Bashing for the Team, Not Glory

In a darkened classroom in a building named for a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Travis Claridge sits, spurting tobacco juice into a paper cup and contemplating a problem in physics.

His eyes are pinned to a roll-down video screen on which is projected a lesson in matter, energy and opposed vectors: How can he better apply direction-altering force to a wide-arcing defensive end before the latter intersects with his quarterback?

“Damn,” he murmurs as the defensive end, a USC teammate, gets a little too close to the quarterback during the previous day’s scrimmage. Crammed into desks at the Trojans’ August training camp on the campus of UC Irvine, Claridge and 16 of his fellow offensive linemen watch the play rerun in slow motion, over and over. He spits into the cup again.

A 6-foot, 6-inch, 292-pound All-American candidate, Claridge knows how it goes. About the only time an offensive lineman gets any recognition is when the player he is blocking lays hands on his quarterback. Then, the scorn of Trojan fans and the gleeful derision of opponents will be all his.

Claridge also knows, as many fans do not, that offensive linemen, along with quarterbacks, have the most intellectually demanding positions. To equate the size of offensive linemen--as a rule, they are the largest men on a team--with lack of intelligence is a mistake. At USC, and most other colleges, they typically have the highest academic grade point averages of any position-group.

Offensive linemen strap on anonymity with their shoulder pads. They are the good citizens of football, bashing and getting bashed with every snap of the ball for the benefit of the team and the glory of others. They are the only players who neither carry nor go after the football, the only ones for whom no official individual statistics are kept.

“You’ve got to be a little left-of-center to be an offensive lineman,” says Emanuel Grain, father of USC right guard Jason Grain. “The only ones who know you’re even out there are the coaches, your family and your girlfriend, if you are lucky enough to have one.”

USC offensive line coach Steve Greatwood says his players are “probably the most team-oriented of all the positions. It’s fun to be around them. You don’t have to worry about discipline problems. You don’t have to worry about grades. They’re very low maintenance.”

Offensive linemen are an enduring, uncomplaining lot who rely principally on one another for appreciation. Theirs is a communitarian subculture in the midst of individualists: dandified receivers, wild-man linebackers, Christ-figure quarterbacks and other “skill players,” as non-linemen are called.

“Offensive linemen are like whales,” says one coach. “They’re always together, and they communicate in a language no one else understands.”

Their Own Language

“Now, in ‘28/29 ghost,’ we’re exchanging the fullback and the playside guard’s assignment. In this case it’s ‘force,’ OK? So, guard, now you are pulling for the safety, for the force defender, whoever that might be. We always need a ‘hog’ block now, because the guard is always pulling when it’s tackle ‘bubble.’ There’s still a ‘sax’ against an under front when the tackle’s covered, OK? But no ‘shag.’ That’s the only difference. Center’s still ‘trip,’ backside’s still got a ‘tempo’ or a ‘splash.’ And we’re goin’ ‘bang’ against the ‘bear.’ Understand?”

--Offensive line coach Steve Greatwood, speaking to his players

Size, Power and Speed

Travis Claridge is a rarity, a starting offensive lineman since he was a freshman. At 21, the senior tackle has the baleful face, blunt speech and touchy ferocity of a wrestler from the days of black-and-white television. Valued for his size, power and speed, he is one of three Trojan offensive linemen with NFL potential.

Until this year, Claridge played guard. His switch to tackle reflects the Trojans’ greater depth on the offensive line this year. Tackles as a rule need greater reach, agility and speed than guards because they are usually lined up against defensive ends, the fastest and most athletic of defensive linemen.

For an offensive lineman, Claridge is volatile. He is prone to sporadic outbursts of anger, focus-blurring vendettas in the heat of a game, and, he admits, occasional tears when life seems not to be going right.

He lived in Michigan until fourth grade. After his parents’ divorce, he came to the West Coast with his father, a dockside foreman for a Japanese auto company. “My Dad, he used to be pretty tough on me to motivate me,” he says. “I don’t know if that’s the right way, but it worked. But, gosh, no, I wouldn’t do it to my son.”

600 Possible Scenarios

USC’s pro-style offense contains about 70 running and passing plays. Offensive linemen are expected to know exactly whom and how to block on each of those plays against 10 basic defensive formations, which creates the theoretical possibility of something like 600 blocking schemes. Further complicating matters, about 20 of the plays can be run from different offensive formations that also require adjustments to the blocking.

After a play is called in the huddle, and the offensive linemen return to the line of scrimmage, they must identify the defensive formation and not be confused by their opponents’ feints. They must communicate with one another through a dozen or more terse offensive line calls: “turk,” “crawl,” etc. They must signal further adjustments if the defense suddenly changes before the ball is snapped and the play begins.

It doesn’t end there. After a play has started, the defense often springs surprises, and the offensive linemen must adapt to them in a coordinated way.

A simple example: Let’s say the blocking scheme calls for the center and the left guard both to slam into the defensive tackle lined up between them, and then for the guard to slide away and attack the linebacker behind the defensive tackle. If, while they’re double-teaming the tackle, the linebacker moves to his left where the offensive guard can’t get to him, the center must realize he has to leave the double-team and go after the linebacker. At the same instant, the guard has to realize that he must reposition his body to allow the center to slide off, yet keep the defensive tackle in check.

From the time the offensive linemen leave the huddle, they have about eight seconds to figure this out. And they must remember the snap count, the predetermined cadence the quarterback calls out before the ball is centered and the play begins. And they must not jump offsides. If the quarterback “audibles”--changes the play at the line of scrimmage--it wipes the slate clean. The line then has to refigure its blocking schemes, this time in about three seconds.

Massive Men

Susan Welch crouches in the shade at the end of the practice field, where the Trojan offensive linemen are firing out of three-point stances and with massive expulsions of breath--”pllwwUHH!”--plowing into large pads held by teammates. She watches as her youngest child, 6-foot, 6-inch, 291-pound junior tackle Matt Welch, pumps his fire hydrant calves through the drill.

“Look at Matthew’s legs,” she says. “You should try to buy him pants. Nobody makes clothes for offensive linemen.”

Together, the 17 linemen on USC’s roster weigh exactly 4,800 pounds, five pounds less than a Ford Expedition. For most, largeness has been a defining fact all their lives, setting them apart, contributing to boyhood shyness and clumsiness. It prohibited some from starting organized youth football at the same age as other boys.

“I was always too heavy,” says starting left guard Donta Kendrick, a 293-pound senior. “I went and they said I had to lose 40 pounds in two weeks. I was 10. It was either that or play with the eighth- and ninth-graders.”

Considerations of size make college-bound offensive linemen the most difficult players to assess for potential. “Will the big high school kid’s athleticism catch up to his body?” asks USC head coach Paul Hackett. “Will the smaller kid who looks good have a growth spurt?”

Through weightlifting, forced feeding and dietary supplements, an undersized freshman can slab on an additional 40 to 50 pounds of muscle in a couple of years (weight that many will shed when their football days are over). During the past summer, 268-pound junior starting center Eric Denmon has added about 20 pounds through daily weightlifting sessions lasting from 2 to 2 1/2 hours and, until training camp started, as many as six meals a day. Dinner, he says, typically consisted of “two steaks, three chicken breasts, about a pound of pasta and two [nutrition] shakes. Also, I ate a lot of beans and rice, and a lot of bananas.”

Remolding the Line

During the last decade, the Trojan offensive line has been the fans’ whipping boy. Once known as “Tailback U,” USC fell to dead last in rushing among 112 Division I-A teams during the 1997 season. Trojan offensive linemen were named first team All-Americans 26 times since 1964, but only twice in the 1990s.

Second-year coach Hackett aims to remold the offensive line in the image of those that helped win national championships four times in the 1960s and 1970s and enabled four USC running backs to win Heisman trophies from 1965 to 1981. The key is Steve Greatwood.

A patient, teacherly sort, the 41-year-old Greatwood has been coaching offensive linemen for 19 years since he graduated from the University of Oregon, where he played guard.

Before each game, Greatwood gives his players an eight- or nine-page written test on what they’ve learned the preceding week. After each game, he issues “report cards,” which assess each play, penalize for mental errors and recognize “pancakes”--instances when offensive linemen knock their opponents to the ground.

The considerable intellectual demands explain why freshmen, regardless of size, rarely start on the offensive line. It takes a year, more often two, to absorb enough of the blocking schemes.

“A receiver can go along for most of the game,” Greatwood says, “and unless his number is called, it’s hard to see how what he’s been doing wrong affects a game. But my guys, if they don’t do what they’re supposed to do on every play, everything comes apart.”

Strength, Intellect

On a team with a right-handed quarterback, the most prestigious position on the offensive line is left tackle. He protects the quarterback’s non-throwing, or blind, side (which is why left tackles in the National Football League tend to make the biggest money on the offensive line).

The Trojans’ starting left tackle is 22-year-old Brent McCaffrey of Fresno. The son of former USC star center Bob McCaffrey, who was a Trojan from 1972 to 1974, McCaffrey is quiet and studious. He thinks carefully before he speaks, and makes written lists of his personal goals.

While growing up, he received an early introduction to manhandling large mammals while working summers on his grandfather’s Central Valley ranch. He is known for his consistency, polish and excellent footwork.

McCaffrey is 6 feet 5 and 268 pounds, with a massive upper body but slender legs. Increasing his weight is a struggle. When he was a freshman, he weighed a mere 245 pounds. Then-head coach John Robinson preferred enormousness in his linemen, and McCaffrey didn’t think he had a chance. He nearly quit the team. Under Greatwood, who emphasizes quickness and explosiveness, McCaffrey came from nowhere to win a starting position last season.

Weightlifting and eating have built him to his present poundage. His father, he says, used to set his alarm and wake his son in the middle of the night so he could consume two large peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and a big glass of milk.

“My friends used to get on me,” McCaffrey says. “We’d just finish eating, and I’d say, ‘Let’s go get something to eat.’ When I’m all done with football, I’ll probably drop back to 240. I like to eat, but not like other offensive linemen do.”

Forming a Close Bond

At 8 p.m., after two three-hour practices, a half-hour of weightlifting and an hour of whole team and offensive team meetings, the offensive linemen saunter into a classroom for a two-hour session reviewing videos of the day’s work.

“Hey,” one lineman calls to another. “I hear you have a birthday coming up.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“That the day the litter came out?” asks a third. “Woof, woof!”

Within the subculture of the offensive line, merciless mock insult is as common as large appetites. The players spend so much time together in the weight room and football classroom that a powerful common identity inevitably develops.

As a group, they exude the good nature of large men with little to fear from others. “Give ‘em a sandwich and a smile,” says Claridge, “and they’re happy.”

Nonetheless, offensive linemen possess an entirely opposite mentality on the field. Their brand of calculated violence is greatly aided by what McCaffrey calls a “mean and nasty” streak.

“My philosophy,” says 321-pound sophomore backup guard Faaesea Mailo, who recently returned from a two-year Mormon mission in Japan, “is to treat others the way you’d like to be treated.” He laughs. “But on the football field? Oh, kill ‘em. Kill ‘em.”

Claridge, Jason Grain and 284-pound backup center Matt McShane, whose nickname is “Pig,” are best friends. In video sessions, the trio usually sits together in the back of the room, emitting wisecracks, digestive noises and World Wrestling Federation voices.

At the other pole are the quiet ones: Eric Denmon, Matt Welch, McCaffrey. “In our offensive line meetings,” says McCaffrey, “you really have to be able to fend for yourself, because the guys can be pretty tough on you.”

Trevor Roberts, a 295-pound junior reserve tackle, says what unites offensive linemen is not necessarily “a buddy-buddy closeness. It’s more a respect that creates this kind of bond.”

That, says Claridge, compensates for the pounding and tedium. “It isn’t fun beating the hell out of each other,” he says. “What makes it all right is being in the huddle and looking around you and you’ve got four other sweaty fat guys playing just as hard as you, trying to be better.”

A Family Audience

A couple hundred relatives of players look down on the field of the otherwise empty Coliseum, where the Trojans are having a full-dress scrimmage. It is offense against defense, a dress rehearsal for the season opener against the University of Hawaii, 11 days away.

Spectators are calling out to sons and brothers as they run, catch passes, make tackles. High in the stadium, Emanuel Grain is yelling out to his son, too. “They’re running in your gap!” he shouts. “They’re running in your gap! I told you! Good job, son!”

Afterward, he confides: “This is the problem with having a son on the offensive line. You never see the game. All you do is watch your kid block.”

How to Do It

Here’s how you’re supposed to block:

Always keep your feet moving.

Always keep your shoulders lower than your opponent’s and square to the line of scrimmage.

Always keep your hands inside his arms, so the officials don’t flag you for holding, the play-killing bane of all offensive lineman.

On runs, explode into him at the snap. Make like you love him, snuggling as close to him as you can, grabbing some cloth if that’s what it takes, and drive with your feet to push him downfield.

On passes, step back and make like you hate him, punching his upper chest with both hands every time he gets near. Glide, neither crossing your feet nor lifting them higher than the tops of the grass. Bend from the knees, not the waist. Keep that back straight. Stick your butt out, and keep your weight centered over your feet and your feet a little wider than shoulder-width apart. Head and shoulders back. Eyes up. Think of a man halfway through the motion of lowering himself onto a chair.

And the 300-pounder coming at you full speed, cursing and clubbing and swimming and trying to throw you aside? Hey, don’t let him rattle you.

Hope for the Future

After the Coliseum scrimmage, the coaches have decided who’s starting, who’s on the second team, and who’s on the third.

Coach Hackett has a surprise for freshman center Norm Katnick: He is being switched to third-string tight end for the coming season.

It’s a compliment. The coaches have noticed Katnick’s good blocking technique and decided that he can best be used, given his current 236 pounds, shoring up tight end. The hope is that he can still bulk up by 40 or 50 pounds into a true offensive lineman.

A tight end works fairly closely with the offensive line. He is also called on, however, to catch passes, which puts him, as far as offensive linemen are concerned, in a different ethnic group.

The next day, Katnick’s father, Norm Sr., watches his son working out with the other receivers. Norm Sr. is struggling with an unaccustomed notion, namely, that a son of his might carry the football, might actually run with it.

The Katnicks are a family of offensive linemen. Norm Sr. started at center for the University of Arizona in 1978 and 1979. His brother John was the starting center for USC seven years later. His father, Andy, played guard on the USC freshman team.

The elder Katnick ran the football only once in his college career. He gained four yards.

“I don’t know, I’m a little sad,” he admits. “I mean, the tight end’s always kind of an outsider, you know?”

Payoff Time

Finally--finally, after 230-odd days of winter conditioning, spring practice, summer weightlifting and training camp, it is game time.

At Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, the Trojans are trampling the Rainbow Warriors of the University of Hawaii, whose 18-game losing streak is the longest in NCAA Division One.

With 12:25 remaining in the quarter, USC’s starting tailback runs through the right side of the line, and Donta Kendrick executes the offensive line play of the game.

Running upfield ahead of the tailback, Kendrick explodes into the Rainbows’ free safety and sends him flying through the soft Hawaiian night, then lands on him to finish. A picture-perfect “pancake.”

The game ends with this score: Travis Claridge, seven pancakes; Jason Grain four; Brent McCaffrey three; Donta Kendrick two. Sacks of Trojan quarterbacks, one.

Oh, and USC won, 62-7.

A Win Despite Errors

Two weeks later, the Trojans take on San Diego State, whom they are heavy favorites to beat, at the Coliseum. On their first possession, the Trojans cover 80 yards for a touchdown in five pass plays, with the offensive line protecting the quarterback as if he were a rare religious object.

In the second quarter, things sour. The Trojans fail to score in four attempts from San Diego’s 3-yard line. Five minutes later, a Trojan touchdown pass is nullified because of a holding penalty against McCaffrey. USC settles for a field goal.

By the third quarter, what began as a Trojan romp has turned into a 17-14 game. In the final quarter, though, the offensive line reawakens, digging out its opponents from the line of scrimmage during a touchdown drive of 93 yards in 18 plays. The Trojans hold on for a 24-21 victory. Afterward, Claridge, despite 10 pancakes, is seething about the team’s performance.

According to Greatwood’s report card, the offensive line has accumulated 11 mental errors, five penalties and 10 “pressures,” instances in which pass rushers got uncomfortably close to the quarterback. McCaffrey alone has collected three penalties, two mental errors and four pressures.

Even so, the offensive line wins the praise of the Trojans’ quarterback. “The line did a good job all day,” he says. “I didn’t get hit very much at all.”

You probably know the quarterback’s name; he’s on his way to becoming nationally famous. We do not mention it here because, as gifted as he is, he’s no offensive lineman.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Hut 1, Hut 2. . .

The offensive line is fundamental to the success of any play, whether stepping back to protect the quarterback on a pass, or blasting forward to open holes for the running back. Here is an example of what USC linemen would do in an offensive play:

The center, Denmon (50), and left guard, Kendrick (70), block the opposing team’s right tackle. Then, depending on the defense, one of the two will move on to block the middle linebacker.