By Holly Ratliff *Host Communications
Assistant coach Mike Archer is prepping for his second stint at the University of Kentucky as the Wildcats get set to open the 2003 season with a fresh defensive scheme. Archer, who served as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach from 1993-95 with the Blue and White, returns to the college ranks after seven successful seasons with the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers. The coaching veteran brings a renewed vision for his profession and an unselfish appreciation for the thing that matters the most to him – his family.
When questioned on his decision to leave the NFL, Archer responded without hesitation about the deciding factors for his move back to the Bluegrass and the college football scene.”In a lot of ways it was an easy decision, because family is very important to me,” said Archer. “My son has been here (as a student at UK) for two years and my daughter made the decision to enroll this fall. You don’t want to leave the NFL because you work to get to that level. I was there for seven years and we accomplished a lot, but this is something that you don’t get a lot of chances to do in a coach’s life. It isn’t very often that you get a chance to go back somewhere you were before. My family liked living here, we like the people and we’ve gotten a lot of support, so in that respect it was easy and it was an exciting move. I don’t ever look back when I make a decision. I move forward. A lot of people say ‘What if?’ I don’t. I move on.”
Though Archer is moving on, he knows he isn’t returning to the same UK he left just a few years ago. With a new university president, athletics director and head football coach, Archer has been candid with his assessment of the new vision and improvements the administration has made in regards to the football program.
“The biggest thing I see is a stronger commitment to football,” Archer said. “When I was here before, I think they were satisfied with being average. Now, with Dr. Todd, Mitch Barnhart and Coach Rich Brooks, they’re dedicated to being a successful football program. They’re putting that commitment into the budget to give the coaches and players all they can in order to be a first-class team. We have great fans in this state and they’ve been through thick and thin with us. We want them to see success and be able to cheer on a winner. It’s good to be around a program where you can win in basketball, football and baseball, and we have an administration that wants to do that.”
Although the gridiron may be 100 yards on both the collegiate and professional playing field, the mindset of the two levels is very different. It’s an approach that Archer knows he’ll have to re-adjust after seven years of nothing but football, football and football. The aspects of academics and the daily issues a student-athlete faces were non-existent in the NFL, leaving more time for learning the intricacies of the game from seasoned big-league coaches.
“When I left here in ’95, I’d coached for 22 years and I thought I knew a lot of football,” Archer stated. “When I got to the NFL, I realized that I didn’t know as much as I thought. I can honestly say I learned every day from people like Dick Lebeau, Bill Cowher and everyone that I was exposed to. In the NFL, all you do is football. It’s football all year round and time isn’t spent worrying about other things. You get to spend a lot of time learning football and I learned a lot.”
Archer knows that the most important thing in coaching is communication, and getting your ideas across so that student-athletes can learn is vital to a team’s success.
“It’s not what you know, it’s what the players know and what they can do to be successful,” said Archer. “I learned more about how to handle people and how to get my message across during my time with the Steelers. Some of the guys in the NFL have been there for several years and when I got there, they helped teach me the defense. Now, coming back to college is a big adjustment. Now I have to teach these kids that know nothing about this defense – from ground one – how to learn how to play it.”
The new defensive scheme Archer is implementing (a 3-4 scheme, compared to a more conventional 4-3 scheme) is one that will take time. But, the Wildcat defense is making progress and, with Archer’s guidance, will look to build on each week’s performance.
“It’s a slow process, but Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Archer said. “We have to make progress each and every day. Some days we take two steps forward and some days we take a step back, but I see progress. Our kids have a good attitude and they work hard and that’s important.
“What I’m hoping for is that this defense will grow and get better as the season goes on. Whatever happens against Louisville, I want us to improve on and get better next week against Murray State. We want to be able to see an improvement, so that at the end of the year, when we evaluate as a coaching staff, we can say that this defense has gotten better. If that happens, then I think the future is bright because we’re young on defense and we have a lot of players who will be back next season. You don’t know what’s going to happen or who’s going to step up, so that’s the exciting thing. Starting with the Louisville game, we’re going to findout who the good players are on defense.”
