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 Johnson Metropolis, in east Tennessee. He was 60.
His son, Roman, mentioned the reason for demise, in a hospital, was issues 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 tutorial 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 used to be handicapped, I knew I’d by no means play a down,” Blevins instructed The Los Angeles Occasions in 2000. “However I used to be set on this objective, making it to the Nationwide Soccer 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 discipline objective and 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 Tremendous Bowl-winning discipline objectives; Tucker, of the Baltimore Ravens, who holds the league file for the best proportion of discipline objectives made; and Olindo Mare, the Miami Dolphins’ all-time scoring and discipline objective chief.
By the mid-Nineties, Blevins’s status as a kicking guru was starting to unfold. By way of an administrator at a group faculty the place he had been teaching, he got here to the eye of Dick Steinberg, the overall supervisor of the New York Jets.
Blevins supplied Steinberg with scouting experiences on the Jets’ kickers in 1993, and the subsequent season he labored because the crew’s kicking marketing consultant, a serious shift in his profession.
“That is an uphill battle,” Blevins instructed Sports activities 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 wanted to have strolling, speaking résumés on the market. If I had guys I discovered who turned profitable kickers within the N.F.L., then I’d all the time have a spot on this league.”
In 1995, he started a five-year consulting stint with the World League of American Soccer (later often called 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 College.
Because 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 Tremendous Bowl-winning discipline objectives for the Patriots.
“Doug has the proper kick in his thoughts,” Vinatieri instructed Sports activities Illustrated, including, “He watches you and figures out what it’s good to do.”
“I wouldn’t be right here with out 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.
Within the early Nineteen Eighties, whereas attending the College of Tennessee, Blevins was a pupil assistant coach below Johnny Majors. After transferring to East Tennessee State College, in Johnson Metropolis, he held the identical place, working for the pinnacle coach Mike Ayers. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in legal science in 1988.
He quickly started holding tutorial 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 Excessive Faculty.
In 1997, whereas nonetheless working for the World League, he was employed by Jimmy Johnson, the pinnacle coach of the Miami Dolphins, because the kicking coach. He helped Mare win the No. 1 place-kicking job by slowing down his kick.
Johnson mentioned it was Blevins’s single-minded focus that helped the kickers.
“Loads of kickers get off on their very own and get out of rhythm; quite a bit can occur to them if somebody isn’t teaching them on each single kick,” Johnson mentioned in a cellphone interview. “Doug knew that was his position and charted each considered one of his kicks, and Mare turned top-of-the-line Dolphins kickers ever.”
After six years with the Dolphins, Blevins turned a marketing consultant to the Minnesota Vikings in 2004. He helped enhance Aaron Elling’s distance and hang-time on kickoffs.
Throughout the crew’s coaching camp that 12 months, Elling instructed The Minneapolis Star Tribune that Blevins “can see each mechanical factor you’re doing on a kick, all of sudden.”
The Vikings job was Blevins’s closing one for an N.F.L. crew. However he continued to work with kickers individually and coached at Emory & Henry Faculty, in Emory, Va., and at East Tennessee State. He had agreed to hitch the workers of Tusculum College, 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 pupil assistant coach.
“Doug wheeled himself into Coach Ayers’s workplace and mentioned, ‘Coach, I’ve lived with cerebral palsy all my life, however I’m a linebacker at coronary heart,’” Taylor mentioned by cellphone, recalling the dialog. “‘I like soccer, and I wish to be a part of this.’”
Along with his son, Roman, from his first marriage, to Nenita Colon, which led to divorce, Blevins is survived by his dad and mom; 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 educate gamers in a specialty that he knew so nicely.
“Skilled soccer is a results-oriented enterprise,” he instructed Skills.com, a disabilities web site. “As quickly as individuals noticed that I may create the specified outcomes and obtain the suitable degree of success, I used to be welcomed into the world.”
