RIVERVIEW – Head Coach Michael Thornton is focused on winning. That statement may raise a few eyebrows given the wins that have yet to come and the losses that seem to be piling up for the Riverview Sharks, but the process is just as much of importance to Thornton as the results and if running an offense such as the Triple Option/Wishbone is what some think is the wrong approach for his squad, then Thornton has no intentions of being right.
Coaching is in his blood. His father Brian Thornton was Head Coach at East Bay from 1994-2010 finishing 12th on Hillsborough’s all-time win list with a 97-79 record. Thornton graduated from East Bay in ’98 and then went to the University of Florida where he was on the Gators’ staff as a student assistant. Riverview was built during the early part of 1998 and began in August that fall to alleviate the overcrowding in the area with students from East Bay, Brandon and Bloomingdale in attendance. He eventually became Head Coach at Cypress Lake High School in the Ft. Myers/Cape Coral area from 2008-2011 posting an 11-28-1 record. His current record entering his fifth season for the Sharks is 8-32 following four consecutive 2-8 seasons.
High school football has evolved slightly since his days as a student and so has the demographic shift of pigskin prowess from being just a Dade-Broward thing along with a scattering of talent in some other parts of the state to a mainstay in this Tampa Bay region. The problem with his tenure down in the southwest part of Florida was one tied to economic factors which in-turn led to slim pickings for schools not named South Fort Myers or Naples or even Charlotte. Although there’s still teams with talent just to our south, the historical “also-rans” from our region are stepping up their games as well making the brand of ball here all the more valuable once you see what lies just beyond the regional borders.
“All-in-all I think our brand of football is better up here in the Bay Area. Our top-tier teams are obviously at a higher level than the Ft. Myers/Naples area being nationally-ranked and I even think our middle-of-the-pack teams are slightly better than the top teams now from that area.”
One of the reasons cited by Thornton (and others for that matter) is that the talent gets diluted because the schools themselves have yet to surpass the 1,500 student threshold and that means thinner pools of talent spread around the area.
“They built a bunch of brand new schools during the housing boom and then the bubble burst and many of the schools and the coaches on staff were left to figure what to do with what talent was available. All of the schools were small schools to begin with having just 1,500 students in most cases, so they were spread thin. Ft. Myers had a lot of success in the 80’s and 90’s, but even they have dealt with some of the ripple-effect of that.”
Thornton has seen some pretty special talent through his years growing up in the Bay Area, but also had the (dis)pleasure of coaching against future stars Sammy Watkins and Dallas Crawford for three seasons when they were shining for South Fort Myers. All of that talent he’s seen here might be trumped by what he saw even though the talent as a whole is so diluted in the southwest part of Florida. Just because the teams themselves might not have the caliber of rosters we have up here, it doesn’t take away from the fact one of the best to ever do it in his eyes came from that area.
“I thought Reche Caldwell was one of the best high school football players I’d ever seen,” said Thornton. “But Sammy Watkins would have to be right up there with Reche; perhaps even a little more dynamic. Reche did so much though. He was amazing.”
Now to that offensive approach. Many coaches at the high school level and some at the collegiate level run the option from the bone with some level of success. Or at least they attempt to. It’s not flashy or sexy, but it gets the job done with the right personnel. The Sharks have rushed for 8,514 yards under Thornton’s direction with 2,110 of those coming in the last two seasons despite their aforementioned win/loss record in the first four seasons of his tenure.
“I’m not against throwing the ball, I’m against throwing the ball poorly.” –Thornton when he was first hired at Riverview. Has that mentality changed?
“It’s a quote that I live by. I’m just really rigid in my beliefs that establishing a sound running game is a little bit easier to do than throw the football around. You’ve got a lot of moving parts that have to be in-sync. Years when you have that great thrower, you might not have great wideouts and visa-versa so I find it’s easier to stick to the ground. I laugh all the time at some of the receiver stats around the county and some of these dynamic athletes are touching the ball six/seven times a game where I believe in our style of ball that we are gonna put those types of guys to touch the ball every play like at the quarterback position for example.”
“It’s just philosophy and it’s rigid, but I do believe it gives us the best chance to win. I know that at times it looks like we are being hard-headed but we want to throw for scores. We were 1-for-3 in the spring game (vs. Spoto) with a touchdown pass and we just missed two other touchdown passes. We intend to throw out of our play-action for scores though. Ideally I don’t care if I throw it five times a game, if we complete three-of-five of those and for two touchdowns that’s 75% efficiency and 14 points.”
The majority of the examples pointing to the effectiveness of this offense come from the collegiate level where schools like Georgia Tech, Georgia Southern and Navy (notice the common link?) have perplexed and pummeled teams into submission by running the ball inside-outside-and-through teams. When mentioning the obvious source of inspiration, Thornton’s voice picks up in excitement about addressing some of the perceptions of option schools and the negative connotations surrounding them.
“It’s funny how committed they (Georgia Tech) are to the run, yet the guys going to the league from that program are the wideouts. I think it puts your wideout in a great position to get open when you’re facing an offense that’s built on running the ball first like it is. It forces the defense to think more than people can even imagine, especially when the player on the outside has the athletic ability to do some damage and there’s no telling when the pass is coming. When you sell out to the run and you concentrate on the backs on the pitch and forget about the receiver then you make the defense pay for it.”
If the offense was so boring and pre-conceived, then why do schools line up in the spread yet STILL run the triple option out of that set? Look at schools like Arizona under Rich Rodriguez or Ohio State under Urban Meyer. Even Auburn under Gus Malzahn will look to run the ball first and foremost, they’re just replacing the pre-snap aesthetics that take place with more moving parts than a Swiss clock shop. Real recognizes real. Game recognize game; and Thornton knows what time it is.
“I was a big fan of what Auburn did two years ago. Though last year I noticed that (Gus) Malzahn was trying to get more creative in the passing game and I think they weren’t as successful. It happened to Paul Johnson a few years ago when he tried to recruit and adjust to a little more passing but it wasn’t as successful as what got them there, which is what they (Georgia Tech) got back to last season. Florida State played their best game of the season in that ACC Championship game and if they had made some of the mistakes they had made during the regular season, I think Tech would have beat them. I watched the Georgia Tech-Georgia game the other day and watched Tech make one of the top defenses in the SEC look silly averaging 10 yards per carry and doing things like going 90 yards in 7 plays or less all on the ground.”
This offense and the mindset behind it isn’t going away anytime soon. Georgia Tech finished the two games versus Georgia and Florida State combining for 730 yards on the ground. Thornton also knows from the get-go what his detractors will say and have said regarding his offense.
“It’s not sexy. I get told by Jeremy Earle (Jefferson Head Coach) all the time I’ve got to throw it around. In the end, we do what we do and I think a lot of area coaches would rather play a bad spread team than a running team (period) because they’ve got to prepare for it. This offense can neutralize pass rushers as well when it forces them to use some different sets of skills other than heading up the field towards the quarterback. It takes discipline to face this offense that we run. It’s not a powerful rushing attack, it’a finesse rushing attack. It’s a pain-in-the-ass.”
To the here-and-now; Riverview hasn’t won a district game in so long that most can’t remember nor do they want to. That’s a great thing, actually. Coming off their 17-6 win versus local rivals Spoto in the spring, things are looking pretty positive for the Sharks. Things could be a lot worse had Riverview stayed in the Class 7A district with their local rivals East Bay and Lennard along with Tampa Bay Tech and others, but instead they’ve got the largest classification in the state and one of the best teams in that classification waiting for them in a district in Manatee. They’ll have some good looks at wins in the district even though the drought is historical. Thornton’s assessment of what lies ahead on their schedule this fall seems to reflect the quiet optimism that has been building since the night of May 22nd this past.
“I think East Bay’s district with the addition of Tech (Tampa Bay Tech) this season is pretty stacked. We’ve got a team in Manatee that would probably win that district as well as our own, so I think that’s kinda wrapped up at this point, but I do believe we are in line to win our first district game in a while. I think we’ve got a competitive district schedule, but one that we can compete in and pull out a win this season. We’ve played some of those Hillsborough County teams (Alonso, Newsome and Steinbrenner) in recent years pretty tough and we are pretty familiar with the program down at Sarasota-Riverview as well. We go to camp with them during the summer and match up with them pretty well. We won’t match up with every team on it, but I believe our schedule sets up in the beginning to get us going. Of course I don’t take anything for granted. Things happen like injuries and whatnot and I don’t want to get ahead of where we are at, but the first four games of the season I expect us to be competitive and that should give us some momentum that we need going into the district.”
The Sharks will travel to Plant City this Friday in their fall classic before opening up with Chamberlain and Leto at home in weeks one and two. They’ll hit the road with that momentum they hope to achieve in weeks three and four at East Bay and Lennard in bragging rights for the area before starting district play at home against Steinbrenner on September 25th.