Doug Blevins, who efficiently coached faculty and N.F.L. kickers like Adam Vinatieri and Justin Tucker, regardless of by no means having performed soccer as a result of he had cerebral palsy, died on Sunday in (*60*) City, in east Tennessee. He was 60.
His son, Roman, mentioned the reason for demise, in a hospital, was problems of esophageal most cancers.
Doug was fascinated with soccer from a younger age, and more and more with the nuances of kicking. He watched video games and educational movies, learn books and, in highschool, began to correspond with the Dallas Cowboys’ former kicking coach Ben Agajanian. Doug would analyze video that Agajanian despatched him, then use the data to enhance the kicking on his highschool crew, the place he was the coach.
“Since I was handicapped, I knew I’d never play a down,” Blevins advised The Los Angeles Times in 2000. “But I was set on this goal, making it to the National Football League.”
Blevins, who instructed kickers from his motorized wheelchair, taught himself the mechanics of place-kicking, punting and kickoffs. He analyzed hip rotations, leg swings and toe angles; he talked to kickers about the place to ideally plant a foot earlier than kicking a subject aim and learn how to sq. one’s physique to the tip zone.
His best-known college students included Vinatieri, who turned the N.F.L.’s profession scoring chief with the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts and who kicked two Super Bowl-winning subject targets; Tucker, of the Baltimore Ravens, who holds the league document for the very best proportion of subject targets made; and Olindo Mare, the Miami Dolphins’ all-time scoring and subject aim chief.
By the mid-Nineteen Nineties, Blevins’s popularity as a kicking guru was starting to unfold. Through an administrator at a group faculty the place he had been teaching, he got here to the eye of Dick Steinberg, the final supervisor of the New York Jets.
Blevins supplied Steinberg with scouting stories on the Jets’ kickers in 1993, and the following season he labored because the crew’s kicking advisor, a significant shift in his profession.
“This is an uphill battle,” Blevins advised Sports Illustrated for a profile of him in 2004, noting that it was particularly tough as a result of he was not an ex-player and much more difficult due to his incapacity. “I needed to have walking, talking résumés out there. If I had guys I found who became successful kickers in the N.F.L., then I’d always have a place in this league.”
In 1995, he started a five-year consulting stint with the World League of American Football (later often known as N.F.L. Europe), the place he taught soccer gamers to be N.F.L.-style kickers and chosen the kickers for the groups.
Between 1995 and 1996, he spent a number of months in his hometown, Abingdon, Va., fine-tuning the place-kicking expertise of Vinatieri, an undrafted kicker from South Dakota State University.
As a results of their collaboration, Vinatieri turned a extra constant kicker, blasting footballs off his highly effective proper foot. Blevins positioned him with the Amsterdam Admirals of the World League in 1996, and the Patriots signed him later that 12 months. His profession included kicking two Super Bowl-winning subject targets for the Patriots.
“Doug has the perfect kick in his mind,” Vinatieri advised Sports Illustrated, including, “He watches you and figures out what you need to do.”
“I wouldn’t be here without him,” he added.
William Douglas Blevins was born in Abingdon on Aug. 3, 1963. His father, Willis, was an engineer. His mom, Linda (LaFon) Blevins, was a nurse who inspired Doug to pursue no matter he wished.
In the early Nineteen Eighties, whereas attending the University of Tennessee, Blevins was a scholar assistant coach underneath Johnny Majors. After transferring to East Tennessee State University, in (*60*) City, he held the identical place, working for the top coach Mike Ayers. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in felony science in 1988.
He quickly started holding educational camps in southeastern states — which he did for a few years — and tutoring kickers. From 1992 to 1995, Blevins was the particular groups coordinator and kicking coach at Abingdon High School.
In 1997, whereas nonetheless working for the World League, he was employed by Jimmy (*60*), the top coach of the Miami Dolphins, because the kicking coach. He helped Mare win the No. 1 place-kicking job by slowing down his kick.
(*60*) mentioned it was Blevins’s single-minded focus that helped the kickers.
“A lot of kickers get off on their own and get out of rhythm; a lot can happen to them if someone isn’t coaching them on every single kick,” (*60*) mentioned in a telephone interview. “Doug knew that was his role and charted every one of his kicks, and Mare became one of the best Dolphins kickers ever.”
After six years with the Dolphins, Blevins turned a advisor to the Minnesota Vikings in 2004. He helped enhance Aaron Elling’s distance and hang-time on kickoffs.
During the crew’s coaching camp that 12 months, Elling advised The Minneapolis Star Tribune that Blevins “can see every mechanical thing you’re doing on a kick, all at once.”
The Vikings job was Blevins’s last one for an N.F.L. crew. But he continued to work with kickers individually and coached at Emory & Henry College, in Emory, Va., and at East Tennessee State. He had agreed to hitch the workers of Tusculum University, in Greeneville, Tenn., earlier than he was identified with most cancers.
Billy Taylor, Tusculum’s new head coach, was a participant at East Tennessee State when Blevins was a scholar assistant coach.
“Doug wheeled himself into Coach Ayers’s office and said, ‘Coach, I’ve lived with cerebral palsy all my life, but I’m a linebacker at heart,’” Taylor mentioned by telephone, recalling the dialog. “‘I love football, and I want to be part of this.’”
In addition to his son, Roman, from his first marriage, to Nenita Colon, which led to divorce, Blevins is survived by his mother and father; his daughter, Sarah Blevins, from his marriage to Nancy Duque, which additionally led to divorce; his brother, Greg LaFon; his grandmother Kathleen Hensley; and his stepmother, Carmen Blevins.
Blevins mentioned that his incapacity didn’t reduce his ardour to teach gamers in a specialty that he knew so effectively.
“Professional football is a results-oriented business,” he advised Abilities.com, a disabilities web site. “As soon as people saw that I could create the desired results and achieve the appropriate level of success, I was welcomed into the arena.”
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