https://theathletic.com/440096/2018...o-state-football-defensive-line-coach-clinic/
In Larryland: Ohio State D-line guru Larry Johnson’s perpetual coaching clinic
Bruce Feldman
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Come on in and sit down. Make yourself comfortable. You’ve come here for the same reason hundreds of high school football coaches are coming from all over the Northeast later today. It’s the same reason why many of the country’s top high school defensive linemen keep coming here, too. The kindly grandfather with the soft, cherubic smile in the sweater vest is why we’re all here. Only thing is, just, please, no cussing.
This is Coach J’s classroom. It’s doubtful you will come across someone who loves what they do more than the 66-year-old defensive line coach. To know what makes Larry Johnson so special — how he has coached more Big Ten defensive players of the year or linemen of the year than any other program in the Big Ten over the past two decades — spend a day around him and you’ll start to see why.
It’s a warm Thursday in April, and the Ohio State football staff is getting ready to host about 1,000 high school coaches for its annual clinic. Larry Johnson — Coach J to his players — is the night’s keynote speaker. On the big screen in his defensive line room, Johnson is going through video clips of pass-rush techniques he and his guys have repped thousands of times. The names of these techniques and his buzzwords probably wouldn’t register to even the most die-hard Buckeyes fan, but they are everything to Johnson’s protégés and their devotion to this craft.
“This is our technique,” Johnson says as he narrates a clip of former Buckeyes All-American Joey Bosa in what on first glance looks like him bull-rushing his way to a tackle for loss at Illinois. This is actually The Long Arm.
Over the next 45 minutes, Johnson will show clip after clip, including some of Bosa in the NFL with the Chargers, where he earned league’s defensive rookie of the year award in 2016 and has piled up 23 sacks in 28 games, utilizing the long arm to wreak havoc on offenses. In the clip against Illinois from 2015, when Bosa had three TFLs in a 28-3 win, Johnson explains something that is so hair-trigger that before the moment Bosa’s second step hits the turf against a retreating right tackle, the Buckeyes star has already calculated and exploded into his move — the long arm — because he’s noted that the Illini player’s hands are down and his chest is exposed. Meaning he’s vulnerable.
“No arms, hands are down,” Johnson says, rewinding the clip. “When you expose your chest open, our kids know we go long arm. He (the offensive lineman) is telling me what I’m gonna do. When I attack you, you’re either gonna punch me or you’re gonna drop your hands. Because he dropped his hands, he’s vulnerable for the long arm.”
The impact of Bosa’s right arm torpedoing the offensive linemen is remarkable. The movement is so powerful, so violent that initially their bodies come together, albeit briefly, in the shape of a triangle with the Illini player jolted bolt upright, before the 6-foot-6, 300-pound man is thrust into a frantic backpedal being driven into the backfield, like a leaf being swept up in a storm.
Johnson gets out of his chair to demonstrate the science behind the long arm before walking through a slow-mo of the video on his big screen with Bosa’s younger brother Nick: “We’re taking your gun hand away. We think your inside power hand is the strong hand of any offensive player. We take our hand and put it right on that gun hand. The target is right here — right above your heart at the top of your pec. That controls that muscle so every time you go to punch, it actually forces you back because my hand is forcing you back. When he goes to punch, he actually loses balance. Everything is through him, and this is why he’s off his feet. That’s textbook.
“There’s really four moves, and they don’t need any more than that. The Long Arm. The Side Scissors. The Counter Side Scissors. The Counter Wheel. Every move has a counter. Once you learn the counters to each move, you’re set. The changeup is maybe a Club Rip, maybe a Power Throw.”
Cont'd ...
