Time Out with Drew Dittman (2004 Justin-Siena High graduate)

Vince D’Adamo: What did you enjoy most about competing in athletics
throughout your life?

Drew Dittman: The process. Preparing mentally, physically, and spiritually to
compete. I always believed in the adage that practice was work and the actual
game was my paycheck. I felt football was ultimately a physical chess match.
The guy across from me could be bigger, faster, stronger, quicker but I could
still beat him by outworking him, outthinking him. That meant not having a social
life and watching film at every break, every lunch, studying my opponent, finding
his tendencies, knowing the opponent’s playbook, what they liked to do at this
down and distance, etc. and then shutting that play down. I guess playing
defense is kind of like life, it’s all about how you react.

D’Adamo: What have you been doing since graduating from high school?

Dittman: It’s been a bit of an odyssey. I headed off to play at Willamette University
after Justin, got hurt a couple times, left after three semesters. To be honest I
didn’t get it done there and let myself and a lot of people behind me down.

Moved back to Napa, did the full time JC student/full time work grind for a few
years, finished a couple of A.A.s and the military came calling. I was 22 and had
to look take a hard look in the mirror and realize that I thrived most in a structured
environment with discipline, so I enlisted in the Navy in May 2008.

As a Navy Corpsman I spent over half my time in with Marine Corps Infantry
(USMC doesn’t have their own medics, Navy does it for both branches). I loved it,
best job I ever had. First deployment was to Japan/Philippines, mostly training
exercises, came home, my unit (2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, Fox Company) was
asking for volunteers for Afghanistan. I wasn’t going to let another Doc work on
my guys in combat, so I went. Shipped out with the toughest brothers I’ve ever
known in February 2010 for Marjah, Helmand Province, did the combat deal, came
home, volunteered for a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan from 2011-2012 with
RCT-5.

After completing some advanced training, I finished out my time in the Navy at
Naval Medical Center San Diego as a Nuclear Medicine Technologist and got
Honorably Discharged in July of last year and moved home to Napa.

Nowadays I’m working in South San Francisco as a Project Manager for Central
Concrete/U.S. Concrete.

D’Adamo: What was your favorite class at Justin-Siena High?

Dittman: This question isn’t fair. There’s three that come to mind. Human
Physiology with Ms Birkmeyer, U.S. History with Tom Bonfigli, and of course,
Honors English with Mr. Morrish.

D’Adamo: What was your favorite athletic moment at Justin-Siena High?

Dittman: Favorite athletic moment? Scoring exactly one point my senior year on
the basketball team. So for Justin’s scoring leaders there’s guys like Chad Lichau
and Garrett Halverson….and I’m at the complete opposite end. But that free throw
was a swish I think.

All joking aside…the 2003 title run in football. We had lost in the section
championship game the year before, and there was something very personal for me
about those 3 playoff games my senior year. Middletown gave us a bit of scare late
in the game, and I remember we stuffed them on 4th down close to the goal line to
seal it.

D’Adamo: How much do you feel you have grown personally since graduating
from high school and how much of that do you trace to athletics?

Dittman: Playing football at Justin, with those coaches, those teammates, that family
environment, was a game changer for me in life. I was an outsider coming in from
public school, and I’m still close with so many people from that period in my life-
Coach Cotruvo, Uncle Varg, Coach Shanks, and then my buddies from those teams
are still the people I’m closest to. As for personal growth, well I’m 32 going on 60 it
feels like in terms of life experience, but it’s a blessing. The circuitous route I’ve had
in life I wouldn’t change, as it’s blessed me with so many great people and
experiences that have taught me so much about life and about myself. At 18 I knew
everything. At 32 the only thing I know is that life just doesn’t quite work out like you
plan it, and that’s actually the beauty of it.

D’Adamo: Within your family, who have been the most influential people?

Dittman: My mother has always been my super hero/role model. I hope one day I’m
half the person she is. She has just taught me so much…just the most
selfless, wise, amazing person I know.

D’Adamo: Name a historical figure, dead or alive, in or out of sports you would
most like to meet.

Dittman: Hardest question yet…but I have to be honest and say Doc Holliday. I’d
have to find out if his portrayal in the movie Tombstone is accurate, because if it is,
I’d think we’d have a lot in common and a stimulating conversation.

"Safety of the game" in football is an oxymoron

By my own admission, though I love football, I make little to no effort to watch NFL
exhibition games.

In a nutshell, if I am in front of the TV, I’ll flip the channels back and forth to
baseball games but I’m not making it appointment TV.

Granted, such games are important to rookies and fringe veterans because these
contests are their ticket to securing a spot on an NFL roster but it’s hard to get
excited about watching games where the starters receive limited playing time.

The 2018 version of NFL exhibition football, however, is something I initially made
more of an attempt than the past to watch because of the newly instituted helmet
rule in order to make the game safer, whatever that means (insert eyeroll). The
rule sounds well intentioned but is going to lead to unintended consequences.

Section 2, Article 8 reads:

“It is a foul if a player lowers his head to initiate and make contact with his helmet
against an opponent. Contact does not have to be to an opponent’s head or neck
area — lowering the head and initiating contact to an opponent’s torso, hips and
lower body is also a foul.’’

The helmet rule is intended to increase safety so as to reduce concussions but
is it practical? I would say no. For openers, referees are still in limbo about the rule
and like most rules, there is too much subjectivity. As a result, it is only going to lead
to more penalties, reviews, fines, appeals and consternation. It’s going to make the
game harder to play and officiate. Both jobs are performance based.

I needed only one game to ascertain that this is going to lead to the most
controversial season I can remember in my 46 years of living. Despite repeated
rules to make the game safer, concussions rose last season by 13.5 percent. You
would think the NFL would read into the idea that their rules to make the game
safer are not working. As Clint Eastwood once said, “Your mouthwash ain’t makin’
it.”

Correct use of the helmet as a protective device and not a weapon has always
been an element of the NFL rulebook. Therefore, adding to the rulebook only
muddies the water. When we think of head contact, we think of a defensive player
acting as a heat-seeking missile.

The rule, however, also applies to a running back lowering his head or a pulling
offensive lineman.

The first exhibit of the new helmet rule came in the Hall of Fame game in which
Baltimore defeated Chicago 17-16.

Two “use of helmet’’ penalties were called on Baltimore, each of them cases of a
linebacker lowering his head to initiate contact. The hits were in the open field
and while perhaps routine by past standards and hardly egregious, they were easy
to interpret under the new rule.

But there were also two “unnecessary roughness’’ flags, one on each team, that
were made with the helmet rule as a guide and were extremely questionable. In
one case, there was a launching motion during a tackle but the defender’s shoulder
appeared to make contact first. In the other case, a defender’s helmet grazed his
opponent’s chest.

Remember, any hit with the head lowered — be it the crown of the helmet or
merely the forehead — to any part of an opponent’s body will result in a flag. When
in doubt, officials have been instructed to call unnecessary roughness.

The problem is, it’s easier to flag players in open space than in the trenches.
Players, maybe star players, are going to be ejected, perhaps at pivotal moments
of games, altering outcomes.

In addition, NFL officials can’t agree on what’s a penalty under the new rule and
what’s not. While everybody wants a safer game, this ambiguity is a legitimate
concern.

From youth football on, players are taught leverage: The lower your pad level, the
better chance you have to gain an advantage on your opponent. I’m no master of
physics, I just play one on the internet, but if you lower your shoulders, your head
goes with it.

The biggest takeaway for me is that “safety of the game” in football is an oxymoron.
The game was meant to be violent. It’s one of the many reasons people watch. One
of the first football videos I ever received was titled “NFL Crunch Course” on VHS
which featured the game’s biggest hits and biggest hitters including but not limited
to Ronnie Lott, Lawrence Taylor, Jim Taylor, Sam Huff, Dick Butkus, Deacon Jones
and John Henry Johnson.

That video would get me jacked up when I was a high school football player.

Be it as a fan or freelance writer, between high school football on Friday, college
football on Saturday and NFL on Sunday, I cannot get enough.

Not even the National Anthem protests killed my love for the game. I stand for my
own reasons and I don’t give a rat’s ass what others think but that’s a talking point I
have already addressed. However, the more the game turns into basketball in pads,
it’s not a two-inch putt that I’ll love watching football ten years from now.

Kramer HOF enshrinement great but speaks to a bigger issue

Sometimes watching one thing can trigger thoughts on something that is
indirectly related.

Green Bay Packers legend Jerry Kramer along with Robert Brazile, Bobby
Beathard, Ray Lewis, Terrell Owens, Brian Urlacher, Brian Dawkins, and Randy
Moss were enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday. My first
thought on Kramer is, “It’s about time.”

The 82-year old Kramer was a finalist 10 times. With Kramer playing right guard,
the Packers won five NFL titles and the first two Super Bowls. He was also the
team's placekicker in 1962, 1963 and part of 1968.

Kramer was a five-time All-Pro in his 11 seasons despite being often injured.
Kramer’s injuries included but were not limited to having surgery to remove
sizable wood fragments embedded in his abdomen from a teenage accident and
a badly injured ankle suffered in 1961. In all, Kramer played in 129 regular season
games; he also had 22 surgeries in 11 seasons, including a colostomy, which he
described as “a horror movie that hasn't been made yet.”

There is an NFL Films clip that shows iconic Packers head coach Vince Lombardi
drawing up his infamous Power Sweep and uttering in his Brooklyn accent,
“What we wanna get is a seal here and a seal here and run this play in the alley.”
We see Jim Taylor and Paul Hourning run between the seals and in the alley.
However, the ones creating the seals were Kramer and Fred “Fuzzy” Thurston.

There remains several other offensive linemen that deserve a Hall Pass. The
ones that readily come to mind are Bob Kuechenberg, Joe Jacoby, Steve
Wisniewski, Mark Stepnoski, Jay Hilgenberg, Tony Boselli, Randy Cross, Erik
Williams, Jeff Van Note, and Lomas Brown.

The easy answer as to why there is a shortage of offensive linemen in the Hall
of Fame is because though some offensive line coaches have grading systems,
they are never made public and not readily comprehensible by most fans like skill
position stats.

In my years of covering high school football, I heard grovels of how offensive
linemen get little to no recognition. So I employed two different practices. The
first was if a running back scored a touchdown running outside to the left, I would
write “Tony scored on a 47 yard run behind left tackle John and left guard Tom.” I
did not watch the blocks but for all I know John was just looking for someone to
block and Tom didn’t make a very good one. However, it generated a measure of
goodwill. The other approach I took was if the team had a big yardage game, I
would mention the entire starting line and the tight end early in the story. Readers
appreciated the gesture.

Though I was not a lineman when I played high school football, there are two
feature stories I enjoyed writing. The first was when I was a college student at the
University of Nebraska during spring football 1996. The Cornhuskers were coming
off consecutive national championships. In 1995, the offensive line of Aaron
Graham, Aaron Taylor, Eric Anderson, Steve Ott and Chris Dishman paved the
way for 399.8 yards per game, did not allow a sack and did not commit a holding
penalty all season. I found it fascinating how Nebraska offensive line coach Milt
Tenipor had the letters “O LINE” enblazened on the license plate of his Chevy
pickup.

In 2003, for the Napa Valley Register, I talked to catch up all five Napa Valley high
school offensive line coaches to pick their brain on their evaluation process. Their
eyes lit up over the opportunity to engage: Jon Conner (Vintage), Tim Mulligan
(Napa), Brenden Shanks and Jason Guiducci (Justin-Siena), Tom Shirmang
(St. Helena) and Larry Hoburg (Calistoga). In 2007, also for NVR, I caught with
then St. Helena head coach Dave Collinsworth for a similar feature. The
Collinsworth era was an ill-fated 2-8 season, lasting only one year, but given that
he was an offensive tackle for the University of Oregon, I respected his acumen
for that position group.

With these discussions, I learned that evaluating an offensive line’s individual or
group performance is not as simple as looking at yardage or sack totals. Teams
can design plays for quarterbacks to get rid of the ball quicker to mask a subpar
line. Sometimes, an offensive line can make the right blocks but running backs
hit the wrong hole and the play gets stuffed. Conversely, a lineman can miss his
block but the running back either makes a defender miss or breaks a tackle to
overcome the missed block.

The problem with evaluating an offensive line is that unless you know the
playbook, how can you tell if a lineman executed his assignment?

The "pancake" block stat has been popularized within the last 30 years or so --
and not talking the ones you eat at Black Bear Diner. That block is defined as an
offensive lineman putting a defender on his back.

Mulligan, Conner and the Guiducci/Shenks tandem had the most informative
evaluations. Though the feature ran 15 years ago and some elements of football
have changed, as in you had huddles and fullbacks in 2003, there are enough
factors of offensive line evaluation that are portable by decade.

Mulligan bypassed individual grading systems because he felt it led to too much
individualism and if the offense scored a touchdown, the entire line received
helmet stickers. Instead, his focus was about are you either moving on the snap
of the ball or even slightly ahead, as long as there is no penalty. From there,
Mulligan would look at making the right step and completing assignments.  

Conner used a detailed grading system for each lineman in order to accumulate
an individual percentage by dividing their successful attempts by their total
attempts.

For example, grades of 50 percent ensured that a player will get an opportunity
to start the next game, while 55 percent could earn the player one helmet sticker
and one more if he achieves 60 percent or greater. The player can receive
positive points for pancake blocks and negative points for penalties.

Conner prefered individual grades because it forced him to evaluate every player
on every snap. Conner looked for several things: 1) Is the player executing his
assignment? 2) Does he play with aggressiveness and passion? 3) Is he getting
off the ball on the snap count? 4) Is the line working on the opponent's side of the
line of scrimmage? 5) Is the player fundamentally sound and staying with his
assignment?

Guiducci and Shenks used a grading system as well that resembled a golf format
of 1-3. That method means the lower the score, the better the grade. Two means
you did your job. Three means something was lacking, such as you missed your
block. One means an outstanding performance."

Justin's coaching staff has four sets of eyes watching each play to speed up the
evaluation. The coaches focused on footwork and shoulder contact. The main
focus is whether or not the player is taking two steps before making contact with
his opponent.

The pancake block, however, is not heavily emphasized because the Braves
blocking scheme was not dependent blowup shots.

Though evaluating linemen is not an easy task, the legendary ones shouldn’t have
their 82nd birthday before enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

My annual pitch for Roger Craig's Hall of Fame enshrinement

This time of the year always hits a nerve with me.

On Saturday, Robert Brazile, Bobby Beathard, Ray Lewis, Terrell Owens, Jerry Kramer, Brian
Urlacher, Brian Dawkins, and Randy Moss will be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as
members of the Class of 2018. I have absolutely no issue with any of the inductees being new
members. The only real issues I have are Owens not being present and why it took so damn
long for Kramer but those are other conversations for another day.

To this day, however, I will continue to champion the idea that Roger Craig belongs in the Hall of
Fame. I must admit some bias but I’m willing to come clean. This story hits a nerve with me
because I grew up in Northern California (Napa, CA to be exact) as a 49er fan. The 49ers became
a revered dynasty that most people know them as today.

San Francisco drafted Craig in 1983 in the second round from Nebraska. Three years later in 1986,
San Francisco drafted his Cornhusker teammate (Tom Rathman) in 1986. I had a great NFL team
to root for in the 49ers, even though they have been mostly bad since 2002 with the exception of
the Jim Harbaugh years (2011-2014). I just needed a good college team to root for – but Cal and
Stanford just didn’t do it for me. They still don’t but I respect the job well done by Stanford head
coach David Shaw. USC has a great tradition in football. So does UCLA in basketball – but rooting
for a Southern California team was a hard sell for me. Well, it still is as much as I respect their
tradition. So I became a Husker fan in 1986. I later became a Husker graduate in 1997.

I moved back to Northern California in 1998. Sorry, I can’t bring myself to saying “NoCal” or “SoCal.”
That sounds way too damn dorky and juvenile. When I hear people those terms, it sounds like a
pipsqueak that has not reached puberty yet.

Back to Craig for just a moment. Well, for the rest of this commentary. Craig was the first player in
NFL history to run and receive for at least 1,000 yards in the same season. He ran for 1,050 yards
on 214 carries and led the NFL with 92 catches for 1,016 yards in 1985 and scored a team high 15
touchdowns that season. Since Jerry Rice was a rookie and was not yet the legend he eventually
became, Craig was the 49ers’ main weapon.

In 1988, Craig was named NFL Offensive Player of the Year by the Associated Press. He ran for
a career high 1,502 yards and caught an additional 76 passes for 534 yards.

Marshall Faulk achieved the 1,000-1,000 club status as a member of the then St. Louis Rams in
1999. Faulk retired in 2005 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2011. Given that Faulk
totaled 12,279 rushing yards in his 13 year career, I’d be hard-pressed to argue against his
enshrinement. Keep in mind; rushing for 10,000 yards is normally viewed as a right of passage to
the Hall-of-Fame. Craig, however, had to run on muddy fields at Candlestick Park in December
while Faulk played his entire career in a dome-stadium on the Astroturf in St. Louis and
Indianapolis.

Craig rushed for 8,189 yards but had just two 1,000 yard rushing seasons. He also added 4,911
more yards as a receiver on 566 catches, scoring 73 touchdowns (56 running, 17 receiving) in the
process while playing both fullback and running back. Keep in mind, Craig caught only 16 passes
in his entire college career. He also had to share carries with Wendell Tyler, Joe Cribbs and Tom
Rathman, not to mention there was this historic passing combination known as Joe Montana to Rice.
To be fair, Faulk shared the spotlight with Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison in Indianapolis and
later Kurt Warner, Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt in St. Louis but he did not have a backfield mate that
he had to share carries alongside.

His final memory to some 49er fans is a costly fumble that enabled the New York Giants to beat San
Francisco 15-13 in the 1991 NFC Championship game. Some 49er fans I have spoken to have said,
“Well, if Craig didn’t fumble the 49ers would have Three Peated as Super Bowl Champs.” I find that
point debatable.

Keep in mind, Montana got knocked out of that game thanks to Giants defensive Leonard Marshall’s
crushing blow. Steve Young, who later went on to have a Hall-of-Fame career, replaced Montana.
Let’s face it, Young could not have been trusted in a big game then. Heck, he was a hit or miss
proposition in a big game after he became an All-Pro and NFL MVP in 1992.

Again, Craig might not have the gaudy rushing stats of say Faulk or Tiki Barber. However, with
Craig’s hybrid style of playing running back, you have to look beyond numbers and see how he
revolutionized the game as we know it today. When you watch NFL running backs like say Bryan
Westbrook, LaDainian Tomlinson, Adrian Peterson or Reggie Bush operate as dual threats and many
others in today’s game – just remember, they owe a debt of gratitude to Craig because he started the
change of a trend where the running back primarily carried the ball. As opposed to carry, catch AND
pick up blitzes.

And oh, by the way, Craig has three Super Bowl rings, two more than Faulk, Westbrook, Barber,
Tomlinson, Peterson and Bush combined.