Do the math: Danny Powell is one of Alabama’s greatest coaches

 

 

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“I am not trying to outsmart the other coach so much as outsmart his kids. As a coach, you may see what they’re fixing to do but you ain’t got time to tell those 11 kids in those five seconds.”

Danny Powell

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By JIMMY WIGFIELD

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Danny Powell is an extremely complex man and coach who always preferred to appear that he was as uncomplicated as a sundial, except he worked best under artificial light on Friday nights.

He could be, depending on the situation, a gentlemanly charmer; an informal man who wore shorts during football games — even in the chill of December’s state finals — propped his glasses on his forehead, wore a rumpled shirt and purchased his coaching staff Crocs to wear on the sidelines; a math nerd who taught algebra, geometry, trigonometry and pre-calculus; blunt and intimidating, once warning an opposing coach that he was in for a 100-point beatdown if his players didn’t cease hitting Powell’s players late, resulting in the rival coach waving a handkerchief of surrender; a ingenious strategist with a eye that could see what every player on the field was doing at the same time; or a tactician so confident in his abilities that, as longtime friend Bobby Farish said, “You never questioned any decision he made.”

He could even give away his plan to everyone within earshot and still win, which, of all places, was borne out in an otherwise obscure junior varsity baseball game he was coaching at Leroy.

The Bears had a runner on third base with two outs in the bottom of the last inning of a tie game and Powell twice signaled for a bunt but the batter missed both signs.

“Coach Powell stops the game and he says, ‘Bunt the ball right here!’” recalled Clint Moseley, who was on that team and went on to become a star quarterback and the 2008 Mr. Football under Powell. “Now everybody knows it’s coming. He was like, ‘I don’t give a damn.’”

Powell pointed to the third base line and commanded the batter to square up. The third baseman crept up.

“He bunted it and the runner from third scored and we won,” Moseley said.

Powell, now 76, and his players did a lot of winning and for that he received a lifetime achievement award from the Alabama Football Coaches Association Saturday at the Embassy Suites.

“Any award given to a high school coach, if he doesn’t have it, then it’s all void in my mind because he was the athletic director, the math teacher, the bus driver and the baseball and the football coach,” Moseley said. “He beat everybody.”

Powell won six state football championships — four at Leroy, one at Jackson and one at AISA Lee-Scott Academy — and three more in baseball at Leroy. He was 187-84-1 in football at six schools, including 66-7 in five years at Leroy, where he was 22-1 in the playoffs. He also won 300 baseball games at Leroy.

Only in the Powellian Theorem can 1 = 9. That’s one man winning nine state championships in two sports and going 148-27 at Leroy and Jackson, a bit of calculus few could solve or replicate; only Sweet Water’s Nolan Atkins won more state championships (10) in the two sports.

 

It all adds up

 

The master mathematician acknowledged a certain geometry shaped his approach to offense, which averaged 35 points per game at Leroy and Jackson. Before Powell brought the spread offense to the Bears, they would likely call 32 dive on third and 9.

“Offense to me was a lot about getting numbers and getting angles,” he said. “If you can get angles on people to block ’em, it makes it a lot easier.”

With Moseley at quarterback and future pro athletes Phillip Ervin and Sammie Coates at receiver, Powell installed the shotgun spread, which no Class 2A team could match up with. Moseley could run and throw, which eliminated the need for two running backs and enabled Powell to use an extra receiver or blocker.

“The numbers and the way I saw things with numbers and angles definitely helped me create advantages,” Powell said. “When you are playing against a good player, you look at it two ways — if you can block ’em, block ’em. If you can’t block ’em, read ’em. Make ’em decide what they’re going to do and go the other way.

“You make it as simple as you can but still make it look complicated to the other side. I tell coaches to always remember this: I am not trying to outsmart the other coach so much as outsmart his kids. As a coach, you may see what they’re fixing to do but you ain’t got time to tell those 11 kids in those five seconds.”

 

‘Everybody’s scared of him’

 

Powell enjoyed his most spectacular success in 2006, 2007 and 2008, when Leroy won three straight state championships behind Moseley, Ervin and Coates and defensive coordinator Jason Massey, who shared two traits with Powell — he was also a math major and would later add a seventh Blue Map to the school’s trophy case.

Moseley and Powell sometimes got along like sandpaper and silk, although he speaks reverently of his former coach.

“We had our battles,” Moseley said, “but they were always mended quickly.”

Moseley transferred from Jackson Academy, where his class had 10 students, to Leroy because Powell talked his father into it.

“I didn’t really have much of a say in the fourth grade,” Moseley said.

When he reached his sophomore year, he didn’t have to compete to secure the starting quarterback’s job. He was the only one who could throw a ball beyond 20 yards and not have it resemble a wad of napkins.

“Me and him have had massive fights,” Moseley said. “First off, I was a full brat at that time. Everybody was scared of him, and I was deep down, but I didn’t tiptoe around him. … He couldn’t whoop nobody’s butt but everybody’s scared of him.”

Well into his Mr. Football season of 2008, Moseley found he had good reason to be.

“Phillip Ervin was my backup,” he said. “I wasn’t focusing in practice. I was doing something stupid. I don’t even remember specifically what it was but he pulled me out. He said, ‘You think I won’t start him? You’re out of your mind.’ At that point, I had already got a bunch of offers. He pulled me out of practice. I felt invincible. He made sure that the message was clear.”

Moseley said he owes Powell for sculpting his life’s path.

“He shaped the rest of my life,” Moseley said. “It is that dramatic. Coach Powell was the reason I went to Auburn and won Mr. Football and the reason we had all this success.”

 

Underrated genius

 

Another reason for the success was Powell’s intellect and instincts, especially on the fly during games.

“I don’t remember him being a big note taker and printing off a ton of stuff,” Moseley said. “He just had that kind of mind. He could watch film once and I would have to watch it three or four times. Most of the stuff was simple, looking back, but he didn’t forget anything. He would say, ‘You remember that play we ran on third down at Excel?’ And I’d say, ‘Nope but if you’ll tell me what it is, we’ll do it.’

“He was so smart. I’ve talked to him recently about this. I think it’s underrated with him. I’ve been around a lot of coaches and he was so good in the heat of the game. He was really good at game planning. He’s definitely one of the smarter coaches I ever played for and that includes Auburn. … The biggest thing was how cool and calm he was.”

Moseley said Powell often camouflaged his intelligence by design.

“One-hundred percent,” Moseley said. “He was very calculated. I don’t think he half-assed many decisions. It all went according to his plan. I’d love to know his IQ. You wouldn’t know how smart he is unless you know him well. His quick wit is the best I’ve ever been around. It’s so much fun when you’re not in the line of fire.”

Opposing coaches can affirm how uncomfortable it was to be in Powell’s crosshairs.

“We were on the road one night and about the middle of the second quarter, Danny looked at the official on our sidelines and said, ‘I’m fixing to call timeout and you’ve got one job in this timeout,’” Farish said: ‘“Go tell their coach that if they don’t quit hitting us late out of bounds, I’m fixing to score 100 points. He’s got a half to prove it.’ The official takes off and goes over there and the coach pulls out a damn handkerchief and waves it.”

Powell often looked good even when he screwed up an assignment. Leroy softball coach Larry Massey, Jason Massey’s father, had a National Guard meeting and couldn’t make the area tournament, so he enlisted Powell’s help. All Powell was expected to do was drive the bus over to Excel, fill out the lineup card and drive the bus back after losing. But that didn’t happen.

“You’ve got to host a playoff game,” Powell told Massey upon returning.

“You went over there and won the tournament?” an incredulous Massey replied.

 

Championship branches

 

Powell taught Jason Massey a lot about being a championship coach and Massey passed that on to current Leroy coach Chan Lowe, who also won a Blue Map.

“I know that experience in coaching in those big games definitely prepared me for coaching at that level,” Massey said. “I didn’t stress about it. He said, ‘Look, I’m going to let you do as much as you want to do.’ He knew that I wanted to be a head coach. He exposed me to a lot of those things that don’t have anything to do with the X’s and O’s of football but with running a program, like ordering equipment. That was a great experience for me. I was not shocked by those things when I became a head football coach.

“As long as he knew what you were doing and you could explain yourself to him, he allowed you to coach, which is something I try to do. I don’t want to be a micromanager. He’s going to trust you to do your job.”

That job was made easier by Ervin, who was a first-round Major League Baseball Draft choice for the Cincinnati Reds in 2013, and Coates, who played at Auburn, then was drafted in the third round of the 2015 NFL Draft. He is now the head football coach at Columbia High School in Huntsville.

Powell managed the egos that often come with great players and also developed those who appeared to be average. When he was a defensive assistant at Leroy, Powell moved Seth Headley from quarterback to the defensive line, where he led the Bears in tackles and became an All-State player.

“He was a player’s coach and allowed those guys to be themselves but also to conform to an identity bigger than themselves,” Massey said. “Clint Moseley, Sammie Coates, Phillip Ervin, all those guys were just phenomenal. And we had a bunch of other great kids. We had a run there that a lot of people just don’t have. I’ve never been around that many athletes all together in one place at the same time.”

Coates has not forgotten his mentor’s lessons.

“Coach meant the world to me,” Coates said. “He was straightforward and didn’t hold back. He’s one of the reasons I made it as far as I did and the reason I’m coaching.”

That gives Powell the ultimate satisfaction.

“That’s one of my biggest joys or feelings of accomplishment when you see one of your former players or assistant coaches really doing well, whether it’s in the sport or life in general, making positive contributions to society and just being a good person, a good parent and a good citizen,” Powell said.

 

Fast track to success

 

In a precursor of what was to come, Powell organized teams in his neighborhood as a child, eventually moving from Jackson to Leroy as a pre-teen.

He already knew Farish — “I think there are pictures of us in Bassetts Creek when we was in diapers,” Farish said — and their mothers taught at Leroy, where Powell’s analytical mind was polished.

“Mama was Danny’s math teacher,” Farish said. “She didn’t talk a lot about her students but she said Danny was one of the five smartest math students she’d ever had and she taught math at Leroy for 40 years.”

Powell stirred his mental acuity with a voracious desire to win in the same jug of Gatorade.

“He’s one of the most competitive persons I’ve ever known,” Farish said. “We played pennies together, softball, everything, and he was a competitor. It didn’t matter what it was. He was four plays ahead of everybody else. I’ve never seen anybody that could look at the whole field like he did.”

And compute it rapidly.

“We tried to play fast,” Powell said. “If we’re better than you, we want to play fast and get more plays in. The worst team is more likely to win if it’s less plays and a slower game. Somebody can beat you for a quarter if they’re not very good.”

But Powell doesn’t mind slowing down. It lets the awards catch up with him.