the room have to be strong enough to compete every day and push the people around you to match your elite work ethic and desire. But also healthy enough to build up the ones around you that have the same strong desire and possibly are just missing the wisdom that comes with time in the culture, playbook, or sport.
The incoming athletes also have to have a healthy enough ego to listen to strength coaches, nutritionists, positions coaches, QC’s and analysts as well as the head coach and play callers.
Mike Leach famously said (and I paraphrase) that his players were ignoring coaching and listening to their girlfriends instead. The girlfriends were telling the players what they wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear.
Player-driven leadership
The great teams are player-led. There’s no doubt about that. Tom Brady was more instrumental in building The Patriot Way than Coach Belichick because Brady was the one in the huddle. Jerome Brown led the ‘86 Hurricanes to an 11-1 season and Mike Barrow led the 1991 and 1992 Hurricanes to a combined 23-1 record.
However, as of late, the hard work ethic leadership guys have gone ignored. If a locker room has too many weak egos the player-driven leadership will result often as in-fighting rather than a desire to improve and compete.
Coaches of all types can seemingly win a national championship. Players-coaches like Dennis Erickson and Ryan Day. Father figures like Mack Brown. Intense and amoral, ie. Urban Meyer. Intense and virtuous like Saban. The seemingly too weird to be liked or the Jim Harbaugh Effect (and Les Miles).
While those head coaches may run a different style of program one thing remains the same and it is player-driven leadership. Players have to trust each other and I believe that quality will come from a great position coach.
Flexibility from the position coach
Of course, the position coach is the conduit to this success. Position coaches are heavily involved in recruitment of players and staying engaged with the parents and guardians of players. A position coach can be the catalyst to a player staying on campus or hitting the transfer portal.
Think about your day job. The most influential person on whether or not you enjoy your day job isn’t even yourself, it’s your direct manager. The HC or OC won’t have as much pull with a player as the RB coach will. There’s a reason Tashard Choice is now with the Detroit Lions and reunited with Jahmyr Gibbs– relationships.
Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images
The position coach has to know when to crank up the heat and when to scale back. Individual period drills need to be effective, but they can’t be overkill on an already overloaded 5-6 month season.
Position coaches have to be there as a shield to their players, and someone that can help the position room develop trust and a healthy ego. If the position coach fosters a cut throat and greedy room, they’ll get those type of relationships from their players.
Communication and Cohesion
Finally a great position room speaks the same language. No I don’t mean the issues you see in professional soccer and hockey where players literally speak a dozen different languages on one roster. I mean they communicate the same way on the field and in the film room.
One issue with the transfer portal is bringing in people from different schemes who don’t even call a defensive end the same technique, or use the same language regarding coverage or call routes the same things.
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
Andy Reid got over the hump in Kansas City when Alex Smith told the coach he had to simplify his offensive terminology in order to get rookies and free agents involved right away. It worked and Patrick Mahomes has teamed up with Reid to win three Super Bowls while playing in five.
If the players don’t know how to communicate on the field or during film the position room won’t find the success the coaches are seeking. That’s why you see Miami defenders confused on every snap- a lack of communication and cohesion from the top down and back up. If we aren’t speaking the same language we aren’t clicking.
The Wrap
The transfer portal giveth and it taketh away. The idea of building a player from the ground up and having the time to develop them has become passé’. Coaches have to get players on the field and making strides as soon as possible.
Quality depth players who are a year away are now transferring out and hoping to start somewhere else. Meanwhile the new players who have transferred in can cause issues with communication and cohesion.
In order to make it all work the position coach has to be part therapist and part ringmaster. It has become much more like being a high school teacher and maybe that’s why Alex Mirabal’s position room has found so much success- he’s still a social studies teacher at heart.
The recent champions have used minimal portal transferring and have relied mostly on homegrown talent with a few shots of portal talent to get over the hump and into the winner’s circle. Can Miami finally slow down their portal kombat in ‘26 and develop what’s on campus? Or will the ‘Canes never find that perfect mix of high school signees and the 5-6 portal transfers needed to win the title?