Today’s Topic: How Did Brian Hartline Craft His Coaching Philosophy?
Brian Hartline’s coaching career has been an interesting dichotomy of rarities and commonalities.
On the one hand, Hartline’s beginning is extremely common. He simply volunteered. He got his foot in the door by helping Ohio State’s scout team prepare for the playoffs back in 2016.
On the other hand, Hartline’s rise has been exceedingly rare. And it’s also rare for a successful former NFL player to begin a coaching career as a volunteer and then be willing to spend the next two years as a quality control coach with no guarantees on what would happen next.
Hartline’s ascension to receivers coach last season for the Buckeyes coincided with OSU having three fifth-year seniors and four juniors in his receivers room, and they weren’t hurt by having a quarterback like Dwayne Haskins throwing to them.
Much of the credit for the receiver play last year has gone to Hartline, but like a guy who once volunteered to help the scout team, he’s not worried about notice or attention.
Instead, his focus is exactly where it needs to be.
“I’m just focused on doing my part,” he said. “What does that mean? To me, I don’t just limit that to maybe in my room. I love getting the relationships with the DBs and the D-linemen and really getting to know everybody on the team. That’s really my only approach.
“I think it helps within the room, outside the room, but I’m really not focused on how necessarily I’m doing, per se. I’m just really worried about the guys in the room and how personally I can do better and how I can add more value to our team and our staff. That’s it.”
Ohio State WR coach Brian Hartline (@brianhartline) left an impression on the Colts staff while discussing Parris Campbell. That’s the type of player-coach relationship that everybody hopes to have: pic.twitter.com/FRXUHWVMvj
— Brad Kelly (@BradKelly17) May 2, 2019
This spring, Hartline said that he used to believe that playing football was his calling. But once he started coaching, he realized he had found his true calling.
Anybody who has ever coached, draws on past experiences and past coaches when building their own approach.
Hartline is no exception.
“I guess I learned everything from experience,” he said. “My foundation was always built from [former Ohio State receivers] Coach [Darrell] Hazell. Coach Hazell changed my life in how he approaches the game and how he got me thinking. So I try to do the same with these guys. I had the same approach.
“Hopefully you would agree, I’m trying to take it to another level. But again, it’s a combination of what coach Hazell taught me, what he taught Ted Ginn and Santonio Holmes and you go down the list, Anthony Gonzalez, myself. And then with the things I learned over the last 10 years. And I added to it. So that’s kind of the philosophy.”